Can isonews be saved?

[copeland]

I haven't been back here in forever and life has changed.

I was kinda surprised how dead the place is and that the management has decided to put the site to bed. Infact, i find it unfuckingbelievable that isonews wants to shut down.

You think after all the crazy shit of yester year, that this place can go silently into the night is absurd.

I think this place needs an enema, surely there is some value to revamping this place to attract all the knobs that once ventured here.

There was a lot of creativity here once with all the work done to circumvent obstacles in the name of open source.

Whats this place cost to run now?

[Shwaggy]

Tree fiddy a week.

[copeland]

$3.50? Or like a true tree fiddy?

[Ren-Hoek]

$3.50? Or like a true tree fiddy?

Neither. Not sure why there is so much secrecy as to the costs.
But, rather than sell to me so I can keep it running, they decided to bury it. Fuck 'em all. Nuke it I say.

[Dr_Grinch]

It costs around $300/year in server fees and domain hosting costs. That's the big secret, which isn't a secret at all.

As for giving it to people/selling it
A) it has no tangible value at this point
B) We're really concerned about privacy issues. There's a lot of personal data in the PM database and in the user registrations that we don't want falling into the wrong/irresponsible hands.

Those are our concerns. When Shwaggy and I bought the site back off whoever the dude was who did buy it (Mushroom or some shit?), he had done nothing with it. Penguin made *heroic* efforts to convert this over to SMF from vBB which we couldn't stay on anymore because we were on a super old and broken version. Because there was so much corruption in the database, the transfer went 70% okay, 30% shit. That resulted in the lost post counts, lost join dates, and also some accounts being lost. There was no alternative there.

Since we did get back up and running and fix it up as much as possible, we have asked over and over for help re-building the site. We wanted to put a front page back up, first looks, etc, but nobody offered to help or had the skills to do so. None of us are developers (Pengy a little), and none of us had the time to do it. We also weren't going to spend thousands of dollars on development costs for a site with such little traffic, so it was going to have to be community driven.
That hasn't happened, but we've kept the site up and kept paying the hosting costs.
Sites like Reddit have killed a lot of small forums like this. At this stage we don't see the logic in maintaining it.

That's the current position. We've renewed hosting up until June and if someone can come up with a plan to do something better than just letting it rot on the wire then we'd be open to answers.

[Ren-Hoek]

Thanks. I thought maybe there was some reason you didn't want costs put out there and I certainly wasn't going to post the info as it's not for me to say.
I have no web skills per se either which was why I had offered to help the only way I could - monetarily. But really after hearing costs versus traffic, I can't bring myself to throw good money onto the fire just so 3 other lamers (and myself) have a once a month back and forth over what a huge fag razor is. Sure it's fun. Sure it probably keeps me a little more sane, but is it needed? Nope. Not one bit. Plus that $25 a month could be used to feed hungry kids in Africa, and that seems like something we can all get on board with.

[Dr_Grinch]

Thanks. I thought maybe there was some reason you didn't want costs put out there and I certainly wasn't going to post the info as it's not for me to say.
I have no web skills per se either which was why I had offered to help the only way I could - monetarily. But really after hearing costs versus traffic, I can't bring myself to throw good money onto the fire just so 3 other lamers (and myself) have a once a month back and forth over what a huge fag razor is. Sure it's fun. Sure it probably keeps me a little more sane, but is it needed? Nope. Not one bit. Plus that $25 a month could be used to feed hungry kids in Africa, and that seems like something we can all get on board with.

Those are the conclusions we've arrived at as well, mostly that Razor is a giant fag, and secondly that it's just not worth sustaining anymore.
It might be possible to switch it to a cheaper host and DNS, but why? Nobody's coming, so why bother. It's sad, it's been a part of all our lives for 15 years in many cases, but it's run its course and served its purpose I guess.

[copeland]

Interesting, and thanks for the disclosure.

I dont necessarily think its dead in the water though. Like all sites - its about the user content.

I myself, have been out of computers and gaming (aside from the xbox). Most of my game play is online so this community offers little in that sense.

However, this community does offer some of the best humour Ive seen across the many communities online (save for maybe offtopic, but i refuse to buy a subscription for those fucks).

I do think there is a way to make this place a tabgible destination again with the right personalities in the forum.

Costs seem relatively low. And when comparing/refering to sites these a common issue - being 0day on relevant topics is what drives subscriptions.

Remember as big as Reddit is, they've sold out to Conde Nast and even with financial backing, their operating model isnt profitable. I think Isonews can be revived with a little effort and a strong core membership.

[copeland]

I think the world evolved and isonews hasn't...

[Ort2007]

Well...How to say this...

