Bigfoot Bill

Times Writer

Great news, folks! Our little community is HUGE now! This summer, we've seen phenomenal population growth, and we're ecstatic to be able to reach so many new citizens. As you've seen many "oldies" say, way back when, people used to get excited just to run into another person in town! And now! You can hardly move around without stepping on someone else.

But I'm sure you can guess what comes next -- as anyone who's been here since the spring has probably noticed, having so many new users has had an effect on the speed of Whyville. Things have been getting slower and slower. We even have to turn away people because we're too busy sometimes.

Many of you have written to us suggesting that we get rid of people who haven't been on Whyville for a long time. Fact is, this wouldn't solve the problem. Those old accounts don't take up much space. Whyville becomes slow when many people come on at the same time. All these people talking to each other, looking in their satchel, and checking their Y-mail is simply getting to be too much for our server. If we didn't set a limit, our server could crash!

The other bummer is that, with our population getting larger and larger, we've got our hands full with administrative stuff. City workers are so busy answering emails and Y-mails, working on ways to raise money to support our city, that there haven't been very many new improvements to Whyville lately. Even the Times Editor has had to pitch in on this -- since January, he's been dying to put up a new design for the paper, but until we can hire another assistant for him, that's just not going to happen.

What it comes to, folks, is that we're no longer a little town -- we are a good-sized city. I bet some of you live in towns and cities that are smaller than Whyville in real life! In order to keep up with all of you, we need to find a way to pay for more computers, more city workers, more everything! It's wonderful that you've made us so popular, but that popularity means we've got to increase our revenue -- get more money coming in than has been going out -- in order to stay afloat.

What are your thoughts on this? Are you willing to help out? Do you have good ideas on how to help Whyville keep up with its growth? Send in your thoughts! You've suggested getting advertisers and sponsors, which we're working on, but we're always open to more ideas. Email ideas\@whyville.net today! I'll be following up next week with the ideas I get from you guys and more.