# Mad ramblings of a nerd -- a CWC look at 2014



## Null (Dec 17, 2014)

In 2015 I'm going to start releasing a monthly PDF explaining the financial situation of the board. Right now, the financial situation is "there is none". Kiwi is paid for until, like, the middle of 2016. Orange is $10 a month.

However, I'm very certain that, this month, Jace will want me to start selling T-Shirts. *If* that happens, there's going to be some drama. Namely, more ethic quandaries. "Is this moral? Is profiteering off Jace acceptable?". To deal with this, I've decided Jace will get about 25%~30% in royalties. Whatever doesn't go towards taxes (and paying the Chinese) will go towards the server costs. I won't be scraping anything out of the pot, and if I did, I'd let people know in advance.

And don't worry, if that happens. I'll have someone design a cool, non-neckbeardish general purpose graphical T-Shirt and probably a Hoodie. It'll just look like any article of clothing and won't have any ebin maymays hidden on it.


What weighs on my mind right now is growth. In short, we've grown a lot. Since *March* we've gone from 300 unique visitors a day to *1,400* visitors _everyday_, or about 900 new unique sign ins a week. I do not have enough fancy text decorations to describe this so here's a graph with numbers.






Right now, at prime time, we get 350 active users at one time. That is a number we previously only saw after the housefire or during the trial.

I also want to point out that this is unique sign-ins, and _not_ guests. When we talk about page hits and sessions, it looks like this. This isn't 100% reflective, it doesn't include guests below the age of 18, people not running JavaScript (esp. Mozilla users with ScriptBlock), or anyone opted out of Google Analytics.





When Tyce and Jace did a wombo-combo stream on that Sunday, we had 440 concurrent users. This shit on the server. I've since tuned our Apache and MySQL installations to be more greedy, but regardless, that is the first time (without the assistance of a 500 bot DDoS attack) we've seen the server slow down or halt due to traffic. We're approaching an event horizon where Kiwi alone will not be able to support the forum.

This is especially true if you look at my projected traffic for 2015.





And that's just sustained growth, what the forum has been pulling in by just being a forum. With editors like @Jaimas chugging away at http://lolcow.wiki articles and the people we have working on that producing consolidated, high-quality content not seen _anywhere else_ on the Internet, I predict a spike. Not just a spike, I really think it'll be a big deal. We'll see, not just more people, but a _fuck of a lot_ more people.


The next step, I feel, will be to upgrade laterally. The way a server works really has two parts. MySQL is a database. It stores information. Apache is a request handler, it turns http://kiwifarms.net into a content response using a combination of what information you've supplied, requested, and what's in the database. By _splitting_ these two entities apart, it achieves at least a few things:

1. The server has more resources and space to work with.
2. Installations are cleaner, so servers have less shit going on as it caters to one sort of process.
3. You can continue to upgrade laterally with LoadBalancing.

LoadBalancing, in short, is another box that looks at your servers. If, for instance, we grow so much we need a _third_ server to handle a _second_ installation of Apache, it can look at both and say "Server A is busy, so this request goes to Server B". This allows for a huge number of servers to run off one database. A loadbalancer can do this with any number of options to pick from and is how massive companies deal with their traffic.

The way Linode does pricing, CPUs become less cost-effective at the 4 core mark. The next step up for Kiwi would be the 8GB package, which is the first package to have fewer cores than gigs of RAM. Check it out:





That means that, building laterally is also _the more cost-effective_ way to handling future upgrades, considering (atm) CPU is becoming our biggest bottleneck.


*What to expect in 2015*:

http://kiwifarms.net becomes official. The old domain is downgraded to CWC only boards to encourage moving.
http://lolcow.wiki launches. I'll mod the forum so that you have to have an account here to edit the wiki.
_Lemon_, our third server, onlines with the possibility of _Lime_ being added as a load balancer node in the future.
A monthly PDF with a full, detailed explanation of money going in and out.
Drama! :^) and maybe T-Shirts

That's all I can think of now. I'm feeling a bit anxious and wanted to go on a text-wall adventure. Let me know if you have any thoughts.


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## Watcher (Dec 17, 2014)

Null said:


> http://lolcow.wiki launches. I'll mod the forum so that you have to have an account here to edit the wiki.


I have a question. How will the lolcow wiki differ from the Cwcki? Are the two sites going to remain separate or will they merge at some point?


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## Null (Dec 17, 2014)

Cuddlebug said:


> I have a question. How will the lolcow wiki differ from the Cwcki? Are the two sites going to remain separate or will they merge at some point?


That's actually a really difficult question I don't have an answer to. I would sort-of like if we could steal sonichu.com and build off that, but at the same time, I really don't want that. Chris's wiki is written in very distinct layers. Writing style fluctuates wildly over the years as public opinion changes, the definition of A-Logging is looser and progressively more strict, etc. Essentially, _none_ of Sonichu.com's articles would be acceptable on Lolcow.wiki, because our rules for writing are more academic and attempt to be completely NPOV. The rule of thumb is, "let the content speak for itself', but Sonichu.com is only one step away from ED which tries to layer in its own humor styling into every page.

