# Search



## Psionicist (Nov 15, 2002)

Hello there.

There are currently 140 community supporter, times $25 per account makes a whoppin' $3500. That's one fine looking server/fee/whatever.

My point is, everything works just fine right now, the server is stable (I appreciate that), Morrus has lots of money to burn on hot hardware (and things like that). Isn't it a good idea to enable the search function for the public right now? Or at least in the rules/house rules forums? I just *hate* when I cannot find what I'm looking for, like old prestige classes, rules discussions and so on. No way I will browse trough thousands of pages with threads just to find what I'm looking for.

And no, I will not pay those $25 for a community support account. I think the search function is one of those things that you should be able to use for _free_.

Anyone with me?


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## EricNoah (Nov 15, 2002)

Psionicist said:
			
		

> *Morrus has lots of money to burn  *




Morrus will have to correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression that this is just about as far from the truth as you could get.  

How he might feel about a test run (maybe turn on searching for a short while to test how it goes), I don't know.


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## Psionicist (Nov 15, 2002)

*Re: Re: Search*



			
				EricNoah said:
			
		

> *How he might feel about a test run (maybe turn on searching for a short while to test how it goes), I don't know. *




That is a good idea, and a bad Idea. The good idea is that you can search the forums (Woot!). The bad idea is that everyone will try out the "new" search and therefor put a massive ammount of load on the server, just because they *can* and *want* to search, like the when the Poll feature was introduced with vBulletin. I can remember there were a whole lots of polls back in January when it was new and "cool". There are not so many polls right now. The point is that a test run might be a bad idea unless you try it out for a month or so.


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## Knight Otu (Nov 15, 2002)

*Re: Re: Re: Search*



			
				Psionicist said:
			
		

> *
> The bad idea is that everyone will try out the "new" search and therefor put a massive ammount of load on the server, just because they can and want to search, like the when the Poll feature was introduced with vBulletin.*




And where would be the difference if Search is truly turned on again? 

On the topic at hand, I don't really need search. The sorting options can simulate that fine enough for my purposes.

Besides, I didn't pay for it with either of my two accounts (though I think about doing it when I get a paying job), so I don't deserve it.


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## Piratecat (Nov 15, 2002)

Let's dispel a few myths.

Morrus runs this site (and Natural 20 Press) as his primary job. He does so for free, letting people who want to help repay the community to donate, all voluntarily.  I imagine that you haven't tried to run a business yet, but $3500 doesn't go a long way, especially when you consider that we just doubled bandwidth for a substantial increase in bandwidth costs per month.  Money to burn? You, my friend, are kidding yourself. 

If you don't wish to contribute, that's your decision and that's fine, but please don't complain that you should get the rights of a Community Supporter when you've made the decision not to become one. To be frank, I don't have a lot of patience for that.

Search isn't going to be turned on for folks that aren't Community Supporters, as far as I know. It wouldn't be fair to the folks that have already donated to help the site! They deserve a reward for their kindness and generosity, and that's one of the easiest ones to deliver.  

So if you think that the only point of becoming a Community Supporter is to pay for search, then you may have missed the point a little, and I'm sorry about that.


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## Morrus (Nov 15, 2002)

Psionicist said:
			
		

> *Hello there.
> 
> There are currently 140 community supporter, times $25 per account makes a whoppin' $3500. That's one fine looking server/fee/whatever. *




It was 3.5 months of server fees until I dropped 2 out of the 3 servers a month ago.  It went very quickly.




> Morrus has lots of money to burn on hot hardware (and things like that).




No I haven't.  Please stop presenting things as fact when you have no idea about my finances.  



> And no, I will not pay those $25 for a community support account. I think the search function is one of those things that you should be able to use for _free_.
> [/B]




Why - is there something in the Swedish constitution that says that Morrus must give things to Psionicist for free?  If you don't want to donate, that's cool, but please don'y try to imply that you're having some kind of right denied to you.



> Search isn't going to be turned on for folks that aren't Community Supporters, as far as I know. It wouldn't be fair to the folks that have already donated to help the site! They deserve a reward for their kindness and generosity, and that's one of the easiest ones to deliver.




Perfectly put, PC! 



> So if you think that the only point of becoming a Community Supporter is to pay for search, then you may have missed the point a little, and I'm sorry about that.




Again, I couldn't have said it better myself.  The Community Supporter accounts aren't about paying for a service; they're about voluntarrily putting something into the community.  Psionicist, as PC says, the point seems to have gone entirely over your head.


