fps_d0minat0r said:
Forums dont take a lot of bandwidth because its basically all HTML. Any data heavy content like pics and vids are linked to external sites, so companies like youtube and games publisher sites pay for the bandwidth for that content (and they get their money back when the promotion leads to sales). Ofcourse it would cost some money to run a forum, but not a significant amount at all. I understand that they are doing nothing wrong by trying to make money from advertising, but theres also nothing wrong to block those ads if you dont want them, because if everyone in the world had adblock, sites like this would still exist because they are based on user generated content. In the worst case situation, you wouldnt be reading any more of their articles, but ten thousand other people on the internet would still be writing a lot of good stuff on the same topic... for free. |
There are some exceptions to things linked on this forum which do take up a massive amount of bandwidth, while the rules on forum sigs are at 1.5mb max since those are uploaded to the site there is no hard limit applied by the forums software it is all handled by moderators here. That means that if some gimp comes along and decides the world should see some 30-40mb gif of a shiny part of a movie they love stuck into their sig then every single user who loads up a page which features a post from that user is going to take that amount of bandwidth directly from gamrconnects webserver, considering that even unsuccessful threads on here get 100+ views others like this weeks charts already reaching several thousand views think of that number of people X 30mb. I know browsers will obviously cache that so the number isn't exactly going to be the exact extent I suggest here, but it's still a lot of bandwidth, and that isn't free.
You mention that sites like this would exist because the content on them is created by the users is free.... That is the equivilent of sitting on your own deck chair on a train and suggesting you don't need to pay the fare because it's your own chair.
Edit - Hmmm the sigs are actually not stored on the gamrconnect site only the sig images are, some of which are still moderately large but still moderately large x thousands of views = bandwidth.
Why not check me out on youtube and help me on the way to 2k subs over at www.youtube.com/stormcloudlive