What's happening at PlaymoDB

[Pynedor]

I hope everything goes well for you and your wonderful website!

[henry_martini]

First and most important, no one can expect you to get it up again soon and regardless to the time for you available or under circumstances you are not comfortable with. :-) 

( I guess that it would take Geobra about 1.5 years to decide if they can be bothered at all and yet another 2 to get a third party company running it. ;-D)

Still I hope that playmodb has not necessarily to be changed but just hosted on a more capable server if it shall be up again 'as soon as possible' without spending much of your time and rewriting (parts of) it.

Suitable changes (maybe even allowing it to stay on the present server for some time) would be better. As already said by tahra and Keesinho with professional background  there is probably some space for improvement and fortunately he already volunteered. ()  Please contact him. :-)

Fundraising by advertisements, payed memberships or any other change that might bring others out there to suspect evil economical motivation$ or impending 'exclusiveness' and that would possibly bring legal, fiscal, administrative and other obligations could be avoided. To fund a dedicated server (~50$/month maybe even less) a few dozen people donating an average of 1.00$ each month should be sufficient if (and as long as) this flow can be made steady and reliable.

[Wesley Myers]

A PayPal donation button would garner more funds than a person might think. Funds that if not used right away could be put aside and drawn upon later when needed.

[GrahamB]

I am a great fan of Playmodb (it is my favourite and most visited website) and really hope it can be kept going by (and for) fans. I would gladly contribute financially to maintain it. Like bonniebeth, I would not mind if people used it without contributing. I gather there are already 'blocks' in place to prevent people exploiting it commercially (e.g. ebay sellers linking to the pictures).

If you are getting time to read these replies Heather, I hope you feel reassured that we will support your decisions about the DB, whatever they are- and thanks from me too for such a fantastic resource! I echo Indianna's early response:

You have always managed Playmodb graciously and generously and maybe now it is time for us to let you off the hook!   

Graham

[sbblabotw]

Thanks, everybody, for your words of support. I really appreciate it! I'm really, really working on not stressing myself and keeping things in perspective. It's not the end of the world. It's just toys.

There are two issues to accepting money from users to upgrade the server capability:

1) Entering the grey area of a commercial site. There seems to be a tacit agreement with Playmobil at the moment, that they won't prosecute me for copyright infringement; but once money starts to change hands, they may have no choice but to involve the lawyers. Nobody wants that.

2) Once I accept payment for service, even donations or advertising, I have an obligation to provide something to the users, an obligation I don't have now. It's a hobby and that's all. I can quit the whole thing if I want to. I don't want to, but you never know what's down the road! I cannot handle a new "real" job.

I can't imagine I could generate enough income from this to replace my day job or even to support some time off to devote to it, so unless there was a steady stream sufficient to pay for a dedicated server - 10 to 15 times what I pay now - it would just be a little bonus really, and once it was set up, if the income decreased, I'd feel pressured to pay for any shortfall. Not to mention, the time it has always taken day-to-day wouldn't change much... and the data store is only increasing in size. What happens when the new server runs out of capability? I'm thinking of the future, too.

On the good side, Playmobil has said, "let's talk". I won't go into details until I actually have something concrete to report, but I'm hopeful.

[bonniebeth]

That sounds like good news! Hopefully there will be a good solution in there somewhere.

[Rasputin]

Does the DB conflict with the parts/instruction feature of Geobra? I mean are they both the same thing in theory. I know they are not set up the same and do not function the same and but if Geobra bought out the DB what would be the reason for keeping it going if they have already demonstrated that they are building their own parts identifier system?

I prefer the DB over Geobras incomplete and over all un-user-frindly parts site.

I do not now why but I have concerns about Geobra taking over the DB 

I have so many examples how fans are way more creative in setting up/running websites

[Rhalius]

You did a wonderfull job all these years for sure. 

Might be good if you could find a small group of dedicated fans to work with you so you dont have to do this alone anymore. If there's about five people working on it with a good system for what everyone does and good communication back and forth, it could be sorted out in no time. Just need to find some tech savy playmo fans.

[playmofire]

That sounds encouraging, Heather.

[henry_martini]

Your db, your choice.