I think what we'll end up doing is writing one page on Lolcow.wiki that has a very descriptive overview of Chris's life, with extensive citations to Sonichu.com. This will be the _only_ person we do this for. No other wiki or lolcow wikia installation will be utilized the same way.


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## champthom (Dec 17, 2014)

Cuddlebug said:


> I have a question. How will the lolcow wiki differ from the Cwcki? Are the two sites going to remain separate or will they merge at some point?



I haven't followed it closely. From my experience, most people try to mimic the CWCki with their particular lolcow of choice when it might not make sense to have an entire wiki dedicated to this person and I think most people don't realize the work it takes to build up a wiki people want to use. From my understanding, this new wiki will sorta be like ED without the excesses of namecalling and immaturity but not watered down like sites like OhInternet. Also based on Null's response, it sounds like he's trying to avoid some of the problems the CWCki has by setting more strict guidelines from the get go. 

The CWCki will probably separate as Null has nothing to do with it, and Marvin pretty much has control. I think the CWCki serves its purpose as I think so many things about Chris are so intertwined that having his own wiki makes sense.


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## Null (Dec 17, 2014)

champthom said:


> but not watered down like sites like OhInternet


I'm not familiar with OhInternet's failure. Did they have any impositions that made content creation not fun? I know the hippo tried to force it on ED's user base, which is obviously never going to work, but was that it? If she was just trying to create a KYM clone, that's also doomed to fail. The scope of this wiki is basically about crazy people / events / groups, not Internet culture.


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## Mr. 0 (Dec 17, 2014)

Null said:


> http://kiwifarms.net becomes official. The old domain is downgraded to CWC only boards to encourage moving.



What happened to folding it under the lolcow forums? Or better yet, what happened to your previous statement of "not having to choose between the two boards?

Third question, _why_ in god's name are you getting involved with lolcows?


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## champthom (Dec 17, 2014)

Null said:


> I'm not familiar with OhInternet's failure. Did they have any impositions that made content creation not fun? I know the hippo tried to force it on ED's user base, which is obviously never going to work, but was that it? If she was just trying to create a KYM clone, that's also doomed to fail. The scope of this wiki is basically about crazy people / events / groups, not Internet culture.



I don't know the whole background, but I did know someone who was a mod on ED and later OhInternet. When OhInternet was about to be rolled out, it was described to me as ED trying to be more like the CWCki, namely more impartial and more standards about what's considered acceptable (believe it or not, the CWCki was considered really impartial compared to ED at the time and the idea of doing things like citing claims was something that wasn't really done on ED). I was also told that the reason was it was hard to find people to advertise on the site (or at least, not porn sites) because most of the content involved anti-Semitic and racist jokes and comments.  People got pissed off that they "sold out" and more or less tried to be a G or at least PG rated site and that's when you had people start their own mirror ED.


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## Watcher (Dec 17, 2014)

Null said:


> I'm not familiar with OhInternet's failure. Did they have any impositions that made content creation not fun? I know the hippo tried to force it on ED's user base, which is obviously never going to work, but was that it? If she was just trying to create a KYM clone, that's also doomed to fail. The scope of this wiki is basically about crazy people / events / groups, not Internet culture.


To my knowledge it was a lot more political correctness and "your rights end where my feelings begin" sort of thought behind the edits there. And a whole lot of "lolsorandom" meme shit. It generally felt like she was attempting to make a site that would make way more money for herself and capitalized on ED's domain name by doing it.


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## Null (Dec 17, 2014)

Mr. 0 said:


> What happened to folding it under the lolcow forums?


It will be. cwckiforums will access that forum directly.



Mr. 0 said:


> Or better yet, what happened to your previous statement of "not having to choose between the two boards?


When I try to update the forum, there's an issue. With 2 websites, there's 2 templates, and there's 2 times as much work to be done. I don't want to work twice as hard to keep people in an autistic limbo satisfied. If you only want to visit cwckiforums for only Chris content, you will be able to. If you want the rest of the website's content, you'll have to migrate. I'm sorry.



Mr. 0 said:


> Third question, _why_ in god's name are you getting involved with lolcows?


I think you're misinterpreting me. When I talk about not getting involved, I mean in trolling and causing people grief. I was reluctant to allow the threads we have on old forum users. I don't want people to think I'm after them, because I'm not. When I talk about not getting involved, I mean not going on head hunts. You see someone join EDF or an imageboard and start talking a little strangely, you get people hawking them. "Can I make a lolcow out of this guy? Can I dox this guy? Can I ruin this guy's life in any way for fun?". I never want to be that kind of person and I never want people to feel I am a liability to their personal security.