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## Psionicist (Nov 15, 2002)

*Re: Re: Search*



			
				Morrus said:
			
		

> *Again, I couldn't have said it better myself.  The Community Supporter accounts aren't about paying for a service; they're about voluntarrily putting something into the community.  Psionicist, as PC says, the point seems to have gone entirely over your head. *




Fine, then I cannot see any problem whatsoever. If you are "_voluntarrily putting something into the community_", and not paying for the search-feature, then I don't think there should be any problems for the community supporters if you enabled search for the public, because you just told me you do not spend those money on search, but into the community.

And no, I do not try to be a smart-ass, I just think this is very odd. If you want to donate money to ENW it's fine with me. I would If I had more money. And if the point is about donating money to support the community, then I can hardly see the problem with enabling search.


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## Piratecat (Nov 16, 2002)

Hmmm. You don't seem to understand. We made a promise to the folks who were kind enough to donate, offering them incentives for doing so. We're not going to take those incentives away because of complaints from people who have decided not to participate, for whatever the reason.

Please understand, neither complaining or asking politely is going to change this policy.  It's something that Russ feels strongly about, and I agree with him completely.


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## alsih2o (Nov 16, 2002)

Psionicist said:
			
		

> *
> And no, I will not pay those $25 for a community support account. I think the search function is one of those things that you should be able to use for free.*




 seems to me anyone can come here and already get a _lot_ for free.

 are you not getting enough value for you freeness?

 i don't see you changing anyone heres mind about the issue, but it wouldn't have hurt your reception on the issue if you had mentioned how much you appreciate some of the ideas, information and services provided to you for free.

 as a community supporter i can tell you that i didn't send in my money so i could search, i searched out so much stuff that i realized i should pay


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## HellHound (Nov 16, 2002)

Honestly...

*I* did buy my community supporter membership for the Search function.

(I hate Paypal... ever since they closed my last account when it still had money in it, I refused to use them. I finally broke with this promise in order to pay here actually.)

My main reason for not paying for community supporter status initially is that I am trying to strong arm a few of the other publishers to chip in with me to pay for Russ to make it to GenCon next year on OUR bill instead of his own. Considering HOW MUCH he has done for the smaller d20 publishers, we all owe him this. SO I figured that the money spent there to support Russ would balance out against the money I wasn't spending on the community supporter feature.

But then I needed to search the boards for comments on a few of my books to make it into the errata as well as into the adcopy for the upcoming Necromancer's Legacy.

And thus, Community Supporter status was purchased.


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## RangerWickett (Nov 16, 2002)

Really, it's not like $25 is that much.  I just spent $15 on dinner and dessert tonight.  If I'd eaten ramen or just gone to my cafeteria earlier and splurged, I'd almost be to another community supporter account just by that.

Pick a bad habit of yours (mine is chocolate).  Don't support that habit for just a little while, and save up $25.  How hard is that?  First, you wouldn't have to worry about us being frustrated with you.  Second, you would have the good feeling because you're making Russ happy, and thus making all of Russ's friends happy.  And Russ has lots of friends.  It's so easy to spread so much joy in the world!

Hm.  If I was feeling particularly snitty, I would start a thread asking for all the community supporters to announce that fact, and then I'd create another thread asking for all of the friends of Russ to announce themselves, and then I'd remind all the community supporters that they each have made all of the people in the other thread very happy.


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## Darkness (Nov 16, 2002)

Psionicist, among these 140 (_one-hundred and fourty!_) Community Supporters, there's certainly at least one who'd probably be willing to do the odd Search for you if you ask them.


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## chatdemon (Nov 17, 2002)

Piratecat said:
			
		

> *We made a promise to the folks who were kind enough to donate, offering them incentives for doing so. We're not going to take those incentives away because of complaints from people who have decided not to participate, for whatever the reason.
> *




What about the promise made when Eric turned the site over to Morrus that people who decided to help out and donate some money to help with the costs would not recieve any special privileges?

I remember reading that somewhere...


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## Morrus (Nov 17, 2002)

chatdemon said:
			
		

> *
> 
> What about the promise made when Eric turned the site over to Morrus that people who decided to help out and donate some money to help with the costs would not recieve any special privileges?
> 
> I remember reading that somewhere... *




I don't.  

When the boards changed hands, we had a very limited time to raise money and buy the messageboard software etc (a matter of days, in fact).  So I passed the hat round and asked people to contribute what they could.

The only thing I said was that I'd be grateful for the help at the time, but that if it was given it was understood to be voluntary and that people should not expect to be owed anything in return for it (other than that I would use the money to buy the messageboard software etc.). 

