I love the OCUK forums....but they are getting SO flakey these days.

agw_01 said:
Basically, people were too tight to pay £10 towards the cost of a new server.
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Actually it was 50/50, I wouldn't mind paying a tenner for faster server, custom avatars and private messages though.
 
pyro said:
Actually it was 50/50, I wouldn't mind paying a tenner for faster server, custom avatars and private messages though.
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Though PM's is something that they will surely never do, because people can send each other rule breaking pm's.
 
It only needs one post I've just written to time out on me and I'm off. It's a shame as I enjoy a lot of the things going on here but I won't be mucked about.

Didn't we have a vote not too long back in regards to donating £10 towards this. Anyone remember the result and how much would have been handed over? Are there any other reasons as to why this has been happening for a good while now?

Edit: just seen the 50/50 above :(

Does anyone frequent payed for forums then?
 
but what happens if there isn't enough money raised lets say for examples sake spie pays £1000 a yr for this server !

for a faster serv is £2000 but only 50 ppl want to pay £10 each a year theres still another £500 to find ? :D

only works if enough people contribute but not everyone does and will !

i for one would but others maybe not ?
 
MadMan-JaMeS said:
but what happens if there isn't enough money raised lets say for examples sake spie pays £1000 a yr for this server !

for a faster serv is £2000 but only 50 ppl want to pay £10 each a year theres still another £500 to find ? :D

only works if enough people contribute but not everyone does and will !

i for one would but others maybe not ?
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Well theory has it he would not want to be dependent on us lot for his server and running costs, just a helping hand. It would also speed up the forums significantly as there would only be half of us on here ;)
I'm sure there's nothing wrong with the old server if indeed it's actually old at all, so I'd guess there's no actual need for a new server. It's just strugling with the weight of use from us lot.
 
Mr Blonde said:
It would also speed up the forums significantly as there would only be half of us on here ;)
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nobody said about making the forums private so the same amount of users would be on it ! :D

and my point is this our helping hand may not be enough for it to be upgraded a step and i am sure Spie doesn't wanna fork out more cos if he did we wouldn't have this topic and we would have a much better server ;)
 
Hmm I don't know where that making the forums private came from - freudian slip I guess!

All I can say is that I hope things change soon. I'm sure it can't make the company look all that brilliant if you can't get in their forums or it's unresponsive. I'm sure the powers that be recognise this.
 
The forums have nothing to do with the shop they are just there as an extra shall we say but i know what u mean doesn't look good if the forums are down !

Nobody is saying they are down people say they are slow but its not nessacerily to do with the forum server maybe people's ISP's are acting up cos it has never been slow for only been down a few times when it has been for everybody else !
 
MadMan-JaMeS said:
Nobody is saying they are down people say they are slow but its not nessacerily to do with the forum server
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It is - check the Teamocuk stats done by Berserker - the server falls over at 780+ users. Which ain't surprising, 'coz it's quite an old piece of kit.

And a new server, able to last a good while, costs £lots. More than £2k :(

Well, you can put together a dual core Opteron server with a couple Gb RAM and some disks for £2k but it'll fall apart before it's built and not be nearly balanced enough - SCSI drives, RAID, and so on:p
 
Although often denied, if only in silence, the forums are much a part of OcUK's success.

Many etailers have no forums or ones so sparse in membership as to render them useless.

The question must arise at some point.....

How important to Spie are these forums as a business stratagem.

As someone pointed out earlier, just how many forums do you visit that require payment?

Not many, if any.

But would I pay to keep this forum at a maintainable level of acceptable service?

Yes, dependant on amount.

These forums are important to myself and many others who frequent them regularly.

Spie, though it must be difficult to measure the benefits, or lack of resulting from the forums, there must be a strong business case for keeping them at a reasonable level of service if only because they represent your business as a whole.

I know OcUK has always played the "forums are not part of the shop" card, but the truth remains most people associate OcuK with its forums as much as its retail products.

My vote?

"We" both give a little.

Spie bears part (how little or how much is up to him) of a server/ bandwidth upgrade and "we" bear the other. Through opt in "premium membership" or such.

