Dashingdon's Site and Recent Complaints

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I am writing this here as a favor to those not normally able to post in the Lounge, so everyone can participate in this discussion.

For those unaware: @dashingdon out of his own pocket, time and effort has made a free hosting site that many of us (including myself) utilize. This was done in May of 2015, because the normal methods of sharing demos was being taken away from us.

His service was and is a life-saver for many of our games and projects.

He does this out of kindness, and he does this without asking much in return.

Right now he does not have a lot of time to give to the service, but he is well aware of the issues everyone is experiencing.

I’ve noticed lately a lot of entitled community members say things that are uncalled for.

People, who do not even understand what is going on are demanding a lot of selfish things… all from a guy doing this out of kindness.

Why do people act like such entitled jerks when their demo loads slowly, or they experience lag when switching pages?

Do people here feel so entitled that they can throw out garbage in their posts and hurt those who are volunteering their time, their resources and doing all this thanklessly?

Before you start raging at moderators here or start badmouthing dashingdon, remember just what is being done for you.

I am sorry that a ton of @Seraphinite’s fans are overwhelming the service — that is what happens when a lot of people try to visit the same site at the same time.

This happens elsewhere too – @Jender reported the same thing happening on Patreon earlier… did you all make nasty posts on Patreon too?

Please think before posting. In the future, there might be suspensions issued.

Thank you for suggesting I do this, Eric.

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Out of curiosity, and just possibly missing it because I’m unabashedly able to miss the glasses on my own face at times.

Is there a way to support the site, like through Patreon?

Edit: That whole ‘glasses on face’ thing.

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Oh I think the Patreon supporters were just given the Dashingdon link early…but regardless, you are totally right in that no one should be badmouthing that man! We all use his service for free, and it is very kind of him to allow us to do so. :heart: Thanks for making this post.

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Thank you so much for writing this notice, Eiwynn!

Do we know if it would be possible/welcomed/allowed for people with the proper skillset to volunteer their time, and the rest of us to donate money to help pay for better bandwidth etc?

Since the dashingdon site has become such an important cornerstone for this community.

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Thank you for making that abundantly clear, @Eiwynn.

And hell yes, the site has proven invaluable to hundreds and hundreds of authors over the years. Sometimes I think when things are given so generously, people tend to forget the value of the service being provided.

Maybe we could take this opportunity to throw some financial assistance @dashingdon’s way? I’m not sure that would help resolve the immediate issues, as it sounds that time, perhaps more than money, is the main obstacle, but I think it would be a nice gesture as a community to raise some funds for the site right now.

Edited to add: Although with the site apparently totally down, I’m not sure how I send money. Dashingdon’s forum profile doesn’t have any other links that I can find.

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It’s sad to hear that people have been taking Dashingdon’s volunteer service to the community as granted and are now being ungrateful.

I agree with the sentiment that others have expressed as well: If Dashingdon was willing to take donations to get support and a thank you that way for hosting the website, I’m sure many grateful people would find a way to donate a bit to the cause. The money could both support Dashingdon personally, and be utilized by them to look out for a helping hand with managing dashingdon dot com.

With the increasing traffic and pressure on the dashingdon server, it is clear there needs to be some reworking. It would be unfair to put this burden on Dashingdon alone when all of us use this service frequently.

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100% this. To be honest, I have no idea how I would run final beta-testing this month if the site is not available. It’s just become a ‘given’ that we can use dashingdon whenver we need to use it.

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I wasn’t aware of how dire the circumstances are and I feel so sad about it Dashingdon has been a salvation for all us aspiring writers to make our game playable. This community would haven’t been the same without it, and probably be far less successful

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I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to criticize @dashingdon. I just expressed my frustrations with the loading time in a way that came off bad. I guess I got used to its quick loading time so much that I took it for granted.

Once again, I’m sorry for my post. And I’m sorry for hurting anyone’s feelings with it too, it wasn’t my intention in the slightest.

