Wayy to thief my sig there, Scoyn -.-

Rojan QDel: So, because Zeno created a thread to announce the existence of his new free host and to inspire more folk to actively post here by saying that he'd only take clients who'd been members here at least a week and who had at least 5 posts here, you took that to be a shameless plug for his hosting services and an invite to create one of your own but to address it as "free hosting" with a $5 setup fee.. okay, just clarifying… :devil:

Rojan QDel: Wait, so you say it's no burden to you to have idle accounts, but you charge a $5 setup fee now because you want to discourage folks from wasting your disk space by having idle accounts.. am I the only one seeing what you're saying here as a wee bit self-contradictory? Or am I confused somehow by this 21 post thread to offer your not-quite-free hosting services? :sad:

Kayle: What is it with you and this obsession about your sig? :tongue:

The setup fee has been and on/off thing, I removed it again with the negative response it received. I said its less of a burden on me if people aren't actually using their accounts, less RAM used, etc. But they still use disk space, which isn't a huge deal because I clean out inactive accounts every once in a while. But would you rather offer hosting services to people and have them never use their accounts or get anywhere, or would you rather offer hosting services and have people really use the accounts and get a lot of value out of them. I'd rather have the latter, which is what I was hoping to get by making people pay the $5 fee, to show they were at least dedicated enough to be willing to spend $5 on their MUD.

In my own experience, I would, of course, rather the folks who are using my resources get something out of them (though "value" is a difficult word to apply to something free), and if they cease to use my resources to clear them out (after I email them to see if they have in fact quit or just had some real life issues to weather), but I don't charge a setup fee to prove their intent, instead, in my case, I only accept "clients" on a referral basis. I have hosted folks who were brand new to mudding entirely and folks who had established muds that needed a new home because of problems with their previous host, but in my case, because I host from my own server in my home I don't charge anything but I also have limits on what sort of resources (particularly bandwidth) that I can offer. Your milage may vary.

I don't think anyone has a problem with paying a $5 hosting fee - the disagreement is with listing said hosting as free. It would be like advertising a "free mud", and then requiring people to pay $5 to create a character.

Exactly, if he wants to charge a set-up fee, or even a monthly/annual fee of whatever, no one here would have an issue with that, it's when he wants to do so but advertise himself as free that it becomes a problem.

I understand that and removed the setup fee yesterday…

I think this is way overblown. I mean it's not like he was being deceptive about the $5 charge, claiming it was 100% totally free and trying to hide the fee until you get to the signup screen. Obviously "free" isn't as good of a description as "one-time fee" or something but I don't see how anyone can be misled since he's pretty upfront with the $5 fee.

So free does mean, free except for an initial $5 fee, to you?

If you think of it as a setup fee, the hosting itself is still free. You just paid $5 for the work it took him to set it up.

So you wouldn't have a problem with a mud advertising itself as "free" if it cost $5 to create a character?

Perhaps a better example is a MUD in which you need to have your description authorized by an immortal to reach level 6, but the immortal in question charges $5 whenever they read players descriptions to authorize them.

No, they're both terrible examples. Kavir's is different because free muds are more plentiful, so the accepted use of "free" is well established. However, most mud hosting cost $$$, so a one time fee is still a good deal. And Fizban's example is terrible because I haven't seen anyone offer free mud hosting, set you up, then demand money for you to keep going…

Free hosts are plentiful as well, 10 minutes on google will show that.

Fizban's example was actually fairly appropriate, Brinson. Just because you haven't seen it done, and most of us wouldn't have the audacity to do it, doesn't make it a bad example of a hypothetical comparison. :lol: The fact is, the real issue that was being addressed here was that he was saying it's free hosting with a one time set-up fee but that's not what most of us are willing to accept as fitting the definition of a free host. If you read through the posts in the previous two pages, no one actually complained that he was charging too much, only that he was charging at all while claiming to be offering free hosting. If he offered his services as a host that only cost a one time $5 setup fee (omiting the word free altogether) no one would've said a thing. As it is, he's recinding the $5 fee rather than the word free, which works too. :wink:

I'm not sure what word would be more appropriate, even though 'free' isn't completely accurate. The process of hosting itself is free in that no matter how long you stick with it, it costs the same amount. That's what most people are interested in when it comes to looking for 'free' hosts, I'd say. So it's not entirely unreasonable to say that it is free with a set-up fee, because the monthly hosting is, in fact, free.

I disagree, most people looking for free hosts have no bank account or credit card and are under the age of 18, so they simply can't pay a single dime.

You could still play for 'free' up until level 6.

But in the case of hosting, you can't do anything until you've have an account set up. Thus my comparison with a mud that charges you a character setup fee - $5 to create a character.




The accepted use of 'free' in muds is far from well established (as the recent discussion on TMS went to show).



Some hosting is free, some costs money…exactly the same as with muds. Back when I started mudding, there were no mud hosting services; if you wanted to run a mud, you usually did so from a university account (preferably with permission).

I'm not denying that a one time setup fee of $5 is a good deal, whether that's for hosting or for playing a decent mud. All I am saying that such a mud or hosting service would not be 'free'.

Agreed, this is why I said Fizban's example was fairly appropriate rather than the better example.


Either way, I fail to see how the accepted use of the term, in any other context, constitutes a change in it's definition for the sake of a discussion such as this, but as it is the example KaVir gave is very appropriate and very reasonable, especially in light of the fact that we've established, repeatedly, that we're not condemning him for charging the fee but for using the word free this way. Now I really start to feel sorry for the folks who compile dictionaries.. :wink:



AMEN! Very well said, KaVir.
It's not about whether this fee is reasonable at all, in fact I specifically said at one point that I thought it was a very reasonable fee. It's about the fact that he was charging that fee while claiming a free mud hosting service explicitly stating that the one-time set-up fee was re-added recently and possibly temporary. (Thus applying unequally to his customers and subjecting them to further/other fees on the same whim basis. :sad:)

I will say that the reason I called it free despite the setup fee was exactly what some people said; the hosting itself was free, the $5 fee was for the account setup. I'm sorry for it being somewhat unequal, but the reason the fee kept being added or taken away was because when it was there, it turned people away, and when it wasn't there, I was having a hard time covering costs. Obviously, its free now, but do realize that though I am offering this to help people out, that it IS costing me something and it would be nice to have something to help cover those costs.