126 replies to this topic

[Grizzly]

We've always been completely against such. We refused to sell programs. We refused to pay our programmers. And our beloved administrators refused to accept any of the site's revenue.

And it worked. We succeeded beyond our competitors. We've gone for many years. We've made it farther than anyone thought we could. The staff, programmers, and members all had their incentives whatever it was, to help codex accomplish this goal.

That incentive doesn't exist anymore. We've failed to produce competitive programs for a very long time. We don't offer sufficient services. We haven't attracted many new members. Activity is pretty pathetic, and it has remained so long-term. And what I think is most important, is the administrators havn't pulled through with much. (Granted there were a few promises made in the late summer.. I havn't heard of any of these promises come true nor any updates). Nothing new has been getting done. Even lower members of staff seem to be inactive. I think the sad truth is that a lot of us have lost interest and motivation.

And you can try to convince me otherwise. You can spit up some arbitrary statistics, but I this is the reality and we can't deny that. I know we've seen tough times.. we've seen low activity, we've encountered busy administrators, and a lack of programs, but it's never been nearly this bad. And I don't think any of this will change without any change on the structure of neocodex.

My suggestion is to introduce monetary incentive.


Legal factors - we've seen many competitors go down because tnt threatened to sue them. But has it ever been for the sale of programs? (Not rhetorical, I'm actually asking you) And Neocodex has been very good at staying under the radar of tnt anyways. I can think of several ways off the top of my head to make this possible with limited interference from tnt.
And this only applies to the sale of programs of course. Paying admins/programmers wouldn't be illegal on ay level that I can think of.

Moral issues - The administrators have always wanted to show selflessness in their management of codex. They've promised to never charge for anything or take any revenue or blah blah blah. But I think all of us are devoted to codex regardless. Everyone's worked hard to make all this happen, and I personally wouldn't give a flying fuck if the programmers/admins/members were rewarded for their hard work and effort if it allowed us to grow as a community.

Debate.

Edited by Freak, 29 October 2008 - 04:16 PM.

[Cory]

I've been for this for a good while but it's not going to happen. Codex needs a lot more then this to help it compete.

[Grizzly]

I've been for this for a good while but it's not going to happen. Codex needs a lot more then this to help it compete.

Maybe it's not enough to take us to #1 again. But that's no reason to sit back and nothing is it?
If we can get programmers, staff, and members motivated to get shit moving, I think it would be a good start at the least

[Cory]

It's gotta start from the top though. =/

[Cory]

I don't think we should have members paying for anything however. There are several other options that we could use. Raui posted a perfect plan a while back where we use the ad funding ( which is sufficient from the logs hydrogen has shown me ) to pay the programmers per use. Obviously the better the program is the more it's used and the more the programmer would make. Better programs = more people coming to the site = more ad revenue = more funds to pay for programs.

Things we would need for a system like this is things that we will never have so it's pretty pointless to even talk about it.

[Grizzly]

I think that's an entirely different debate altogether.. discussing what kind of monetary incentives to place and where. I think we should begin with a simple decision as to introduce monetary incentives or not.

(Well, not that that decision is to us. I just mean as part of the debate )

All I can say is if you pay me then I'll be more than willing to pump out godly programs. I'm not saying that in a selfish way, but you have to understand from my point. To me the internet is my work place. Therefor anything that I do for free has to come secondary when I need money. Since right now I'm still $1,200 in debt on my car, it's crucial for me to get money. Since I make programs on my spare time, which is practically non-existent right now, I'm hardly able to get programs out on a timely manner.

On the issue of morality and legality: welcome to the internet. It's really rare to find sites with "free" hacks and most of them are public crappy ones that are highly detectable. Most programmers prefer to get paid for their hard work, and to be honest I don't blame them.

I don't know if that is what Codex needs, but if we did move in that area I would have no problem with it.

Yup, I think nobody can argue that money is the most powerful incentive we can offer. We can argue all day about whether this is right or wrong.. selfish or not.. but the fact of the matter is, that we can ultimately provide a bigger better neocodex with such and that brings benefits to everyone.. not just the people that get payed directly.

[Sida]

I'm for it tbh. Time spent coding for neopets, which hardly any (none?) of the programmers actually play, is something to do in your very, very free time. This would create the incentive to not only create programs, but keep them constantly updated. We'd actually be trying to get members to use it.

If something like this were to happen though, a lot of thought would have to go into the methods we would use. It could go really well but it could put us down the shitter.

I still can't believe we're all trying to keep Codex alive and it's origional owner couldn't give a shit -.-

[Grizzly]

Firstly, paying a programmer or asking for money to use programs nulls the existing legal loophole that all programs are for learning/teaching purposes. Yes that rule isn't the greatest defence, but for the time being it's good enough. We start charging... well I guess you'd pay to learn about programming, but it's pushing the limits.

