Hary R Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 2 hours ago, Kerbart said: And that is why Squad went with Curse; companies tend to put a disproportionate amount of emphasis on things like “accountability” and “continuity.” Silly companies. This is something I said earlier but I guess people didn't understand why I emphasis the "business partnership" so much. Let me explain a little, like it or not, Curse is a company, they have financial guaranties, they won't shut down tomorrow. And if something goes wrong (server went down, download time is long etc), they (curse) are entitle by contract to repair it as soon as it happened. For a company, those guaranties are very important, that's why I ask, can you provide this kind of business partnership to Squad? And before someone reply to me, I'm repeating myself: i'm a financial adviser, this is my analysis of why Curse is to stay (this and some other reason I can easily see but don't need to explain), it's not my opinion on the mater at hand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Virtualgenius Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 (edited) Everyone admits the original spaceport wasn't ideal but at least it was run and controlled by the Squad team Curse is a commercial entity that you have no control over, you agree to there T&C's and you dont have a leg to stand on, at least when it was hosted by Squad you had the power of the community to back you. KS/Spacedock are similar to the old spaceport they will listen to the community are not a commercial entity provide a better user experience. If Squad didnt want to host mods they should have offered it up to the community first before moving to a commercial provider, but there communication skill in any major change is sadly lacking. Edited February 22, 2016 by Virtualgenius Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frizzank Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 (edited) Servers are not free, please put a donate button on SpaceDock and every other kerbal mod hosting so we can give you some money. Edited February 22, 2016 by frizzank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcirish3 Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 42 minutes ago, Hary R said: This is something I said earlier but I guess people didn't understand why I emphasis the "business partnership" so much. Let me explain a little, like it or not, Curse is a company, they have financial guaranties, they won't shut down tomorrow. And if something goes wrong (server went down, download time is long etc), they (curse) are entitle by contract to repair it as soon as it happened. For a company, those guaranties are very important, that's why I ask, can you provide this kind of business partnership to Squad? And before someone reply to me, I'm repeating myself: i'm a financial adviser, this is my analysis of why Curse is to stay (this and some other reason I can easily see but don't need to explain), it's not my opinion on the mater at hand. I actually get this, you are absolutely right. But then again I also am a financial analyst. I don't like Curse, which puts me on the other side of the fence from you, but as long is there is going to be an official mod site it will have to be with a stable company. I don't think Github can provide what KSP needs, I can't recommend another site that is better. I do not think the spacedock and those building it can at this time offer such a service. In fact I don't even think they want to try at this time, based on some of the comments made by those building the site right here in this thread. Which of course makes any discussion of them being the official mod site for KSP kinda silly, since the site creators at least at this time do not wish to be the official mod site for KSP. If any of you read the discussion I had with Sal_vager up thread I think a third "CKan like" solution would be better with no official mod site. I am not a programer so I am not sure if I could accurately explain, besides it is @Nothalogh's Idea not mine. The proposal that the number 1 community site be given a link along side the Curse link seemed reasonable to me and may really be all that is necessary, but as Sal_vager pointed out it could be a very slippery slope that leads to chaos. If this line of action was to be taken it would have to be done so in a very careful and deliberate manner. So at the end of the day I don't truly know what the best solution should be, I just know that doing the status Quo becuase it is the status quo is the worse reason to do anything. Consider this a reality check on "is the status quo the best option today!" I think the fundamental problem here is that there are a significant number of people who do not like Curse and never have, I am one of them. There are some real and tangible problems with Curse, many of them have been laid out here in this thread. But changing the official mod repository to some other site or idea comes with its own problems that may be just as challenging or more challenging as those presented by Curse. I think the real thing that has kept things boiling under the surface is the refusal by Squad to acknowledge that Curse has issues at all, and perhaps to present a plan of action on how Curse and Squad as partners plan on working to mitigate these issues and what kind of time frame we can expect them to be taken care of or if they are systemic and can't be fixed. If the community members feels like they're being ignored or bamboozled, even if they are not, it can lead to a lot of frustration and annoyance. All of this annoyance came rushing out with the closure of Kerbalstuff, and given the topic of this thread ended up being vented here. In any case I think the discussion has gone around and around a couple times at this point so do we really need to keep going at it. I think we could just close this one up and move along, squad will take what we have all said and use it or not, it is at the end of the day up to them. Please don't forget really we all just want Squad to do what is best for KSP, to make it as appealing to as many users as possible, and all the passion is around various visions of how that could be done. So really are we not truly all on the same team after all? