I don't think we have a lack of good intentions, good will or good people.
The codebase can be handled by committee if kept small enough to keep each coder from killing others hard work the night before
A CVS would be extremely handy though.
I think that the bigger problem comes down to who will pay for the server to run the site.
From what i! has indicated, there is a huge cost for the server. It's also mentioned that there are other sites on the same servers so it appears that the full cost ($5,100 a year) is not fully correct (my bad, I didn't read the server requirements properly).
I wonder when i! stop in next, they could give a better indication of what sort of resources are being consumed.
eg. size of the DB, bandwidth used by this site, whether they know how much CPU is consumed, etc.
This would give us a better indication of what size server we need to be looking at in order to keep the site running once it moves off the dedicated machine.
A couple of thoughts I had (and they're not necessarily great thoughts).
If the volume of data is a problem, then maybe we could pare the system back to GCA caches (descriptions, logs, etc), but for the "other caches" information (eg. gc, gpsgames, shutterspot, etc) we lose the logs. Keep the "found", "noted", "dnf", etc, flags but don't keep the actual logs themselves. This would reduce the size of the database considerably. Of course, the downside is we lose the logs, but keep the statistics.
Cut the site back to just the forums and GCA caches. We would lose all of the combined statistics.
With these two suggestions and a reduced size of the database, this could enable us to move the site off onto a smaller (read less expensive) server solution.
Another possibility is that we move the data off to a smaller server anyway. This would probably result in slower performance than we get now which might keep people away rather than draw them in.
Google ads are a possibility, but we have a small community and the ads may not generate enough.
Sponsorship and ads from GPS related activities may be another, but I doubt we would get enough interest from real sponsors to make it worthwhile.
Everyone hates ads anyway, but may not want to pay to get rid of them.
Some other interesting information.
The number of GCA hides (compared to all hides) is around 3.5%
The number of GCA finds (compared to all finds) is around 1%
So the numbers are increasing.
Why the dips?
These were when the caches were migrated from GC to GCA and everything suffered for a little while, but despite the naysayers, the numbers appear to be trending upward albeit slowly.
While this next graph is very hard to read in the early days, I believe that it took around 20 months for gc.com to get to the same number of finds as GCA is at now. Click on the link to make it bigger and easier to see.
http://www.caughtatwork.net/geocaching/ ... ALL&size=3
So not everything is doomy and gloomy. I believe GCA is a real listing alternative and with the other things that make it Australian, I would love to see it stay.
I'd donate money, but everyone needs to weigh up the benefits that the site offers to them on an individual basis and make a judgement call.
Is it worth starting a poll to see how many people would donate (say $10, $20, $50) to keep the place going? While not a guarantee it might be interesting to see what real support we have.