Hello, fine peoples of FFXIAH.
As some of you may know by now--and if you have no clue what I'm talking about, check
this post out before reading any further--Google pulled their advertising from this website because of "the amount of sheer profanity, nastiness, and other behavior exhibited on the forums was so bad, they no longer want to be associated with our brand. In other words, the behavior of our forum users has now put the future of the site itself at actual, tangible risk."
Yeah. That doesn't sound too good to me, either. What it boils down to is that the forum users have caused this site to lose one of their major sources of advertisements. Okay, no big deal, you may say. I am now going to point out something on a
page that no one seems to visit anymore: "Our current hosting expense is $820/month." That's a bit of a bill, if you ask me. Who knows if that number has gotten larger since Scragg wrote that? The website's user base isn't exactly dwindling by any means.
We, the users, all share some portion of the blame. Oh yes, some more than others, but inactivity and apathy towards the state of the forums has truly hit the website where it hurts now. We, the users, all use this website, and now what I imagine the primary source of revenue that keeps this website afloat has been knocked away. It's been bad enough that I bet half of us used ad-blocking when the ads were there. Now it's even worse than that.
I also cannot find the exact post, but I want to point out that the website doesn't turn a profit. Jaerik has stated several times, as I recall, that this website is a loss straight through and through.
So what am I getting at?
Well, things are looking kind of grim. If you want to thank this website for being a gosh darn excellent tool and the admins for always being attentive to us, if you want to thank them for doing
us the favor of running this website even when we haven't been the most agreeable, most thankful users, or if you just want to help keep the site afloat in some troubled times, I implore you to please go to
http://www.ffxiah.com/donations and make a donation.
Honestly, after what the developers created for us and what we put the administration through it's the least we can do.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I truly hope with all my heart that even in these harsh economic times that we can muster up a few dollars to give back to the website.
