New Server Drive - donation and prize thread (Final total: $13,310!)

[Turjan]

Not that I really was concerned about the prize, but I hate when something like this is left hanging.

I also feel like he is avoiding the issue, and it seems like only one or two us of really care.

I think many of us care. We see that nobody is feeling responsible to respond. The prize issue is really secondary - I think it would be somewhat awkward if they were actually sent out now . It's the complete silence that speaks volumes. Even a negative answer would be an answer. As it is now, it leaves some awkward aftertaste behind.

 

[reveal]

Not an excuse, as I agree with what others have said so far, but PC does not have internet access at home right now. Hopefully he'll provide an update when he gets back on.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=140905

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

I've been following the thread on and off, seeing as how we are one of the publishers who donated prizes that have yet to be sent out. I'll keep tabs for a little while longer and see what happens, but if nothing is done, then I'll do something myself.

 

[guedo79]

Has anyone directly PMed or emailed PC?

 

[reveal]

Has anyone directly PMed or emailed PC?

I haven't but I know for a fact that he's aware of how we feel and, at one point, was going to address the situation. But he never did.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

* Lengthy post deleted *



I've given up on this. It seems unlikely we'll ever get a response on this one. Hopefully the server drive raised enough money to keep the site up and running for awhile, because I'm never donating again*.


*While I didn't donate to get prizes** I think it's unethical to offer prizes as incentive to get people to donate and then never delivering them.

** Actually now that I think about it a little, I did donate to get prizes. I felt burned after the last server/connection drive and wasn't going to give money, but the prizes convinced me to donate a little. Maybe not a popular opinion... but there you go

 

[BSF]

I can see how the task of correlating all the donor info and prizes would become difficult to handle. I can also see where Kevin would be reluctant to hand this off to somebody else. After all, he has real names, addresses, and likely donation amounts in whatever file format he is working from. How many of us would be 100% comfortable with him handing off that information to somebody else we didn't explicitly trust? It is a quandry I think.

I am pretty sure Alsih2o has many of the donated materials waiting to be shipped off. I think Piratecat has had a slew of real life issues that have taken time. No, I don't know any details, I just base that off the posts on the board. But yes, this does kind of need to be resolved, one way or another.

I'm not good with databases, I deal with OS, network and hardware issues. How hard would it be to build a DB to match and correlate data? How hard would it be to pull that data from a spreadsheet? I think I remember Piratecat mentioning that he tried to parse everything through Excel. Would anybody be able to put together something that Piratecat could then import the data into and run himself? Maybe that would alleviate privacy concerns and ease the job for him?

Mind you, I'm just another member, so it's not like I can push anything forward. But it is my experience that it is easier to solve a problem by offering a solution rather than just noting the problem. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to knock on anybody. Just making the observation that maybe one or more of us could help.

 

[Wystan]

In reality it would have to be nothing more than user name and prize cross referenced by PC when he gets the computer back up. I think most of the ill will is caused by the updates from PC in the last few weeks to other issues, but nothing here.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

It would be easy enough to whip up a spreadsheet to do it. The grunt work is the data entry for all the names.

Just put the person's name in Column A, address in B, the amount they donated in Column C, a random number from 1-10000 in Column D, what prize(s) they won in Columns E, who offered the prize in Column F. Regen the random numbers before each prize, sort by lowest number and prizes won, and if there's five copies of whatever, just go down the list and give it to the five lowest numbers that haven't won anything. Do the prizes starting with singles and working up to the multi-copy giveaways. Once everyone has a prize, you start over again with the second round.

You could get fancier, but for a one-off, its not worth it. You'd spend more time dinking around with it than it was worth. So far as I know, all donations are considered equal for any prize not explicitly marked as having a minimum donation, and there are only a few of those, so you don't have to screw around with weighting algorithms or stuff like that.

When you're done, you can sort by publisher, copy and paste their info into another sheet, and email it to them (or whoever is doing the shipping).

A days work, to be sure, but not that big a deal. Shipping all that would be a monumental pain in the butt, though. If this is the only thing holding it up, I'll volunteer to do it (and if confidentiality is an issue, it could even be set up to be blind -- one person does the prizes, another randomly assigns the names).

That's assuming the donor list is more or less in one place. If that hasn't even been collated yet, there's nothing anyone else could do even if they wanted to.

 

[maransreth]

Another option is to use the random numbers feature that Excel has under the Analysis Toolpack.
Each donator is given a number between 1 and whatever the last number is, and each time a prize is being determined, do the random number. Then delete it from the list so that person cannot win another prize by mistake, until at least each person has won something.

Yes this or any other option is long and convulted, but you would hope that PC would have undewrstood this when he volunteered and would invest the time required to ensure that it was done correctly.

While real life issues affect everyone, I think it is abysmal that noone from ENWorld staff/moderators has stood up and given this to someone else to do. How do publishers and members who participated feel that ENWorld had a need and it was fulfilled, but they have let everyone else down by not finishing the tail end of this.

How much longer is this thread going to continue while we wait for someone to finish the task? Like everyone I donated to help out and contribute to a site that has helped me. So I dont care too much about the prizes, just that this is dragging on and I feel let down by ENWorld, when so much support was garnered when it was required.

I think I'll go away now and see how long it takes for a ENWorld moderator to come along and tell us when this will be fixed. I think it will be a loooong time. Hopefully this post and the other recent ones will push moderators to try and finish this off.