Hi Jonathan -

Thank you for the bump here. I need to address this issue soon and make some decisions of my own on how to proceed with the myArmoury.com project.

This note comes with interesting timing in that I recently spent 30+ hours working on upcoming content for the site.

Let me throw some numbers out there for you guys. Hopefully Nathan won't get mad at me.

3-5. Number of hours a review can take for Nathan to produce, assuming an experienced author, submitting a complete review and high-quality photographs. Many reviews take much longer.

204. Number of reviews published or in some stage of our production process. (Do the math)
:)

3-5. Number of hours a collection gallery page can take for Nathan to produce them, assuming an experienced author, submitting a complete document and high-quality photographs. Many can take much longer.

240. Number of collection gallery pages published or in some stage of our production process. (Math's fun, isn't it?)

20+. Number of hours a Feature article can take for Nathan to produce, with image sourcing, production, etc. Some take much, much more (40 hours +).

104. Number of feature articles published or in some stage of production. (Do that math, too) :)

Just counting the very average and general numbers above (which leaves out exceptional cases, administrative tasks, coding of the Bookstore, Moderating, etc. that add up to many, many additional hours), we can see that Nathan has spent the equivalent of at least 85 40-hour-work-weeks (over a year and a half of 9-5 work hours) just on myArmoury's non-forum, non-Bookstore, non-Photo Album content.

Any hours he spends working here are hours he's not getting paid. Can we raise enough money to reimburse him for all the time he's spent here? Maybe not, but let's give it a shot. :)

I've just re-enlisted! This site is the best arms & armour bargain anywhere!

Please think about how much you learn here, folks, and dig as deep as you can responsibly dig.

Oh, starting a new running total of contributions might be motivational, seeing a specific goal and the total increasing like last year might be a good idea as an official launch to this years campaign. ( I would include the most recent contribution from the time this Topic was re-activated I think or from the last month or two to be fair and acknowledge the contributions already given without prompting ).

Is there any other method besides PayPal? I neither like nor particularly trust PayPal after some of the horror stories I've heard.

Could I just send Nathan a check for my chunk of the fundraising?

I wonder if Wikipedia could chip in some of thier donations. They source myArmoury in just about every historic arms related article :lol:

I was surprised to see it to. And it's not just the English wikipedia version. I periodically Google my own name to see what's on the web about me, and found my articles and others from here had been cited in the French version of wikipedia.

On another note, we're currently just over a 1/4 of the way to our fundraising goal.

I'm really excited to see the total going up. What has surprised me a little bit and heartened me a great deal is going through the list of donors and seeing the number of donors with low post counts (or no posts at all, in some cases). We have prolific posters donating as well as those who are less prolific or are new. So people of many different visible involvement levels are donating, which shows the strength and generosity of this community.

Going to have to skip the donations this time around. It appears that for the first time in my life I'm actually going to be involuntarily separated from employment for a bit.

This fund raiser couldn't come at a better time. My cat was having issues and I took him to the vet today. Today's visit cost $200, but he needs some additional work done, estimated at $1035 (low) to $1237 (high). Now, I'm not saying that the funds raised here go for the cat. They don't. But without these funds--and me needing to shell out the cash for the site's annual hosting--expenses like this bring on tough choices. So I guess what I'm saying is thank you to those who have contributed. The work I put into this project is pretty extensive and the money I throw into it isn't too small, either. When you guys come out of the woodwork and donate your hard earned cash towards it, it really does make it possible for me to keep this thing going. There'd be a long way to go before this project went into the "black" so to speak, but at least with these fund raisers it isn't bleeding me dry. :) Thanks to the few who have given.

Well I hope the few become the many as it doesn't take much per person if enough contribute as I have said before AND will repeat OFTEN. ;) :lol:

To paraphrase that program " HEROES " : Save the Cat, save the myArmoury World. :p ( Disclaimer: Although the money is NOT going to the cat ).

But seriously, I hope your cat gets better.


( Just for those who don't know the program: http://www.canada.com/globaltv/globalshows/heroes/index.html )