Jace is a person and I understand his right to exist. I feel that he is better off away from his psychologically abusive mother. If I can help him by giving him a website and a trickle of real income, I am allowed to do that and I feel comfortable doing so.The site benefits from the profits, we get a place where Jace is allowed to be himself, and when he's out of his mother's house he is capable of streaming and acting as he wants. I do not see any downside to this, except maybe a backlash from the more hardcore psychopaths skirting around the fringe of the community.




champthom said:


> I was also told that the reason was it was hard to find people to advertise on the site (or at least, not porn sites) because most of the content involved anti-Semitic and racist jokes and comments. People got pissed off that they "sold out" and more or less tried to be a G or at least PG rated site and that's when you had people start their own mirror ED





Cuddlebug said:


> To my knowledge it was a lot more political correctness and "your rights end where my feelings begin" sort of thought behind the edits there. It generally felt like she was attempting to make a site that would make way more money for herself and capitalized on ED's domain name by doing it.


Oh yeah! I remember this comic. I'm not financially motivated so hopefully we'll avoid the same pitfall.



Spoiler


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## Uzumaki (Dec 17, 2014)

> http://kiwifarms.net becomes official. The old domain is downgraded to CWC only boards to encourage moving.



BOOOOO! I like the CWCikiforums layout.


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## Watcher (Dec 17, 2014)

Uzumaki said:


> BOOOOO! I like the CWCikiforums layout.


I think Null said at some point the Cwckiforums forum theme would remain with the kiwifarms.net domain. But don't quote me on that


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## Trickie (Dec 17, 2014)

So... we're not going to call the monthly PDF "Da Update" or some variation thereof?


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## Mollybdenum (Dec 17, 2014)

Are the PDF's going to have graphs?


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## Null (Dec 17, 2014)

Mollybdenum said:


> Are the PDF's going to have graphs?


Unfortunately not. They'll likely be done as invoices.


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## Surtur (Dec 17, 2014)

Null said:


> Unfortunately not. They'll likely be done as invoices.


Mourning Dove will be displeased.


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## LM 697 (Dec 17, 2014)

Mr. 0 said:


> Third question, _why_ in god's name are you *getting involved with lolcows*?



Now we have proof that he was talking about Barb. http://cwckiforums.com/threads/null-is-in-loooove.6516/


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## CatParty (Dec 17, 2014)

draw us some more diagrams pls


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## Holdek (Dec 17, 2014)

I'm not sure what the value is in having an even less funny version of ED.  Most people interested in this stuff just come for fun, funny content.  But good luck with it, I'm curious to see how it turns out.


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## Null (Dec 17, 2014)

Holdek said:


> I'm not sure what the value is in having an even less funny version of ED.


The comparison to ED falls flat for multiple reasons.

ED's purpose isn't people, it's drama.
ED's articles on people are trolling and insulting the people they're about, not explaining or chronicling them.
ED's writing style isn't humorless from lack of intent, it's simply _unfunny_.
ED's standards don't exist. A lot of the fun stuff they had simply vanished because they weren't maintained or organized properly.

With different standards, different focus, different purpose, and different intent, there's almost no common ground on the two projects other than the fact they may have articles on the same things more frequently than most other websites.


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## ToroidalBoat (Dec 17, 2014)

The "About" page on ED even says other ED articles are not reliable.


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## Himawari (Dec 17, 2014)

What caused the huge jump in active visitors in June?  Did something significant happen around then?


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## Trickie (Dec 17, 2014)

Himawari said:


> What caused the huge jump in active visitors in June?  Did something significant happen around then?



If memory serves me, that's when the eBay stuff was going on.

Anyway, I think lolcows are funny enough on their own (otherwise they're not lolcows, are they?) that you can make articles about them that are worthwhile to read without adding in your own unfunny commentary. The thing with ED, though, is that they often write articles about subjects that, on their own, aren't all that funny, and that's why they need to inject this style into it to funny it up a bit, a wiki dedicated to lolcows has no such problem.


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## EI 903 (Dec 18, 2014)

I want a kiwi shirt.


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## Philosophy Zombie (Feb 5, 2016)

*let's take a posthumous look*: my review of Null's policy goals for 2015


Null said:


> *What to expect in 2015*:
> 
> http://kiwifarms.net becomes official. The old domain is downgraded to CWC only boards to encourage moving.


Done, 10/10 good job.


Null said:


> http://lolcow.wiki launches. I'll mod the forum so that you have to have an account here to edit the wiki.



Conceived but stillborn and Jaimas is the only midwife. I'll count this as a no-go.


Null said:


> _Lemon_, our third server, onlines with the possibility of _Lime_ being added as a load balancer node in the future.


I'm pretty sure you did this.


Null said:


> Drama! :^)











Null said:


> and maybe T-Shirts


lol, no lmao.

3/5 is just barely a passing grade, Null. I'm not surprised that you dropped out of high school.


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## Null (Feb 5, 2016)

Philosophy Zombie said:


> 3/5 is just barely a passing grade, Null. I'm not surprised that you dropped out of high school.


GOOD ENOUGH


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