I don't believe paying people nulls the purpose of programs to serve as teaching purposes. I mean people are payed to right textbooks and such.

Of course, it's unlikely that it would mean legal letters. We'd just be in a worse position if they did decide to send one. And I don't think a site has been shut down because they were selling programs. usually copyright violations with selling np.

Also, we have certainly not stayed under TNT's radar. They know all about the place. Believe me on that.

And I didn't mean so much that tnt knows about us.. I meant that TNT has pretty much never taken the effort to take legal actions against us even when we were big. We're usually good with avoiding their radar in that sense.

Raui did make a very simple, very good formula for payment of programmerss on a usage basis. Currently there isn't enough constant income to cover that payment. But something could be done about that.

And yes there are many things that could be done. The most simple and effective solution would be to pay programmers and charge users for use. But that is just one solution of many.

Josh - do you think a pay by use would be better or one payment for the program entirely? What kind of figures would be acceptable per program?

By the way, you may think those stats were arbitrary but essentially, they are fact and therefore you're not correct in saying we're less active than ever. Figures clearly show that's not the case. Every single year people think it's the worst it's ever been. They forget what it was like.

I know activity has definitely been worse than this. But I don't think I've ever seen so many months of continuous lack of activity. There was always a spark in interest of neopets, maplestory, wow, or something else to get us all active, but that hasn't helped us in a while. Moreover, I think you can agree that Neocodex is in general not as active or even fun as it once was. We can just do nothing about it and argue that Neocodex has seen more inactive days, or try to change it and boost activity to more than it's ever been. I'm personally a high achiever.

It's been said many times before that we don't have the incentives. That we don't have a good set of programs. Stating the obvious doesn't help solve the problem. You can't simply say - solve problem by paying people. It's just surpasses the problem straight to a quickfix that ends in codex potentially running out of money. People have to want to contribute. If they don't that's a problem in of itself.
Again, we can't be simply paying people. We're going to need a flow of income. Essentially, I propose running a business.

I think a fairly large problem is that too many people here are tired of the site but like the familiarity too much to leave. They stick around, aren't willing to meet new members, help the site, they start problems on a regular basis out of boredom or whatever and just generally troll around until they get banned or give up. People have moved on from the theme, but stick around anyway. We aren't accepting of newer members and so we shoot ourselves in the damn foot.

Don't complain about activity if you shoot every newbie who puts a toe wrong, dares to think differently to you, suggests something you don't like.
Don't complain about not having top of the line programs on the site if you aren't contributing in some way yourself.
Don't go spouting that the site is dying or some other drama-queen bs when you aren't going to do anything about it.
Don't complain about the lack of advertising if you aren't prepared to get new people here.
(for the record this rant isn't directed at any particular person.)

I don't think it's fair at all to blame the members and settle it at that. Is the administration really going to not take any responsibility at all? Are they never going to change as our population wittles away? It's not that I believe that it's the administration to blame. For whatever reason, we're slowly dying. And to commit change, it starts with the staff not the members.

It's not really up to us whether or not a member is active or not. It's more up to the member.. I mean we can all warm and welcoming as we want, but if they don't have an incentive to stay, they're not going to. I think our attitude has little to do with the problem. Many of us have stayed with neocodex for many years because we like the community and that's the only reason neocodex is surviving today.

[hungryhippo]

If you're talking about making members pay for programs, that could backfire on you. I haven't seen anyone mention the possibility that there is probably a large group of people who just don't have the extra cash lying around (college students) and couldn't afford to drop cash on programs here and there, and so they would just stop using the programs all together.


"I think a fairly large problem is that too many people here are tired of the site but like the familiarity too much to leave. They stick around, aren't willing to meet new members, help the site, they start problems on a regular basis out of boredom or whatever and just generally troll around until they get banned or give up. People have moved on from the theme, but stick around anyway. We aren't accepting of newer members and so we shoot ourselves in the damn foot."

amen to that. I don't think there's anyone on here who'd consider me a friend at this point...And I've seen more than one new member vehemently attacked for asking the wrong question or posting an opinion

Edited by hungryhippo, 29 October 2008 - 07:12 AM.

[Random]

I wouldn't have a problem with Staff or programmers getting paid because of their work.
They really do spend a lot of time on here and trying to better our site.

[Grizzly]

If you're talking about making members pay for programs, that could backfire on you. I haven't seen anyone mention the possibility that there is probably a large group of people who just don't have the extra cash lying around (college students) and couldn't afford to drop cash on programs here and there, and so they would just stop using the programs all together.