That was solely to protect myself from people coming back later after being edited, banned or whatever for profanity, pornography etc. and saying "Hey, I paid - I can do what I want".  It certainly didn't _exclude_ the possibilty of me giving someone privilages; it just ensured that people woud not expect them. Anyone who was not comfortable with that was advised not to donate anything.  I remember it well, because I made a point of making that very clear indeed - it was an important issue given the circumstances.

Luckily for you, though, chatdemon, despite the fact that no such promise was made, nobody who donated to buy that software etc. _got_ any special privilages, features or anything else.   So, nothing for you to be upset about here. 

I think you may be confusing two different things - the community supporter accounts came much later and were entirely unconnected with that initial whip-round; they were about server hosting when traffic increased to the point that it got very, very expensive.


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## johnsemlak (Nov 18, 2002)

I'd like to add a positive spin to this thread and say that while I havn't opted to bay $25 to become an ENworld supporter (I might later),  I find that I get much better value by supporting enworld in another way, by buying Natural 20 products.

I just spent $5 on Moon Elves (I presume ENworld gets some of that).  For that, I get new prestige classes, weapons, armor, spells, etc.  Very good value.  I'm looking forward to my next purchase.


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## Morrus (Nov 18, 2002)

johnsemlak said:
			
		

> *I'd like to add a positive spin to this thread and say that while I havn't opted to bay $25 to become an ENworld supporter (I might later),  I find that I get much better value by supporting enworld in another way, by buying Natural 20 products.
> *




Actually, you support EN World in the best way - by helping out with the actual work.  People like you, Blacksway, all the scoopers, all the mods and admins, all the people who maintain the reviews page/d20 guide and the staff reviewers are a pretty darn important part of what makes this site cool.  Thank you!

(Apologies to anyone I missed, as there are bound to be some).


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## Dinkeldog (Nov 18, 2002)

I'm eagerly anticipating Cyberzombie's Elements of Magic release from Natural 20.


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## johnsemlak (Nov 18, 2002)

Morrus said:
			
		

> *
> 
> Actually, you support EN World in the best way - by helping out with the actual work.  People like you, Blacksway, all the scoopers, all the mods and admins, all the people who maintain the reviews page/d20 guide and the staff reviewers are a pretty darn important part of what makes this site cool.  Thank you!
> 
> (Apologies to anyone I missed, as there are bound to be some).  *




Well, I didn't want to toot my horn earlier, but it's always nice to receive gratitude for one's efforts.    Of course I enjoy what I do so it's not really necessary.

My initial reaction to the post at the beginning of this thread was typical, and identical to those who have responded above.  This site is the result of a lot of people's hard work.  In general, it is an extremely useful and very efficiently-run site (compare it to just about any other RPG site-- I think you'd have to agree).  Complaining about not being able to run searchs for free, even though the reasons are clearly stated, well, some people...

HOWEVER, I think I can understand that people who use this site a lot become used to the high standards that this site nearly always keeps, and as a result become frustrated when they run into problems (witness the people who posted rather rude complaints when the site when down a few weeks ago).  It's easy to forget, when you become used to using a site like ENworld, that its a grassroots site and not supported by a conglomerate, because it's overall quality, despite some complaints people have, is very high.  If someone posted similar comlaints about the WotC site, I'd be more sympethetic, because we nearly all shell out at least $30 for the PHB and perhaps much more for the DMG, MMI, MMII, S&F, modules, LGG, Dragon mag, etc.  And in today's world, a company with a fan base like WotC is pretty much expected to maintain a decent website for its fans.  Of course, even then, the complaint wouldn't necessarily be vaild, but it would be more acceptable.

The fact that people post such complaints as in this thread I think is a credit to ENworld and it's high standards and very professional quality, which make the ENworld site nearly indisinguishable from much more money-driven sites like wizards.com or espn.com or whatever (for those who what to disect that comparison, I said 'nearly' indistinguishable).  It's nice to know that in today's world of mergers, conglomerates, and mega-corperations, that grass-roots volunteer organizations still exist and compare favorably to their competitors.

Finally, it is worth noting that ENworld is only one of many fine sites dedicated to providing resources for RPG players; many others do a fine job with perhaps even more limited resources.  I can't name them all, but I use Mortality.net and dragonsfoot from time to time.  Also, many d20 publisher companies and their sites are pretty much run by people from whom RPG stuff is a hobby.


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## RangerWickett (Nov 18, 2002)

I want to point out a small, amusing tidbit of information, since you mentioned that buying Nat20 products supports ENWorld.  In a sense that's true, but actually Russ keeps Nat20's funds separate from ENWorld, as I discovered to my dismay when he charged himself several hundred dollars for the banner ad space ENWorld had given Nat20.

You notice there aren't anymore Nat20 banner ads.






 .


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