The hidden cost of that, though, is that there is a hidden cost. You say "rent servers" as if it's a silver bullet, but when Dragoneer and FA had a particularly nasty DDOS attack, it ran up $2000 in charges that he was responsible for. Cloudflare and other services can to a degree mitigate DDOSs, as well as programming to allow sites to drop into a "war-footing" to minimize the damage, but if a site is receiving or sending traffic, the meter is running.
There are really two solutions to this problem, and both of them approach it at different angles.
The first involves pay-for-use or subscription services to allow site owners the monetary resources to upgrade their site, deal with issues such as this, and maintain support without going into the massive debt that many of us saw SYSTEM go into. This process of decline for Furnation was not a momentary thing. This was a site that existed before the cheap resourcing we saw now. Before VPSs and software stacks that are built to do social. It's likely there was so much debt owed that the machines themselves were collateral for a bit. We didn't support it then, and now the person who did support it is tired, clearly burnt out, and has nothing left to give.
Our first take-away from this should be the knowledge that these sites ARE NEVER FREE. Someone is always paying for them, and given SYSTEM's comment on his page, you might as well append the "Someone is always paying for them" with the phrase "with their life."
The second solution involves the fluidity of paywalls, locked up proprietary systems, held data, inability to transfer data, and general closed source mentality. The thoughts that go into all these competitor sites in furry seems to be "what can I offer that no one else can", and thus, the sites and the data and their users stay locked up. It's only when the site goes under that we all flail around, wondering what could have been done, ignoring that creating little fiefdoms in the fandom where things are locked up can lead to no other solution. Of _COURSE_ the data on Furnation is gone, it was behind and controlled by one person. It's at his whim to release it, and he can't even keep the lights on. He can't even keep his own lights on, which he definitely should first. The data this fandom generates has NO future closed up behind closed, proprietary services. None.
So the second takeaway is, we need to be using more fluid, open source solutions for our community. FA will fail. So will Weasyl. So will Inkbunny. So will Google and Facebook and Twitter. There is nothing that says these sites will (or have to) stay around forever. What we need as a community is to embrace open-ness, instead of setting up private fiefdoms for the Lords of the fandom to rule over the data. We need to have open source solutions that allow us to survive sites like this one going down.
The hidden cost of that, though, is that there is a hidden cost. You say "rent servers" as if it's a silver bullet, but when Dragoneer and FA had a particularly nasty DDOS attack, it ran up $2000 in charges that he was responsible for. Cloudflare and other services can to a degree mitigate DDOSs, as well as programming to allow sites to drop into a "war-footing" to minimize the damage, but if a site is receiving or sending traffic, the meter is running.
There are really two solutions to this problem, and both of them approach it at different angles.
The first involves pay-for-use or subscription services to allow site owners the monetary resources to upgrade their site, deal with issues such as this, and maintain support without going into the massive debt that many of us saw SYSTEM go into. This process of decline for Furnation was not a momentary thing. This was a site that existed before the cheap resourcing we saw now. Before VPSs and software stacks that are built to do social. It's likely there was so much debt owed that the machines themselves were collateral for a bit. We didn't support it then, and now the person who did support it is tired, clearly burnt out, and has nothing left to give.
Our first take-away from this should be the knowledge that these sites ARE NEVER FREE. Someone is always paying for them, and given SYSTEM's comment on his page, you might as well append the "Someone is always paying for them" with the phrase "with their life."
The second solution involves the fluidity of paywalls, locked up proprietary systems, held data, inability to transfer data, and general closed source mentality. The thoughts that go into all these competitor sites in furry seems to be "what can I offer that no one else can", and thus, the sites and the data and their users stay locked up. It's only when the site goes under that we all flail around, wondering what could have been done, ignoring that creating little fiefdoms in the fandom where things are locked up can lead to no other solution. Of _COURSE_ the data on Furnation is gone, it was behind and controlled by one person. It's at his whim to release it, and he can't even keep the lights on. He can't even keep his own lights on, which he definitely should first. The data this fandom generates has NO future closed up behind closed, proprietary services. None.
So the second takeaway is, we need to be using more fluid, open source solutions for our community. FA will fail. So will Weasyl. So will Inkbunny. So will Google and Facebook and Twitter. There is nothing that says these sites will (or have to) stay around forever. What we need as a community is to embrace open-ness, instead of setting up private fiefdoms for the Lords of the fandom to rule over the data. We need to have open source solutions that allow us to survive sites like this one going down.