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Here’s a link to Dashingdon’s ko-fi if you want to send him money: Buy DashingDon a Coffee. ko-fi.com/dashingdon - Ko-fi ❤️ Where creators get donations from fans, with a 'Buy Me a Coffee' Page. :slight_smile:

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Thanks so much, and done!

@Eiwynn, would you consider putting Dashingdon’s Ko-Fi info on post 1?

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I think a huge part of the problem is the fact that people don’t know that much about Dashingdon. I’ve been on the forum for four years now and, while I generally keep to a few threads, I didn’t even know Dashingdon was an actual user, much less that he had a Ko-fi.

I think that lack of awareness is because for most people the website just sort of “exists”. They don’t know where it’s from, they don’t know who maintains it and they don’t even think it costs money to maintain it even if it makes sense.

I think that topic should be brought up more often on the forum. I’m not saying that CoG has to advertise the whole thing on its front page all the time, but perhaps we could have a pinned thread a few times a year or something to raise awareness and help Dashingdon keep up his website?

Of course that is assuming he could improve the website with more support. I have no knowledge about that sort of stuff, so extra financial support might not be the answer.

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I don’t think anyone really has the right to complain for something that is completely free, were not paying for anything and neither is our tax money going into it so we really don’t have the right to complain.

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I don’t have anything to say about this other than a big THANK YOU to @dashingdon for all the years of service.

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I think people just need to consider the difference between voicing their frustration in a respectful manner, maybe joking around with each other to lighten it a bit, and demanding that things get fixed immediately because they’re inconvenienced, or being angry or aggressive about it.

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Considering how wide-reaching DashingDon’s work is on the forum, it really is good that this isn’t locked off. The site is such a staple ever since Dropbox changed its format and broke all the old links that I don’t think any writer on here that has used it, some of whom aren’t Regulars, isn’t affected by it – and the readers especially are affected by it.

But yeah – as @Harroc said, this is primarily an awareness problem. I didn’t even know that Dashingdon was a forum member until about half a year ago, myself. The line blurs between what is a service provided by a community member, and what seems to be a service providdd by CoG themselves.

That said, it’s sort of expected that something as anticipated as Wayhaven 3 would do this. It’s probably the most anticipated game on the forums, and the sudden upsurge in traffic is sure to overwhelm a fairly low-end server. I think I remember Wayhaven 2 doing the same thing, but that could be me misremembering.

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Honestly, if you’re going after the Don for his completely free service, which has made the lives of hundreds of authors and thousands of testers easier for years, then you don’t deserve to use it. Without it, as it is right now, we can already see what might’ve happened had he never made it in the first place. Whoever is expressing genuine malice towards him, and being jerks… go somewhere else. Don’t be a tool.

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I fully agree with refraining from dumping on Dashingdon. I never knew it was a free, volunteer service. But it’s so crucial to everyone in this community. Polite suggestion to the moderators: maybe pin a post to the top of the forum briefly explaining what Dashingdon is and putting a link to their Kofi or Patreon so people can donate?

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While I understand and sympathize with the fact that it can be difficult for users (especially new or casual ones) to know that things like dashingdon.com or CSIDE are not official services provided by CoG themself, I would like to note that even if they had been, we would still not be entitled to their existence or efficiency, and I would hope that people would still be respectful when dealing with any problems.

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I feel like I’m being misinterpreted here. I’m saying misinformation has contributed to the drama, but the drama is definitely out of hand either way. Knowing that these things have a source, and that these sources are people on the internet doing things for free, would curb the drama somewhat – and more awareness of either of the two big projects would mean that they have more funds, which in Don’s case would mean a bigger server more capable of handling the traffic load (although I’m not sure if any server that’s purchaseable by one person could handle the load it got in a matter of seconds).

The broader scheme of it is probably somewhere along the lines of what happens in a lot of internet communities. Genuine frustration is expressed. That frustration is exagerrated, often as a joke but sometimes genuinely, and then the mood of the room sweeps up more people. If the conversation becomes confrontational, subconsciously, people will become more confrontational.

Not an excuse, again. Still bad, again. Just the fact that it is a thing that happens, and not an aberration unique to the forums.

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