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Virtualgenius Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 It wouldn't have got to this circular argument if Squad had engaged with the community from day 1 how many official mods has squad put out i am reasonably sure its 3, as opposed to how many mods are created by the community Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VITAS Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 (edited) 7 hours ago, frizzank said: Servers are not free, please put a donate button on SpaceDock and every other kerbal mod hosting so we can give you some money. you can right in my signature. it will also be on the site soon ish. p.s. im open to suggestions for other ways to donate in our dev thread Edited February 22, 2016 by VITAS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaddbo Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 (edited) i would just like to state my opinion of curse and thank SirCmpwn. granted, while curse is a large website and has many users, it has many ads. this is very annoying for people with slow internet, and can make downloading a pain. also, sometimes it won't accept an upload, and i believe that is the main reason that KS was bigger and more popular than curse. it is hard to upload onto curse, and sometimes hard to download. and i would like to thank SirCmpwn for the time and effort that he put into KS. i understand his reasons for leaving the job, and thank him for the time that he did put into the website to make it great while it lasted. thank you for taking your time to read this, Jaddbo Edited February 22, 2016 by jaddbo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Padishar Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 24 minutes ago, jaddbo said: it has many ads See the many posts explaining that curseforge doesn't have any ads. Yes, Squad should stick to curseforge links everywhere. 25 minutes ago, jaddbo said: sometimes it won't accept an upload This is true of all web sites. It has definitely been true of KerbalStuff on more than one occasion (not including now ). I, personally, have never had any trouble uploading files to curseforge (or downloading either). The validation can sometimes take a while but that is a small price to pay for free hosting if it prevents the site from being clogged up with rubbish. 31 minutes ago, jaddbo said: i believe that is the main reason that KS was bigger and more popular than curse I don't think it has anything to do with reliability or ease of upload and download. I believe there are two main reasons: The advertising on the main Curse site is terrible and, other things being equal, any site that has significantly less (or no) ads will almost always be more popular than one that has lots. Quite a lot of people who dislike Curse do so based mostly on hearsay and rumour of issues from many years ago. They are a commercial entity that managed to weather the storm of those issues and are still going strong years later. Both of these "reasons" are ad related which the CurseForge site doesn't have at all. Back on the actual topic, my thoughts about KerbalStuff's closure are basically: KerbalStuff is dead. Doesn't matter to me, I never uploaded any mods to it because I wasn't confident it would last, and it didn't. SpaceDock is now alive with what looks like a much more capable team running it. It might be worth me using it to distribute mods now if I actually cared how many people were running my mods. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Virtualgenius Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 Curse makes money of your hard work, you agree to there T&C's if they decide to move everything to Curse.com you don't have a leg to stand on by supporting the community site it can grow and expand and you can add input and it provides a better alternative thats not for profit but a service to the KSP community Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skalou Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 26 minutes ago, Virtualgenius said: Curse makes money of your hard work, you agree to there T&C's if they decide to move everything to Curse.com you don't have a leg to stand on by supporting the community site it can grow and expand and you can add input and it provides a better alternative thats not for profit but a service to the KSP community honestly i don't even know if they could, but they won't or on my side i won't give them anymore the new versions of the mods, and if they can make money for them and for mod autors, i find it a good deal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Padishar Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 Just now, Virtualgenius said: Curse makes money of your hard work, you agree to there T&C's if they decide to move everything to Curse.com you don't have a leg to stand on by supporting the community site it can grow and expand and you can add input and it provides a better alternative thats not for profit but a service to the KSP community None of that reasoning concerns me in the slightest. They are a commercial entity that provides a reliable and free hosting service, I expect them to make money somehow, I'm not paying it nor do I, or people that follow links I post, have to look at ads, so I really don't mind. If (and it's a big if, it really wouldn't be a very sensible decision for a commercial entity to make though they could almost certainly weather any storm it would create too) they pulled the kerbal.curseforge.com site or did anything to it or to its Ts&Cs that did concern me then I might reevaluate my decision but I consider this just as unlikely as them going completely out of business (i.e. not at all likely during the lifetime of KSP). You can provide input to Curse(Forge) too. I have reported several issues and all of them have been dealt with in a professional manner and a reasonable timescale given the constraints of a commercial entity that provides a robust and scalable service. Personally, I don't think that KerbalStuff/SpaceDock does provide a better alternative, I really don't like the way it lays out the list of mods, I much prefer the CurseForge style of list even when the sort option misbehaves, either not actually sorting by name, or by resetting the sort to popularity when you select a different category (that reminds me, I've been meaning to report both of those issues for some time, I'll do that a bit later). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sal_vager Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 34 minutes ago, Virtualgenius said: Curse makes money of your hard work, you agree to there T&C's if they decide to move everything to Curse.com you don't have a leg to stand on by supporting the community site it can grow and expand and you can add input and it provides a better alternative thats not for profit but a service to the KSP community @Virtualgenius, please actually learn something about Curse before making claims like this, thank you. On 16/02/2016 at 9:16 PM, Jadedcat said: This is being fixed. The CurseForge search works a bit better than the Curse.com search and is being improved. Once the code base CurseForge is built on is ready (I have no idea what's left) it will be used to replace the Curse.com backend and fix a lot of the current issues Curse.com has while adding the improvements CurseForge already has. (This is my understanding of the solution planned) On the topic of ads: The ads on Curse.com mod pages (there are none of CurseForge) are used to cover the author rewards program where authors can earn points for downloads and exchange those points for Paypal, Steam or Amazon cards. People often seem to have an unrealistic view of how much ads are worth. A few ads on 1 site does not cover author rewards, server costs and salaries for coders, admins, reviewers, moderators, etc and have profit left over. Most people seem ok with the idea of ads as long as its offsetting the personal cost for a single person running 1 site. I am unsure why people get annoyed by ads offsetting the cost for a team of people maintaining multiple sites and giving the community content creators who host with us some reward for their time and creativity. TLDR: The ads on Curse.com are 1.) Optional, you can use CurseForge.com and not have ads at all or use adblocker. 