Support the TCL.ORG!!!! (He-Man.Org take-off) ;)

Site Discussion Team Discussion
1

Hi all,

Anyone who visits www.he-man.org will hopefully see what I’m making fun of here - if you visit the front page of the site you’ll see why! :wink: How does this sound for an announcement on our front page:

SUPPORT TCL!!!

In 2008, a new www.thundercatslair.org will be coming your way - the most slick, up-to-date, ambitious and beautiful website in the history of all creation! Some of the many features this site will boast will include:

  • Information on anything and everything to do with ThunderCats! The whole team will be quitting their jobs and leaving behind their other commitments to work on the site full-time, each putting in over 100 hours a week each!

  • 3D holographic projection! Yes, that’s right, for the first time EVER, the team at TCL.Org will be hiring some of the finest scientific minds in the world to create, for the first time, 3D holographic images that project from your computer right onto your wall! Want to see a 6ft tall Cheetara in your bedroom? No problem!

  • New enhanced forum! This site will boast a new, interactive forum produced in association with Skype, allowing fans to log in and talk with each other VERBALLY, without having to bother to download Skype! Again, this will be produced exclusively for this site!

The team here at www.thundercatslair.org are funding what we can. But, we can’t do it alone. That’s why we are guilt-tripping you, yes YOU, the fan off the street who comes to this site for leisure and pleasure, into donating a measly $1,000 each into our PayPal account, in order to fund our site which we shall own exclusively and just let you contribute information to for free, even though you’ve paid for it to be there!

Just $1,000
Really, money like that is expendable in this day and age. Depending on your personal tastes, $1,000 will buy you an expensive holiday, a new car, the most state-of-the-art home cinema system money can buy, or just the first installment of a divorce settlement. If you can give up one of those things just once, that $1,000 will allow us to provide you with a site that will last for years and years and years (or certainly for a while).

If you can’t send $1,000, then please send what you can.
$1,000 is what we need from each user, because, let’s face it, if we’re all going to quit our jobs to work on the site full time, we’re going to need money to eat. But, we will gladly accept whatever you can give.

Over the past few years, ThunderCats fans everywhere have generously supported us - but, to continue our plans for Internet domination, we need your help. YOU have the POWER to help us! (Oops, wrong show!) And hey, remember, you can’t take it with you! :slight_smile:

Rant over! :wink: But please guys, let’s never, ever allow this site to get to a stage where we are begging and guilt-tripping our visitors and forum members for money, huh? :slight_smile:

Take care… :slight_smile:

2

Yeah I too thought the wording on he-man.org was a bit much. It sounded to me like they were more or less telling you, you had donate $10 or else! :frowning: I dunno who wrote that up, but they need to learn a lesson in being respectful to users of the site, whilst making the situation clear.

What is up reads very badly.

3

And I thought i was the only one who had a bad taste left in its mouth after reading the donation spiel. :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown:

Etiquette my friends…Goodness imagine if every member donates $10,

By the way Chris…your post was an instant CLASSIC You had me rolling

4

Chris here…

In the interests of being fair, I would say that if that piece on the front page really was written by Emiliano Santalucia, I know that English isn’t his first language, so that may account for some of the bad wording - however, in that instance I would say it’s up to Val Staples to edit it! :wink:

The thing that really leaves a bad taste in my mouth is the fact that, on the www.he-man.org forums, you’ve got folks pontificating (which is a polite way of saying “mouthing off with a superiority complex”) about donating to the site. “Oh, $10 is nothing when you think of what this site gives you, be a REAL STAND-UP GUY and donate $10!” I don’t know if any of you guys who post over there saw, but I actually had a bit of a mini-rant about it because I was so pissed off with some people’s superior attitudes - I haven’t been over to www.he-man.org yet today because, even though I don’t consider I was rude, I’m nonetheless expecting to find I’ve left behind a war zone! :smiley:

EDIT: Actually not so much of a war zone as I expected - a couple of nice PMs from Val Staples (JVS3) and one PM from forum member King Miro that I’m actually not so keen on (but isn’t rude). Although King Miro would disagree, I actually think what I’ve said over there will have done some good, because folks posting in that thread that they can’t afford to donate and people getting on their case for it (of which there are two instances in the thread I posted in) is not cool. :frowning:

Take care… :slight_smile:

5

Its a freaking website…a WEBSITE no your livelihood. Theyre going about this the wrong way requesting people to donate $10. When you request a certain amount you quickly begin to raise some eyebrows as to what your intentions are. Bottom line is if you cant afford to do a site overhaul on your own budget/money dont do it at all…you cant expect forum members to donate a specific amount.

Sorry but I cant help but share Chris’ sentiments on how bad he-man.org has handled this issue. TASTELESS…

6

chris that was hillarious. I havent been to the org in a few days so seeing that on there made me wonder. 10 per member is a lot of cash

7

I think it’s the wording that doesn’t really convey what the .org really wants. Lots of websites do this and I don’t necessarily think it’s bad for them to be asking for donations. Unlike ThunderCats where there are many smaller sites that are popular amongst the community, He-Man.org is THE site that the community supports which is why I would understand their requests for donations. Now if they required everyone to donate, that’s totally different.

If you guys remember, I also am trying to transfer TCL to a database system (which I am still working on) and it’s HARD WORK to do that type of stuff. It’s so much more complicated than HTML and I think Val and co. are getting professionals to do it, thus the money issue.

I kind of wish we were first to doing the whole database thing because when we eventually switch, it feels like we’re once again copying Val when that’s what I originally wanted to do. I want to stand on our own.

Anyhoo, they’re good guys so I don’t think it’s wrong to ask for donations. Personally, I wouldn’t do that, but then again, they have tons of traffic which means they probably pay 3X what we pay for hosting…so I can’t begin to fathom paying $500-700 for hosting.

8

$500-700??? He-Man.org is a great community but the wording on the announcement was just not good IMO.

On a side note when i readabout members being able to track their collections thru the website that definitely sparked my interest

9

Yeah I remember at the peak of the 2002 MOTU line, their traffic was off the charts. Val even auctioned off his collection to pay for the hosting…and I’m sure if he still had his collection, he would offer that up rather than ask for donations.

I know that if traffic is high, websites are required to get dedicated servers which cost a lot more than shared hosting, which we currently use. Dedicated servers is like the website has it’s own hard drive and shared hosting is like we’re sharing a hard drive with smaller websites.

Having a database allows visitors to do a lot of things that HTML cannot provide such as the collection tracking. It’d be nice for us to have that as well since we have a very active toy collecting community. :slight_smile:

10

Chris here…

Oh don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame them for asking for donations - heck, I’d be the first person to advocate us sticking a link on the front of this site where folks can donate to it at random if they so wish! :slight_smile: What I think is bad (and what I was making fun of) is the wording, and also the fact that there are forum members on He-Man.Org’s forums who are basically claiming the moral high ground for themselves on the issue of donating, and getting on the backs of people who don’t. :frowning:

Just to put something else into perspective - if every single registered member of He-Man.Org’s forums donates $10, the total amount raised will be $29,570 - whilst I confess ignorance on this score, where they are saying “Every fan needs to donate $10”, surely to God their running costs can’t be nearly $30,000?? :?

Take care… :slight_smile:

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$30000? To put that into perspective thats one persons yearly salary…tax free