[LargeFormat] f32 forum help

[Clive Warren]

At 10:24 am +0100 14/12/05, tomphoto at gmx.at wrote:
>Hello Clive,
>
>let me know of your needs, hope the f32.net dont get lost.
>Sent an request to all the members and we alltogether
>will help f32 forum is going on.
>
>regards from an cold vienna,
>Tom Prack
>phototom.com
>

Hello Tom, and to all of the other very positive responses. I have to 
admit that I have been close to throwing in the towel.

There have already been a few financial contributions and I would 
like to make a couple of them public as they are from two of the 
people who have consistently supported f32 over the last five years - 
I will of course ask those kind people if they are happy for that 
info. to be made public. Thank you very much indeed to those who have 
contributed.

Ignoring the time taken to put the site together and gather the 
community, on average I have spent around an hour every evening since 
starting the Community of Practice solely in stemming the tide of 
spam and attacks on the server. Every so often the protection is 
completely re-engineered by yours truly and seems to stop most of the 
spam for a while. The last time I checked, there were over 35000 spam 
and malicious messages a day hitting the mail server. Imagine if only 
1% of those messages get through and you can probably grasp the EMail 
nightmare and the disruption in communications.

The latest problem took around 6 hours of work to resolve so far and 
there is still more work to do. I refuse to be beaten by the spammers!

Updating the web site has suffered and for that I apologise. I have 
never wanted to to make subscriptions compulsory and so every so 
often I have requested that those who find the various aspects of 
f32.net useful to put their hands in their pockets to contribute if 
they find the facilities useful or entertaining. For  that purpose 
there has been a donation button on the front page of the f32.net web 
site for a number of years - sadly, not used very often.

It has been suggested to me recently that I should set up a facility 
to regularly take one or two dollars a month as a subscription. This 
idea I am seriously considering. In the meantime I would ask that if 
you can spare some hard earned cash to help defray the costs then I 
would be very grateful and it would certainly help me in paying for 
the hosting and bandwidth charges that I pay every month.  f32 is a 
non-profit making organisation but is has cost me plenty over the 
years!

A mention should be made of one of the most gifted large format 
photographers that I have had the pleasure to meet, Graeme Hird, who 
has made the Photography Critique section of the f32 Forum an 
excellent place to showcase work. Thank you very much indeed Graeme 
for all of the hard work.

There are still a couple of glitches with the Forum since the last 
upgrade and I am consultation with the software authors currently to 
address these problems.

Finally, thanks to all of you for staying with f32.net and making it 
the vibrant and informed and friendly community that is unique on the 
web.

Good light,

Clive