2.) used to give rewards to the community content creators. Side Note: The reason Curse needs to pay salaries is because hosting a central repository is a thankless job. People complain if anything goes wrong (understandably) and if everything is working, it often feels as if no one appreciates the volunteer work. Being paid a salary means someone like me doesn't burn out reviewing hundreds of files a day, monitoring 8 different forums for problems, and answering support questions that are frequently abusive. I have made content that was used by millions of people with no appreciation and tons of complaints. I have been a volunteer for community sites. In fact, that's where Curse found me, volunteering as a site admin/manager and content creator for Minecraft. Then they offered to pay me to do the same thing but on a schedule. Having worked with both sides volunteer and employment, while I like the idea of community sites, I prefer the stability of sites where the admins/moderators are paid a living wage. Community Hosted and Run Platform: - Usually 1 person covers the costs - meaning they have to work a job too - Volunteer staff: frequent burn out, difficulty scheduling coverage, has to take a back seat to real life and real jobs - Susceptible to closure when the founder gets bored, is tired, loses interest or any number of other issues that could occur Professional Platform with paid staff: - Cost is not restricted to 1 person - The staff are paid, they don't have to worry about feeding their kids or having shelter. - Since staff are paid, if staff get bored with the topic, it doesn't matter. - Easier to schedule coverage - More stable, less likely to have service interruption - Highly unlikely to vanish (I'd say impossible, but I try to never say that) I am sad that the founder of KerbalStuff felt it was time to move on. Having been there though, I understand exactly how depressing it can be when the people using what you created seem to only complain. Even when some people do express gratitude/appreciation , the complaints can overwhelm you and leave you feeling trapped and depressed. That's why I gave up on volunteering. Its much easier to handle criticism, complaints when its a job you are paid to do instead of a hobby you do because you love it. The complaints end up killing the fun of a hobby. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcirish3 Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 (edited) 3 hours ago, Padishar said: The advertising on the main Curse site is terrible I think you miss the point in that many, many, many people (not currently in this thread) innocently stumble into Curse instead of CurseForge. Making matters worse, if you follow the links from the curse main page to the KSP page it takes you to an ad filled mess with popups that cover content and are a nightmare to deal with, instead of taking you to the Curseforge page. These same people then come and complain to Mod makers who then avoid Curse so they don't have to deal with the complaints. My point is the issues with Curse are real and are causing real problems for mod makers and users alike, and Squad and Curse have not been upfront about the issues and how and when they will address them. Edited February 22, 2016 by mcirish3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Padishar Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 14 minutes ago, mcirish3 said: I think you miss the point in that many, many, many people (not currently in this thread) innocently stumble into Curse instead of CurseForge. I don't miss that point at all. My second sentence in the post you quoted: 3 hours ago, Padishar said: Yes, Squad should stick to curseforge links everywhere. It is also a shame that when you google "ksp mods" the Curse page is top of the list and the CurseForge one is only 5th. However, when I follow that link to Curse, the page I get is actually a lot better than I was expecting. It certainly isn't filled with ads and there are no popups. In the initial part of the page I get there are 2 premium account banners, a normal banner ad and a square ad, so, only two actual ads. Scrolling down there is another square ad on the right and another banner below the mod list. It is totally obvious which parts of the page are the mods and nothing is remotely "a nightmare to deal with". There is also the panel right at the bottom with another square ad and links to various other featured sites but these are obviously below all the important content. None of these get in the way at all though they do, obviously, contribute to the size of the page download. 28 minutes ago, mcirish3 said: These same people then come and complain to Mod makers who then avoid Curse so they don't have to deal with the complaints. [citation needed] The top ten downloaded mods on Curse total over 5 million downloads. MechJeb alone has over 1.2 million. If what you describe happens to "many, many, many people", then surely enough people would have complained to Sarbian and the authors of other popular mods to make them pull them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaddbo Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 4 hours ago, Padishar said: See the many posts explaining that curseforge doesn't have any ads. Yes, Squad should stick to curseforge links everywhere. ok, admittedly, i was wrong on that part. there are no longer any ads. when i last went on there, it was prob about 9 months ago. they have since then removed the ads, and so i stand corrected. but i do think that it was very nice of the person to run KS as long as he did, with no help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Concodroid Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 On 2/17/2016 at 0:07 PM, maculator said: Spacedock.info Wow. I didn't know about Spacedock. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarin Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 8 hours ago, Thomas P. said: If everyone would have the problems that the users in this thread have, there wouldn't be any problems anymore.. *rolleyes* Heck, it is a website. They have to get their money from somewhere too. If you don't like it -> Don't use it, and don't complain if a mod is Curse only. But these arguments lead to nothing. You just download mods from it, for a game in a computer. You don't have to marry it... Yes, how dare anyone have any computer-game related complaints? There are children starving in Africa. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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