Homecoming Wiki:Site support

Donations

At this point, the administrative costs of running this site are covered, and it needs no donations to be sustainable. In lieu of donating to this site, please consider donating to some charities that the site administrator considers worthwhile:

• The American Civil Liberties Union. One of the few organizations that are literally fighting for our freedom.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation. Another very worthwhile organization fighting for our digital and online rights.
• The Democratic Party. While not perfect, it is much better than the alternatives.
• The American Heart Association. Don't be fooled. Heart disease is America's number one enemy, not terrorists.
• The American Cancer Society. I lost both of my parents to cancer and desperately want to see this unnatural disease eradicated.
• The University of Alabama at Birmingham's Computer Science department in the School of Natural Science and Mathematics.

Alternatively, if you are familiar with some of the technologies that run this site, primarily MediaWiki, phpBB, Mambo, CSS templates, Linux, and MySQL, you can let me know by e-mailing me at tonyv@pcfreepress.com. I'm sure I could always use technical help in the administration of this site.

One of the easiest ways to donate is by supporting this site through your effort in expanding and improving its content. There is still a lot of work to be done before this site can be even remotely considered comprehensive. I will periodically post small projects in the forums for this site that I feel will significantly contribute to the quality of the information here.

Last, but not least, the most fun way you can support this site is by supporting the City of Heroes and City of Villains community. Don't just think of the games as a mindless exercise in levelling and getting game swag, actually participate! Try to make the games more fun for others, and in return, I assure you that you will make the games more fun for yourself as well.

Opinion

All of the opinions on this page are the opinions of the Paragon Wiki site administrator and systems operator, Tony V. All references to "I" or "me" refer to Tony. This section does not necessarily reflect the opinions of other editors of this site or of NCsoft Interactive or Cryptic Studios.

This site is, always has been, and always will be a completely volunteer effort and 100% ad-free. There are several reasons for this, including:

• I absolutely, positively hate ads. They invade every aspect of our daily lives, and every day, in almost everything we do, we are unwillingly and continuously subjected to them. I set this site up to be a valuable information resource to the City of Heroes and City of Villains community because I'm a huge fan of the games. I am not a salesman, and I never want to be. I believe that by coming to this site, you are in no way inviting me to come into your home and try to sell you crap, whether it's in person or by forcing unwanted ads on you over the Internet.
• I am a huge supporter of the Open Source ideal, and I believe that information should be free. That's one of the basic tenets that has led to our evolution from the dump apes that we were to the smart humans that we are now: Knowledge must be shared, as widely and as openly as possible. The most enlightened periods of our time have always been marked by the free exchange of knowledge, and our most dim moments in history have been when knowledge is suppressed.
• Among other things, the Copyright/Ownership Policy specifies that all fan sites such as this one must be non-commercial efforts. Now, I'm almost certain that if I ran ads to try to recoup the expense of hosting this site, never actually coming out ahead, that would not count as a commercial endeavor. Still, I would rather not find out the hard way, and given my other personal beliefs, I figure that it's just as well to avoid the possibility of the appearance of impropriety altogether.
• Personally, I don't think that merely knowing something entitles one to earn money. I believe that only through the useful application of one's knowledge should one be rewarded. Unfortunately, in today's society, with our current state of patents, copyrights, and trademarks, this is in fact quite the opposite. While one could argue that setting up this site represents a useful application of my knowledge and skills, I would rather think of it merely as a forum that facilitates the sharing of knowledge.
• Speaking of skills, in a way, I am being paid indirectly for administrating this site, just not monetarily. I have learned much valuable information about hosting web sites, running MySQL databases, using Linux, and installing, configuring, and managing software packages such as MediaWiki, phpBB, and Mambo, and other software. These are valuable real-world skills that I may in the near future be able to usefully apply towards being financially compensated in other endeavors.