"I think a fairly large problem is that too many people here are tired of the site but like the familiarity too much to leave. They stick around, aren't willing to meet new members, help the site, they start problems on a regular basis out of boredom or whatever and just generally troll around until they get banned or give up. People have moved on from the theme, but stick around anyway. We aren't accepting of newer members and so we shoot ourselves in the damn foot."

amen to that. I don't think there's anyone on here who'd consider me a friend at this point...And I've seen more than one new member vehemently attacked for asking the wrong question or posting an opinion

What our competitors have done and also what similar sites have done is to offer free programs, but offer some elite programs for a price. This has been very successful from what I have seen. There are a numerous amount of other pricing strategies we can consider. There is the choice of allowing new members to pay in order to access private member programs. We could also have monthly memberships. etc. And typically, they'd all be very cheap.
I know a lot of you wouldn't be too happy about paying for programs, but it's better than no programs.

And there are millions of other places to use monetary incentives..
- We could do competitions for programmers instead of paying them per use
- We could pay programmers on a commission base
- We could do a competition for recruiting new members (I think we've done that in the past)
- We could even use monetary incentives to promote activity in the ezine/graphics team through competitions or whatnot

And to your second comment.. Neocodex has always been like that. Many of us have always displayed hostility towards new members. Especially towards those who are eagerly in search of programs. In fact for a long time, many of us wanted neocodex to be private and not even accept new members, or only accept new members on an invite basis. It has always been like this, so I don't believe this is the source of the problem.

And on an irrelevant note, if you want to meet new friends, it's really up to you. Just start talking to people on msn. Get active in maybe different fields like gfx or programming and whatnot. I've been here years now and I don't really have friends on codex either buddy. I certainly talk to people on msn occasionally.. I've gamed with others.. I've done gfx with others, but nothing moreso than that. But I've never really made an effort to.. Again, I don't think this matter has anything to do with our recent shortcomings.

Edited by Freak, 29 October 2008 - 07:38 AM.

[Tetiel]

We have quite a bit of ad revenue sitting there for a "rainy day fund" so I don't see why we can't use it to pay programmers. I don't know how much we'd pay. It'd all depend on how much we can afford. What I don't exactly agree with is charging people per say. That makes me nervous for the same reasons it makes Kitsune nervous.

[Warlord]

Codex should rely solely on ad revenue to pay programmers. The people cheating at neopets could never really afford to pay anyway, and with the uncertainty revolving around cheating it wouldn't be a safe bet for a user. Paying people as an incentive to complete major projects seems to be the only way to go these days as none of them are getting done otherwise.

Personally I don't like coming here and having my posts get stomped on with personal attacks and whatnot, thats where my activity goes.

[Random]

Codex should rely solely on ad revenue to pay programmers. The people cheating at neopets could never really afford to pay anyway, and with the uncertainty revolving around cheating it wouldn't be a safe bet for a user. Paying people as an incentive to complete major projects seems to be the only way to go these days as none of them are getting done otherwise.

Personally I don't like coming here and having my posts get stomped on with personal attacks and whatnot, thats where my activity goes.

And then if we drew more people in, we'd get more ad revenue anyway.

And yeah, that's probably a reason for people being inactive, but some of our more active members have senses of humor that revolve around insults.

[Grizzly]

Codex should rely solely on ad revenue to pay programmers. The people cheating at neopets could never really afford to pay anyway, and with the uncertainty revolving around cheating it wouldn't be a safe bet for a user. Paying people as an incentive to complete major projects seems to be the only way to go these days as none of them are getting done otherwise.

Personally I don't like coming here and having my posts get stomped on with personal attacks and whatnot, thats where my activity goes.

Other competing sites have had pay for use programs and they have sold. And our members and the members of those sites have the same ability to pay for programs. And we're not talking about a lot here. If we charged $3.00 for access to a program and 50 users purchase it, that's 150$. If we have 5 successful programs that could mean $750 for the site - whatever we pay to the programmers.

Unfortunately, many of you are biased in this argument because you don't want to pay for programs. But if paying for programs means we can get quality programs, I think we should go for it.

And again, we don't have to charge all members for all programs. We could offer elite programs for sale and others for free. Or we can offer sale for low level members for access to private member programs.

We have quite a bit of ad revenue sitting there for a "rainy day fund" so I don't see why we can't use it to pay programmers. I don't know how much we'd pay. It'd all depend on how much we can afford. What I don't exactly agree with is charging people per say. That makes me nervous for the same reasons it makes Kitsune nervous.

I've seen the revenue neocodex makes a few months ago and it's not much. Not enough to pay for legit programs. Not to mention administration probably would be unwilling to touch those funds.

