[IMPORTANT] Looking into the future... PLEASE READ

[Nekone]

Hi all, long time no post!

 

This announcement is a little sad, to be honest with you, but we do like to be transparent with our community, so pay careful attention to this announcement.

 

The forums are...well let's just say they're old. Most of the topics on here don't get updated anymore, we don't see anyone that really logs on these days, I even disabled registration some time back (yes, that error you see if you try to register is intentional) because really it made no sense for there to be accounts that would never be used and a lot of what we do these days doesn't really even require you to have an account on the forum itself. A lot of these circumstances came about from years back when Kametsu ran afoul of copyright law. The actions taken by these agencies directly resulted in the loss of most of our community, including the people that were only here to just converse and have fun, so you can blame them (the copyright folks) at least somewhat for the current state of this community. We had some part too but that was only because our hand was forced as well if we wanted to stay out of legal trouble. Our backs were against the wall then, there was no telling what would happen if we had resisted; aside from us, they could have easily obtained user information too. YOUR information. And that didn't sit right with us. We made the difficult decision to protect the community and keep them safe from harm.

 

I did kind of stray just a bit from the intent of this post but I felt it was important to provide back story context to help support what I'm about to tell you now.

 

Since then, I've been sustaining Kametsu's infrastructure entirely out of my own pocket. This has, to this point, not been any sort of issue and I'd been doing it without a problem for quite a long time. However, hosting costs continue to rise, and just like most working adults, I have my own bills to maintain as well and the costs associated with those also continue to rise. As a result of these increases, it's beginning to slowly impact my financial viability. Given the state of the site, there's zero justification to ask for donations because it just wouldn't make any sense. We're not in a position to do that because we simply do not have the community activity to do that with. As such, other measures must be taken to keep everything solvent.

 

The biggest problem we have now at the moment, is I'm essentially paying for server resources that are just simply not being utilized at all, and by a large margin at that. Now, I say that but, before anyone asks NO the website and community are NOT going to be going away anytime soon or in the future! Aside from that not really being my decision to make, it's not really the end of the road either. Instead, what I intend to do is work out a definitive plan for the site in the coming months that will involve a lot of downsizing. You'll probably see a lot change here. While nothing is set in stone yet, one of the ideas being considered is to dissolve the forum (most likely archiving it) and focus the community entirely on IRC and Discord, using the website for news postings kinda like how we have the existing blog now. This plan would keep the website running, keep the community aspect since 99% of it is on our Discord and IRC anyway at this point, and at the same time allow me to downsize our capacity, which will reduce unused utilization and subsequently reducing costs by a significant margin bringing everything back well into the green.

 

I don't really have any timeframe for any of this to happen as I still need to talk it over with Koby. But as soon as we have one we'll let y'all know here, on Discord and on IRC. Please, rest assured that we DO NOT intend to kill off the website. That will remain. We will maintain our Discord and IRC presence; that will also not change. What will likely change is simply the format the website takes in the future, that's all.

 

I know that was a lot to read and I apologize, but I felt it was important to communicate the current situation and let you know we still do very much care for those of you that are still with us, including those of you residing on Discord and/or our IRC - and we thank you for continuing to do so. We'll have more details in the coming weeks/months.

 

Looking forward to the future...

 

- Nekone

[professa X]

Jeebus! Yah done gave me a heart attack in the beginning. I hopped off of discord. And I thought you know let me see what's up with this site. I see this banner notification. I see the date it was posted. I got worried I was about to lose a part of me past.

 

Stick around for as long as ya can m8s 

 

P.S. Oi don't be stingy with the colors. Give me a nice rouge colored handle.

 

 

Edited May 31, 2023 by professa X

[Nekone]

On 5/31/2023 at 8:44 AM, professa X said:

Jeebus! Yah done gave me a heart attack in the beginning. I hopped off of discord. And I thought you know let me see what's up with this site. I see this banner notification. I see the date it was posted. I got worried I was about to lose a part of me past.

 

Stick around for as long as ya can m8s 

 

P.S. Oi don't be stingy with the colors. Give me a nice rouge colored handle.

 

 

@professa X haha sorry I didn't mean to frighten you! In a nutshell it's just basically adjusting things so I can continue to maintain the server the site sits on itself, such as that it continues to have a web presence in addition to our Discord and IRC. Odds are we'll likely just archive the forums as read-only. I don't really see any problem keeping the data stored so no worries there we'll maintain it.

 

And I think you'll find a nice new shiny handle color at least on Discord now you can bug Koby for anything outside Discord e.g forum

[professa X]

On 6/1/2023 at 11:55 PM, Nekone said:

@professa X haha sorry I didn't mean to frighten you! In a nutshell it's just basically adjusting things so I can continue to maintain the server the site sits on itself, such as that it continues to have a web presence in addition to our Discord and IRC. Odds are we'll likely just archive the forums as read-only. I don't really see any problem keeping the data stored so no worries there we'll maintain it.

 

And I think you'll find a nice new shiny handle color at least on Discord now you can bug Koby for anything outside Discord e.g forum

Oh see I see my new handle

[Zanco]

Oh my. Here I was returning for nostalgia but came back to heart ache. Sad days. Can I get a link to the discord?

[Koby]

48 minutes ago, Zanco said:

Oh my. Here I was returning for nostalgia but came back to heart ache. Sad days. Can I get a link to the discord?

Howdy @Zanco.

 

You can find the invite link to the Discord here: https://discord.kametsu.com/#discord-links

[Zemekis]

On 5/31/2023 at 9:44 AM, professa X said:

Stick around for as long as ya can m8s 

Trying to, haha. Although it seems I arrived massively late and the site may have dipped below the point where conversations can even be had anymore. The Discord seems to be decently active, but I'll be doing what I can to be available here on the site to interact a bit until it's inevitably archived. Is there much activity on IRC? I would go check it out, but I don't often keep an IRC client sitting open on my computer. I could toss the channel into my Bouncer to idle and check in once in a while...is that allowed?

[Koby]

2 hours ago, Zemekis said:

Trying to, haha. Although it seems I arrived massively late and the site may have dipped below the point where conversations can even be had anymore. The Discord seems to be decently active, but I'll be doing what I can to be available here on the site to interact a bit until it's inevitably archived. Is there much activity on IRC? I would go check it out, but I don't often keep an IRC client sitting open on my computer. I could toss the channel into my Bouncer to idle and check in once in a while...is that allowed?

Our IRC channel is bridged with our #general channel on Discord, so anything said on IRC shows up on Discord and anything said in #general on the discord shows up in the IRC channel. This way users who opt for one over the other can still converse with everyone between the two.

 

But sure, bouncers are allowed.