A New forum site??

[saturnlite88]

Hello Mafia friends. I have some important information to share.

We are not all perfect. I and the other admins hastily found the forumotion free forum hosting without doing much research. We regret that. We placed Mafia Online onto their servers unaware of how little control over the site they allow. In our frustration to make a forum that will be ideal for our Mafia games, the admin and I have decided that the best choice is to take MO and host it elsewhere.

NO DECISIONS HAVE BEEN MADE YET! WE WILL NOT FORCE ANYONE TO MOVE, AND NO NEW SITE HAS BEEN MADE! We want your opinions first.

Here are the pros and cons as we see it. We have thought about this for a long time.

Pros

• It would be possible to set up a real-time notification system. It will be hard and require some html know-how, so we can't guarantee that it will happen, but currently it is impossible to achieve.
  
• We will be able to sort posts by author, etc.
  
• There will be more control behind the scenes in regard to staff permissions. Right now, to give, for example, Parti the tools to send newsletters, we have to give her ALL the admin tools. The full phpbb options allow more control.
  
• We can host more things other than a forum. We are thinking maybe a wiki would be cool, and other option exist as well.
  
• We will have more options in regard to the look of the site.
  
• There are a host of free extensions to the forum that we would have access to if we left forumotion.
  
• We would keep the banner, the rankings, the shop, the achievements, and everything that you love about MO right now.
  
• We will own the rights to our forum, and have complete control over it. We will not have to move again anymore ever to get what we want.
  
• We will have our own domain name (we are thinking mafia-online.org)

Cons

• Forumotion is a jerk and will not let us have access to the site files, not even for a fee. We will not be able to import users, posts, threads, or anything for that matter. This has a number of drawbacks. We can manually update post count, points, rankings, etc. to users on the new site, but the posts themselves will not be there. We would then put a link on the new site to MO as an archive.
  
• Users will have to register a new account.
  
• It is not free. We are looking at about 100 bucks for two years. The admin staff is willing to take on the bulk of this, but we would appreciate help. We have thoroughly considered a vast number of options, and have settled on using [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
  
• The site will not be ready for a while. Maybe a week or two or more.

WE want to know if you will be okay with this change. We feel like the last time we moved, a small group of us forced it on everyone without asking first. In our opinion, MO is not good enough right now, and most of us have given up on amirite. Tell us your opinions, ideas, questions and concerns because we want to hear them! No decision has been made, but we have thought about our options for several weeks now.

If we seem to agree that we should move one last time, we will work to make the transition as seamless as possible. And future changes will NOT ever again require a large upset. Also, if we chose to do this, we will offer incentives for people to donate to the cause.

We hope that you will give this the consideration it deserves,

Saturn, Parti, Mary, Lucy, Bonsly, and Blake

[Sergio]

My opinion:
MO sucks ass atm (No offense.)
We should move
We won't have to pay, will we?

[saturnlite88]

It will be free to users. There may be ads (just like there are now) but nothing obtrusive. We will ask for donations, though.

[Sergio]

lol @ people w/out adblock

[Mary]

I have adblock but I have it disabled on certain sites like youtube and amirite where I know that there are people that really need my ad revenue in order to keep this thing going that I enjoy. So, if we set up a new site I will disable adblock on it as well.

[saturnlite88]

Well, if the ads are placed by the hosting site, I don't care actually. But if we put ads on it to help pay for OUR costs, then We should disable it.

[Mary]

Yeah, I still have it enabled on here because we don't get the revenue.

[saturnlite88]

In response to moving back to amirite: I don't think the site has what mafia needs anymore. It will not have ranks, shop, or achievements. We will be at the mercy of the new admin, and cannot change things. We will give up the dead player's thread. The site is supposed to have a big change by the end of the year that will make it a lot like twitter, and the demographics are changing. I hope that this new site can be designed in a way that brings in new members that are interested in mafia.

[Sergio]

amirite's original intention was to be like twitter, so that's good

[Mary]

No it wasn't. Amirite was around before twitter was popular.

[Sergio]

mary learn sarcasm...

[PinkSponge]

I think we should move. This site frustrates me a little too much. But I think before we start actually moving over there and posting and stuff, we should make it the best it can be. Try to set up the notifications, if you can, and make it look nice and make sure it's easy to use. With this site, we basically just threw it together and told people to come to a half-finished website.

[saturnlite88]

We will get it all ready and then we will move.

[Sergio]

nobody here knows how to code though?

[Blake11roys]

nobody here knows how to code though?

That assumption is incorrect, sir.

[boxtop]

nobody here knows how to code though?

Experience with coding might not always be enough experience to build a working notification system from scratch.

[Sergio]

nobody here knows how to code though?

That assumption is incorrect, sir.

is there really anyone here capable of building a notification system? i know im being cynical, but i'm just trying to stay realistic

[saturnlite88]

We found a how to online. It will be hard. I don't know if we can do it. But it is possible.

[saturnlite88]

So far, five people are fine with leaving and five woulld rather not make a new site. I think most of the pro-leaving are admins...

So can we get some discussion going (besides Sergio) about what you guys think and why? Also, voting is anonymous so I'd like to know who is of what opinion.

[PinkSponge]

I definitely want more control over the site; that's the whole reason we left amirite. But if we're going to use this website, we have to accept that we can't have total control. It sucks that we'll have to pay money to keep our own site running, but $100 every two years isn't horrible. It's absolutely feasible. The notifications might be difficult. I know people who can code, but I don't know if they'll be able to help.

[frostehh]

I am up for the move. I think MO is fine, but there are definitely things that would be nice to be able to change and add that you just can't do here. Also, the price also isn't bad especially if a few people chipped in to help. We should definitely have the site up and running before making the switch and if you guys need any help with well anything, just let me know since I'd love to help.

[lucyjoan]

Just to put the numbers into perspective (numbers are my second favorite thing ever), if each of the 5 admins splits the $100 we only have to pay $20 apiece. If, say, four people chip in $5 for the liberty of popup notifications, then each admin only has to pay $16, which is less than a pair of jeans or a T-shirt (depending on where you buy your clothes). If ten people chip in $4 apiece then each admin only has to pay $12.
If, and this is the big hypothetical if, all 40 of our MO users decide to split the price evenly (and this is completely hypothetical because that 40 includes both "Narrator" and Sergio), we would each only have to pay $2.50. I bet you could find a good portion of that in loose change.
I'm not entirely sure what the point of this was. I just like numbers.

[Mary]

I think the point was that for a bunch of teenagers $100 can seem like a scary number but there's enough of us that care about this and are willing to pitch in that it's totally doable.

[saturnlite88]

Amen. Again, we will be offering incentives to donate. So there's that.

My big concern is the backing. It seems like a lot of people want this to happen, but is there anyone that will be upset if it does? The only resistance I feel so far is a few numbers in a poll, which isn't exactly discouraging. If you want to discourage us, try harder.

[Mary]

Yeah I really think people should post and discuss because that's what's going to help us figure out what's best.

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