• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

Time to Evaluate SOH Viability Is Now

Milton Shupe

Milton Shupe

Staff Contributor
Staff member
In 10 days, Ickie must pay for the flight server, and in 30 days pay for this server. We are at 41% of our goal now.

Because of where we stand now, we must evaluate alternatives to providing SOH services.

As you know, only your donations keep SOH going. As members, we must step up or be willing to consider other sources for our community involvement. Time is getting short and Ickie must consider alternatives now.

Do we wish to support this site and keep it alive and well? Only we as members can answer that question.

Time is getting very short and decisions need to be made pronto.

We need to meet a substantive part of our goal shortly to keep SOH active in its current state.

Decision time.

We greatly appreciate your support. If you can comfortably do that, now is the time to step up.

Thank you for whatever you can do.
 
In the admin lounge we were talking about the good old days when SOH had low bandwidth allotments.

Roger and Ickie were talking about how at the end of the month the downloads would have to be turned off to avoid hitting the bandwidth limit.

Those days maybe coming back soon if we can not raise enough money.

We know we have enough members to support the site but the number of unique donators has been on the decline every year while the number of people who download has continued to go up.

If you find SOH a value to your hobby please donate.
 
If a choice has to be made - and I certainly hope it doesn't come to that - I find great value in the downloads available here, and I find very great value in this forum. I have never used the flight server and I don't know if I ever will. I may not be a typical SOH user, but I suspect that maybe I might be.

Just a thought...

Meanwhile, we are already more than halfway towards the goal, the drive hasn't been going on all that long, and the amount raised seems to be increasing significantly every day - this despite the fact that many of us are of retirement age and get a monthly pension paid towards the end of the month, and which hasn't been paid since the drive started. I hope I'm right in thinking that it's too early to be making drastic choices.

Of course, it's never too early to consider possibilities...
 
Mick, you are right in your thoughts. Thanks to yesterday's response, the pressure is being significantly relieved. The next few days are key and hopefully with mid-month donations, we will be in much better shape. We sincerely appreciate everyone's willingness to do what they can comfortably.

And yes, we are always evaluating our options to reduce our annual costs and needs to balance that with reliable, responsive systems with appropriate mirroring, backups and recovery capabilities, but will continue to push for a lower cost operation. If we can get through this year's annual obligations, we will have the time necessary to weigh all the feedback from members and determine our best way forward. Just my view as a staff member.
 
Just me 2 bits... but if every member of the SOH just donated a "fiver" ($5)... the admins could wrap this whole business up and we'd be money ahead. Just me 2 bits... I have been unemployed off and on for about 5 years now, and I still find a way to give a little. It ain't much but it's still a considerable donation. I'm not saying that everyone should do as I do if they are in similar situations... but just $5 bucks from every member would really help out. Sorry if I sound a bit terse... I'm not trying to single anyone out. Like the man says, "do what's comfortable". But if you value this site and what it has to offer, then do something to give a little back.

I reckon I'd better put a lid on it. I'm no hero here and I shouldn't be ranting about such things, for fear that I might KILL this thread as I so eloquently have done to other threads in this forum.... or worse, one of the admins might close it altogether. Just me 2 bits is all.

Sorry for the tirade...

BB686 (I have to drop the American Flag from me name since the flag icon no longer works on me signature)
 
rich12545 said:
What is the flight server and what does it do? Just curious.
Click to expand...

Rich,

For clarity, the Flight Server (SOH.net) is the multi-player server that also supports Teamspeak online chat, the RTWR, and its own set of forums, and is our "Go to place" when/if this main server is down. It is used fairly heavily for CFS Multiplayer action and for Teamspeak live audio chat for FSim MP, developers, team flights, other collaborative efforts, etc.


Not to be confused with the server we are on here, the SOH.com server.
 
My bad! I've been wrapped up in my own problems, but I just got to stock up my Paypal and I'll donate!
 
Donation Drive Goal Reduced ...

Ickie has been researching for a better Flight Server deal and came up with a savings of $3000. Therefore the Donation Drive goal has been reduced from $14K to $11K. Thank you all for your feedback, input, and support. And, thank you Ickie for your efforts on this. :applause:
 
Maybe donations could be made towards the latter part of the year,
say September.Folks may have a little more disposable income than
after Christmas.

People like me,old age pensioner could plan ahead and put a little extra aside
for this purpose. It is a pity that The Australian Dollar has lost so much ground
to the US Dollar,makes the donation a lot less because of the exchange rate.

This is truly the best site on the Internet,with so many great people.

Anthin
 
Anthin said:
Maybe donations could be made towards the latter part of the year,
say September.Folks may have a little more disposable income than
after Christmas... Anthin
Click to expand...

Good idea. It has occurred to me too that right after the holidays and their usual expenses is not the best time for people to come up with extra cash. (And too close before the holidays might present the flip side of the same issue.) And for those of us in the middle and upper reaches of the northern hemisphere, high winter heating bills also cut into disposable income.

I see that we're now three quarters of the way to goal, thanks in part to Ickie's careful shopping. (Thanks Icky! :applause:)

This has got to be the best FS site on the web, and I'm sure it's not coincidence that it's user supported.
 
Time of the year for the donation drive is obviously dictated by our Jan/Feb due bills to pay for servers, bandwidth, s/w licenses and support. Agree this time frame is tough after the December holidays but then there are Summer vacations, prep to send kids to college, or back to school in Summer, and then upcoming holidays for Nov/Dec again. So, I usually donate monthly or bi-monthly to spread my costs of support over the year, and I do not have to remember to save up for January. :) But, no matter when one donates, it's always appreciated.
 
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