I believe a sizable portion of OcUK's membership would pay for additional privileges on the forum if priced correctly. It's all about "new", "better" etc. after all.

Isn't that what many parts of this forum are about?

Buying a new gfx card to run FEAR faster than a mate can......

Buying a new X2 just because it has the potential to beat a single core......

You get the idea.

Overclockers UK

It's always been about speed, Spie.

Speed of a cpu, or nowadays, speed of a forum.

Show us the money and we'll show you ours. ;)
 
malc30 said:
I have said it once and i will say it again so listen.
If it wasn't for the forums i would NOT shop at OcUK store. Period.
My friend introduced me to the forums to get tech advice etc because of how good the forums are i felt obliged to shop at OcUK store.
They are NOT the cheapest or the Closest store to me at all.
My Loyalty to OcUK store comes Directly from my usage of the forums.
I have to say out loud that i feel the Sluggish state of the forums reflects badly on the store. After all the shop sells Hardcore High end PC components etc but cannot maintain a forum at an acceptable speed. If you didn't know better you would think they didn't know what they were doing.

Now i don't like this state of affairs at all and like even less the fact i have to post it for all to see but i feel connected to OcUk and feel i have the right to voice my opinion.
I continually praise Oc to all pointing new customers towards the doors/site.
When they come back to me moaning about Oc's inability to run a forum at acceptable speeds what am i s'posed to say.
Any of the reasons i can think off are Not acceptable ;
New gear is expensive. To me this means a business is not profitable. Not an image i would want to portray.
Surely as a high end component store with system builders building your own server which is superior to others is a sign of your Skill in this field.
Forums not linked to shop Business. Absolute TOSH. Read above.

What i will say is i do feel the Dons are slacking. I enjoy reading the tech info and other informative posts but there is a load of rubbish posted that for me just wastes bandwidth.
I think the Dons have slackened off recently and i think this is wrong. Rubbish posts/threads need to be stamped on before they have 40 replys added.
Loads of threads started on subjects that have threads already is another waste of bandwidth.

Personally i came here to learn which i have done but recently i find myself drawn into sifting through spam to find the quality. This is Wrong and its not Oc. The Dons used to be Bang on so whats changed.
Clearing the crap out would certainly speed things up round here.

Just my ten cents.


p.s.
And to rest my case i am just off to browse the Oc store as i do every morning. My last purchase was a Momo and a Speedlink a week before xmas and 2gig of geil just before that. The last customer i sent to you was yesterday and yes he went straight to the forums on his arrival home to get the advice he needed for his new hardware.


I Seriously value these Forums it annoys me when others do not. No matter Who they are.

O yer and would i contribute. Yes i would. If it improved things and reflected the kind of image i wanted i would be happy to contribute. I want to be associated to a site/server/forum that reflects my own high standards not to one that represents Windows 95.
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I agree completly, I'm not looking for a pat on the back back but I,ve shouted the merits of the OCUK shop and forum combo to hundreds of people and many have started spendind big bucks b-cos of the added support and help they get through these pages, For a company that makes millions on selling high end pc components I really don't think it should be that hard to invest in a server that benifits us and in turn benifits the company, Look at it like this, If only 1 highend user is atrracted b-cos of these forums, and he/she typically upgrades through out the year and spends around about 800-1000 pounds a year (which is about what I spend on OCUK) then that 1 person in ten years is spending between 8 and 10 THOUSAND pounds on the OCUK franchise :eek: , and thats just 1 person, these forums attract thousands of people.
 
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Either pay a bit or suck it up. Seems like the only option to me . It can get annyoing at times but I usually avoid the busy times nowadays ayway and I'm just glad they're here tbh. :D
 
Why dont they just set up a Donation thing like is on the spybot site?

So people can donate when ever they want to and it wont lose people because they need to subscribe to the site.

There are plenty of people saying they have a 10er to be spent so who knows, it might makje more then a subscription :)
 
The cost of running these forums to a high standard must be trivial compared to the business benefit they bring to OCUK - they are seriously good value for money, best way to spend marketing budget. A tenner a year from a few dozen members is a drop in the ocean.
 
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