Hi folks! I maintain GoblinRefuge.com in my spare time. I saw a link to this
thread in the #mediagoblin channel on freenode. If you don't mind, I'd like
to address some of the concerns brought up in this thread.
Upload Limits
=============
The site currently imposes a 1024 MB cumulative per-user upload limit. I
implemented this because the hosting fees for storage and bandwidth were
increasing too rapidly. GoblinRefuge.com generates no income and has no ads,
and I currently pay for all of the hosting out of pocket.
It looks like there may be a way to user-specific upload limits, but I
haven't tested this yet. Perhaps I could use this as a way to generate a
small amount of income for the site. Would any of you be interested in paying
a small fee to increase your upload limit?
Something else I could do is turn off the feature which keeps the original
file. Currently when you upload a video to GoblinRefuge.com, we store both
the original version and the transcoded version. I configured it this way
because I assumed people would want to preserve the original version of the
file, but I realize this takes up more storage space. I could consider
turning this off moving forward.
Centralization
==============
I share concerns that GoblinRefuge.com is becoming too much of a central
player, and I would love to see more MediaGoblin sites. I'm happy to help
troubleshoot the installation and configuration of other MediaGoblin sites. I
idle in #mediagoblin on freenode all the time, and I try to help out as much
as I can. I'm hoping that once federation is implemented to allow
communication between sites, that more sites will open up.
Monetization of Uploads
=======================
Charging users to upload videos is an interesting idea. So far in my hosting
experience, storage space is actually the more expensive item though. My
storage provider (RackSpace Cloudfiles) charges for storage and for CDN
traffic. The monthly CDN traffic charge is roughly the same month-to-month,
but the storage charge increases each month because more and more files are
being uploaded. Still, even recovering a little of that cost would be
beneficial. I think implementing this would be much more difficult than
setting up a fee for increased storage space, but I could be wrong.
Contact Information
===================
I began hosting GoblinRefuge.com to see how feasible it would be to run and
maintain a MediaGoblin instance. I wanted to eventually offer paid
MediaGoblin site hosting, and GoblinRefuge.com is the test-bed for that. It's
ended up being kind of a hobby that I run in my spare time, and I never went
to great lengths to provide contact information. The site has grown much
larger than I expected, and I keep meaning to go back and add stuff like an
about page, contact info, and a privacy policy, but I just can't find the
time.
The only real advertised way to contact me regarding the site is through
twitter (@goblinrefuge). If you've ever seen a server crash on
GoblinRefuge.com, you may have seen the goblinpolice email address mentioned;
you're welcome to send email to goblinpolice AT goblinrefuge as well. You can
also find me on freenode under this nick. I prefer not to get
GoblinRefuge.com questions in the #mediagoblin channel, but you're welcome to
ping me there and we can figure out a way to communicate.
Thanks
======
Thanks to all of you for using MediaGoblin in general and GoblinRefuge.com in
particular. I appreciate the feedback and suggestions about the site. If any
of you want to get involved in the MediaGoblin project, please come join
#mediagoblin on freenode. We'd love to have more people involved in the code
and more people running sites.
- ayleph