[Warlord]

Other competing sites have had pay for use programs and they have sold. And our members and the members of those sites have the same ability to pay for programs. And we're not talking about a lot here. If we charged $3.00 for access to a program and 50 users purchase it, that's 150$. If we have 5 successful programs that could mean $750 for the site - whatever we pay to the programmers.

Unfortunately, many of you are biased in this argument because you don't want to pay for programs. But if paying for programs means we can get quality programs, I think we should go for it.

And again, we don't have to charge all members for all programs. We could offer elite programs for sale and others for free. Or we can offer sale for low level members for access to private member programs.

I've seen the revenue neocodex makes a few months ago and it's not much. Not enough to pay for legit programs. Not to mention administration probably would be unwilling to touch those funds.

Will all the rich 12 year olds steal mommy and daddy's credit card to buy our programs?

[Grizzly]

Will all the rich 12 year olds steal mommy and daddy's credit card to buy our programs?

I'm sure the younger kids might ask their parents. Other older members (the majority) will be able to purchase using their own funds on a paypal or perhaps a debit card. So what? lol.

You're acting like everyone is completely dirt poor here. Don't people buy video games? Don't people purchase nexon cash on maplestory? Don't people spend monthly fees on games like wow? Where do those funds come from? Most of us have paid for such, so we're all ABLE to afford these programs. It would be a matter of whether you wanted to or not. If you don't there could be less efficient free programs available.

And I did mention other options of sale that wouldn't effect a lil private like you, so I'm not going to repeat myself again.

[Cory]

Which is why we shouldn't sell programs to the members, we could very easily pay the programmers with ad funds! Codex isn't bad off in the funds department. They're not doing amazing, but not to the point where the site is going to close down or anything if we spend a bit extra.

[Grizzly]

Which is why we shouldn't sell programs to the members, we could very easily pay the programmers with ad funds! Codex isn't bad off in the funds department. They're not doing amazing, but not to the point where the site is going to close down or anything if we spend a bit extra.

idk.. I feel like we're all overestimating the amount we make from ads. When I was staff, I got see our exact revenues from ads and they weren't significant. Things may have changed since then but I doubt it.
I just think we're going to need another source of revenue to finance these payments.

I wonder if Hydro ever got google ads working again

[Bryn AKA Interhacker]

The day codex charges members for its program is the day me and many other codexians will join a rival site and use them for free.

Also, charging people for use of programs is certain to get those programs broken down, auth riped out and spread across the internet free to use

[Oaken]

Paying the programmers themselves is the only way it would work.

[Bryn AKA Interhacker]

Paying the programmers themselves is the only way it would work.

Explain this.

Why do we have to pay our programmers when....

Another top rival site has, Chaos Blade, Sockopen, Josh And many old SD working there (making them programs for free)

[Oaken]

Explain this.

Why do we have to pay our programmers when....

Another top rival site has, Chaos Blade, Sockopen, Josh And many old SD working there (making them programs for free)

.....that's really nice for them. However we DON'T have those people. The people we do have are more than capable of making better programs than those you mentioned. However they also have better things to do, like earn a living.

I would imagine that programmers of Laser Waves capabilities for example would not really get any sense of achievement from making a neopets program when they are able to do things much more complex that will earn them money. So with no challenge in it....and no money it, why bother.

.....oh and at no point did I say we HAD to pay them.

Edited by Oaken, 29 October 2008 - 12:18 PM.

[Bryn AKA Interhacker]

.....that's really nice for them. However we DON'T have those people. The people we do have are more than capable of making better programs than those you mentioned. However they also have better things to do, like earn a living.

I would imagine that programmers of Laser Waves capabilities for example would not really get any sense of achievement from making a neopets program when they are able to do things much more complex that will earn them money. So with no challenge in it....and no money it, why bother.

.....oh and at no point did I say we HAD to pay them.

Firsty, dont take my comment personal to you, am just making a general statment

Secondly, everyone has to make a living i just dont see why or how one site needs to pay there programmers and another site dont.

"The people we do have are more than capable of making better programs"

Not quite right, sockopen and chaos have full all in one bots avalible, the very bot that a codex member has been making for a while now.

Edited by interhacker, 29 October 2008 - 12:23 PM.

[Oaken]

Firsty, dont take my comment personal to you, am just making a general statment

Secondly, everyone has to make a living i just dont see why or how one site needs to pay there programmers and another site dont.

"The people we do have are more than capable of making better programs"

Not quite right, sockopen and chaos have full all in one bots avalible, the very bot that a codex member has been making for a while now.

....that has already been done by a Codex programmer long ago. It's just not available to the public.