Why so slow?

[Anonymous]

How did fornits go from an average of 100 people online at any given time, to under 10 in just a few days? Was the old forum's user counter not working correctly? I don't think I've ever seen fornits this slow before. I hope that it picks up, not many other places this sort of thing is discussed.

[psy]

How did fornits go from an average of 100 people online at any given time, to under 10 in just a few days?

The 100 figure was never accurate.  SMF counted all yahoo's bots (they use a host of them for their "slurp" crawler engine... like a swarm as opposed to google or msn).  Phpbb3 accurately identifies Yahoo's swarm of bots as a single entity and counts it as one (despite multiple ip addresses).

[Anonymous]

I noticed this and think it's kind of depressing. I used to think there were 100 guests online at any given time, like the old forum used to indicate and thought this meant that a lot of people were interested in this topic.

[Antigen]

A lot of people are interested in the topic. At the height of our popularity, we had roughly 30 thousand unique visitors logged per month. Not only are more and more direct program vets churning out at a rate of something like 150k per year or three (depending on how you figure) from the private sector gulags, but the public sector gulags, from South Bay to Guantanimo Bay are becoming a part of the public conscience.

The trouble here is that we have been sued, threatened, shut down, hacked and otherwise harassed to the point where it's a miracle this site even still exist at all. But, believe it or not, things are looking up. Through generous donations of time and, occasionally, cash, we've managed to keep the site up in some form or another through all of it. Now it's just a matter of keepin' on while old friends and new discover or rediscover us and get things crackin again. One of the major benefits of switching back to phpbb is that the old urls work! So google and other search engines are busy reindexing all those old links laying around out there on the net.

[Anonymous]

I noticed this and think it's kind of depressing. I used to think there were 100 guests online at any given time, like the old forum used to indicate and thought this meant that a lot of people were interested in this topic.

If you wanna’ know why it's so slow, or if ya’ just want a shot of Ipecac, read the "bury this carcass" thread.

You can’t post without reams of proxies to protect you, and posting here inadvertently legitimizes abusing and outing cult victims.

We voted with our feet. We 86’d. Never was' 100 visitors, but there were lots of core users… who got fed up.

[Guest]

It's sad. No one is posting. I've had issues with some of the decisions made regarding this site, but it's like everyone got angry, took their toys, and left.

I hope someone creates a forum people are comfortable in, or that people learn to tolerate dissapointments, and post here again.

[Antigen]

You want to know what happened? Ok, here's the run-down.

First, we had a stable, well trafficked site on BareMetal. The bandwidth fees (almost entirely generated by Fornits traffic) were pretty high, but that was offset by my commercial hosting accounts. Overall, it evened out w. a little pin money to spare.

Summer 2006: Then we got hit with just a deluge of various kinds of automated and non automated spam. I could not find the help I needed tweaking the old hacked up software that we had and the updated version with some spam protection was not supported by BareMetal. So I took a friend up on an offer to build me a custom website host capable of handling Fornits and my small client base in trade for my paying about half for a colocated server (actual seperate machine) what had been paying for shared hosting (hundred or more other customers on the same server) That went sideways for a number of reasons.

At the same time, my life went from stultifying monotony outside of my online activities to chaos on parade.

Fall 2006: I switch to a highly recommended commercial turnkey server with all the standard software and start moving sites over. Mind you, I'm living on credit at this point, hoping to stay ahead of things till I can get on my feet again.

Winter 06: I have several hard drive crashes in quick succession, the last one having happened before I could get  backup plan in place. At the same time, we're hit with one after another forced, panicked move to yet another new server behind falacious, vindictive, cyber-bullying legal threats from Sue Scheff to one after another hosting provider. I pawn off my commercial accounts to someone who I thought would mind them and make some money for himself. He did not do that. Instead, he went MIA, further fucking up my reputation w. customers.

Spring 07 - Summer 08: Forced server moves continue till we land up on a very off the mainstream server, which in turn draws hacker attacks, going offline for weeks before finally dissapearing for good and all w/o a moment's notice. In all the shuffle and confusion of all of our very complicated lives, 3 or 4 months worth of backups are lost. We finally get back online with what appears to be the only hosting provider in the english speaking world that won't automatically fold to a bogus legal threat, but Google has forgotten our name and people have started and/or found their own sites in the mean time. It had the effect of the Magicians Apprentice breaking the enchanted broom stick.

So now it's Fall of 08. We're back, Google just finally did a thorough index (once I found the time and focus to figure out how best to get that done, what with the new software n situation n all). There's still nothing else out there like Fornits but this is a whole new ball game. How will things play out for a site like this in a new environment? I guess that remains to be seen.

[Anne Bonney]

Wow Ginger.  I'm sorry you had to deal with all that and I so appreciate that you have kept it up.  I know it can get discouraging to see the traffic slow, but honestly......that's the price for speaking up about an extremely unpopular subject.  Especially in the political realm we've all lived in this past decade or so.  I can't stand some of the shit I see posted here, but I would never want it regulated or moderated.  It really is the only place left that you can truly speak your mind.  That means that you also hear some not only unpopular, but sometimes downright disgusting and incendiary, (i.e.  when the KKK holds rallies on courthouse steps).  I must admit that I appreciate the warning on whether or not to view a certain image.  It didn't bother me until it permeated every single thread.  Then it became almost unbearable to check Fornits at work.  If it ends up that the porn returns, so be it.  I'll check it at home.  Again, it's not that the porn offends me, I just don't want to get in trouble at work.  Although it's nice not to be surprised by Tubgirl.

However small your readership is, or was......it has made a difference for so many people for so many different reasons.  A lot of us 'vets' have found solace and validation for everything we've felt all these years but no one else understood.  We began to understand what happened to us and how and that allowed us to at least begin to heal.  A lot of kids were just coming out of programs and flipping out.  Parents were either searching for info to put a kid in (quite a few that ended up NOT doing so after speaking with some of us here and privately).  Parents were searching for answers as to why they didn't get what was advertised to them for their children.  Parents were also, unfortunately, seeking justification for what they had done.  Even some of them ended up understanding, at least to a degree, what really happened.  

Point is, no matter how small or big.....Fornits has been invaluable in bringing this subject to light and helping those that have been harmed begin to heal.   Thank you.

[Antigen]

Thanks

Ya know, I never really did do any serious promotion before. Just let things develop as they would and it all worked out. Maybe that will happen again.