Shouldn't donations be made public so we know how much has been donated and how much more is needed?

 

I think it is, donate and you'll find out.

makes more sense the other way round.

WotanUK - OrbX is only one developer that has their own forum. Many developers who have a forum that you can access and view without logging in. To name but a few, Aerosoft, FSDreamteam, Majestic, Oncourse Software and Hi-Fi. These companies provide support forums where people can see, some even allow you to register without buying, so PMDG having their own forum on their own servers would not be too much of a stretch. I can understand smaller add-on developers or the one man developer, who do not have the facilities for continues support.

 

However AVSIM will calm down once the SP1 and the 300 release settles down.

Aren't people supposed to donate in order to keep the service running? As for the case of avsim it isn't tax funded.

 

I haven't donated due I doubt eastern european contributions won't do much, so I won't complain.

 

 

OrbX is only one developer that has their own forum. Many developers who have a forum that you can access and view without logging in

I was responding to the statement from "Glen_Chambers" that it would make things better if only paying customers could access the forum.  It was not a comment that PMDG would implement this system.

 

 

Aren't people supposed to donate in order to keep the service running? As for the case of avsim it isn't tax funded.

 

Agree completely. I have contributed either, that's why i don't complain.

 

However AVSIM will calm down once the SP1 and the 300 release settles down.

 

Not in Europe! At least three days a week every week I get a 503 error. I'm sure just as many people visit the avsim library which is always running and responsive. I think the avsim forums carry too much baggage and need slimming down a bit.

Considering it's a free service, i am not sure that anybody should be complaining.  Presumably if you want a quicker server / network connection are you all willing to contribute, only seeing two people in this thread who have donated

Not all donate banners are showing. Mine isn't or is there a minimum or something 

PMDG should have their own forum which I might add they could moderate far better.

AVSIM moderators do not provide any "moderation" in PMDG forums, except for those rare occasions when someone violates AVSIM's "Terms of Service" or makes a truly profane or libelous post.

 

PMDG provide their own moderators for their multiple forums and sub-forums.

Not all donate banners are showing. Mine isn't or is there a minimum or something 

That depends entirely on when the donation was made. Those who've donated since the new icon system came on line will have the icon banner.

There's a lot of people saying "you can't complain if you don't donate" but the way I see it avsim is making no effort to improve Web hosting so why would I sink my money into something that has no plans to improve? Surely with the sheer volume of people on avsim they would get donations and webservers when configured correctly could only cost avsim 100-150 a month total US. This isn't at all unreachable.

 

And I agree that PMDG shouldn't rely on a broken service for its forums as forums are every day life for some people and used much more for sole support. I'm disappointed they haven't invested in somethimy better considering how awesome PMDG is.

Surely with the sheer volume of people on avsim they would get donations and webservers when configured correctly could only cost avsim 100-150 a month total US. This isn't at all unreachable.

Even your "high" figure wouldn't cover the bandwidth used during the course of a single day, much less a month. Seriously!

Even your "high" figure wouldn't cover the bandwidth used during the course of a single day, much less a month. Seriously!

Yes it would unless you're living in the 90s realm of hosting services giving you only MB or GB of traffic.

 

Plus unlimited bandwidth is not hard to come by not to mention GBPS uplinks.. welcome to 2014..

 

Source: used to work on web servers / services catering 5k+ at once.

Why not go to the Letters to the Editorial Staff section and explain in detail to Tom all of the things that he's doing wrong in your opinion?  I am eager to see his response.

 

DJ

Source: used to work on web servers / services catering 5k+ at once.

My source trumps your source. Factual knowledge always will.

 

We run two main servers that provide over 11 Terra-bytes of bandwidth of files and data a month. Each of those servers run 8 processors, with 32 gigs of RAM on each. Our MySql database is over 7 gigs in size.

 

We have looked at "cloud" systems and at a minimum, they would quadruple our costs (at a minimum and actually it could be five to six times more or greater). Each month we would be unable to predict what our final cost would be because of their variable pricing due to bandwidth and other charges. Our advertising and donations do not pay our costs now. Doing that would just cause us to shut the doors sooner than later.

 

Go to the MS Azure site and price out a comparable Linux based system. When I looked, their Linux based solution was over $4,000 a month before you priced in bandwidth and database size. Factor in 11 Terra-bytes a month and the size of the database and I shudder to think what the monthly cost would be. I can say this with certainty... The community would not be willing to pay for it, that's for sure.

Go look into OVH...

My source trumps your source. Factual knowledge always will.

 

We run two main servers that provide over 11 Terra-bytes of bandwidth of files and data a month. Each of those servers run 8 processors, with 32 gigs of RAM on each. Our MySql database is over 7 gigs in size.

 

We have looked at "cloud" systems and at a minimum, they would quadruple our costs (at a minimum and actually it could be five to six times more or greater). Each month we would be unable to predict what our final cost would be because of their variable pricing due to bandwidth and other charges. Our advertising and donations do not pay our costs now. Doing that would just cause us to shut the doors sooner than later.

 

Go to the MS Azure site and price out a comparable Linux based system. When I looked, their Linux based solution was over $4,000 a month before you priced in bandwidth and database size. Factor in 11 Terra-bytes a month and the size of the database and I shudder to think what the monthly cost would be. I can say this with certainty... The community would not be willing to pay for it, that's for sure.

 

If advertising and donations don't cover your costs, how do you keep the show on the road at all? Perfectly understandable if you tell me to mind mine