Basically, I am a developer. Mainly in C++ and SQL, but then I do work with customer's front-end (the web part, which consists of Python and HTML/CSS/SQL and some HTML5 for mobile contents I guess) almost daily because there is no such specialised department in my company.

But SMF? I've no experience with it. Will it be workable? Yes. Will it be painful for doing so? Most likely. And how rewarding would it be? I personally think it's not even worth that much.

It's just, this site is based on the community. And the kind of community this website is based on is pretty much segregated nowadays. If you want random reviews by random people you can just read it in Steam or just go to Twitch.tv.

If you want to talk about specific releases (mainly if it's working or not), then many torrent sites comment section will fulfil it. And then, this is my personal experience, are we even downloading stuff as much as we used to? Many of us here are old enough to have a stable income and games are not as expensive (assuming you don't need to buy it ASAP) with promotions, bundles, charity-based or foreign activation keys. And then it's so convenient to get games nowadays with all the digital downloads...Please note that I am not talking that "it's a bad thing to torrent games" but more "it's not as big as before" where we would be waiting for the scene release (scene? Does that even exist properly? Most random P2P "groups" or nameless preloads+unlocker work well enough) and talk about it. Do we even have the topics we used be able to talk like before? I...don't know...

And being a mere developer I really cannot think of any silver bullet that is original enough that will not compete directly with other well-established sites. And then, even if there is SUCH idea...do we have anything in here that MUST be saved by migrating data? Reviews/first-looks are all outdated. The majority of recent posts are bickering, trolling and insults. And are post counts and registration date so important anyway?
So really, would it not make more sense just to let it die / kill it. Which would allow a lot more flexibility on the framework / skillset needed on the new site? After all, the forum-style community is rather outdated versus the recently more popular Wiki-style (or also the more general CMS-style). But of course, the issue of "what kind of unique content you planning to offer" is still there.

At the end, I cannot see the point of keeping the site alive for the sake of nostalgia. And funny thing, I always imagined there were a lot more web-designers than general programmers like me, so it makes me wonder if we got some here just lurking. After all, even my job is not web-design specialised I end up touching it more often than I like (especially, I hate JavaScript).

[copeland]

The piracy aspect garnered international fame in the news...the fact this migrated from iSONEWS to this domain, in itsellf, is historic.

I think that if the ability in the membership can convert this to whatever updated format makes sense, salvaging the rest in an accessible archive would be equally important.

The place is lucky, the financial side of the problem pales in comparison to other, bigger, sites.

To flat out loose 15 years of accumulated posts here would really kill the spirit if the forum.

[Ort2007]

Well, the ""piracy"" aspect that made it to the news was not because of the actual software piracy; what made the original isonews get busted was because of the ads on this site that were related to modding/chipping consoles. And when did it happen? 2002? 2003? That was like 10+ years ago. Do you really think that piracy is as big talk as before by the media? Nah. Nowadays "we are more concerned" about sexual abuse on children and grooming.

The rest, I already wrote my opinion on the post before which summarises to 'can not see the concrete value to go through the pain of migrating the data when there are not enough active users to make it worthwhile'. And also, 'lack of plans/ideas of what sort of unique content the site can provide to attract new active users' for an attempt to revive. Again, even if such idea exists, I see it much more healthy to start from scratch than to invest extra just to keep the "nostalgia" (posts filled with insults and anger) and "ego-inflating things" (post counts and registration date) for a handful of "active" users.

Really, there is not much to lose or to kill in the forum at the end. The forums are as active as an empty cemetery, doubt there is any morale or spirit to kill.

[Penguin]

<off-topic>No, the original site's domain was not taken because of ads about modchips, but you're close. The original domain name was given up by krazy8 as part of his plea deal with the DOJ; he was arrested for selling roughly 60-70 modchips. Taking down iSONEWS like this, especially after the site had been repeatedly and unsuccessfully investigated in the past, was a neat bonus.</off-topic>

<on-topic>As far as I'm concerned, the site has run its course - there is really nothing it offers, save for a platform for a few oldies, that couldn't be covered through other means.</on-topic>

[Glock9mm]

I think everyone has covered it.

This thing needs to go off life support. I dare make the assumption that for most of us old timers it's been painful watching the site waste away the last 5-6 years, after it had been successful. I mean really, 15 years for this type of website is an eternity; no shame in pulling the plug now.

As a side note, thank you Grinch, Shwaggy, Penguin and the rest of the team (if I missed anyone) for giving us a couple of extra years for our nostalgia's sake. Oh, and a big fuck you to JayRoe and Isoleeted, while I'm at it. What a giant, smelly orange turd that was.

[methos6969]

Get the shotgun son.  Time to put old orange down. 

If you told me I'd still be around now back in 2002, I woulda laughed.  It's pretty awesome this site lasted this long.
Good luck and thanks for all the fish.