Mikor said:
Would you care to foot the bill for the server costs and volunteer your time to maintaining it from griefers and other undesirables?
My roommate and I have both offered to donate money to Exano as well as previous hosts (Touch & Spot) at various points. I was also a mod on Touch's server and, for a while, Spot's server to help people with any issues they might have in addition to help give the boot to griefers. If any server I spend quite a bit of time on needs help in any way I'm always more than willing to help in any manner I can. Heck, my roommate and I helped work out the map issues Exano was having and my roomie even hosted them for public use.
The post you quoted was less directed at your server(s) and more at Minecraft multiplayer in general the past year or so. It sometimes seems like servers die out with a frequency that makes fruit flies look long lived. Populations fall the longer it has been since the last patch and, as we all are aware, being an admin/mod for anything like a multiplayer server can be particularly draining over time so some turnover is to be expected. Either of which could mean a further decline of the server or its demise entirely.
Maybe it's that I've become too used to the publisher hosted servers that are for all intents and purposes permanent but the transient lifestyle of a Minecraft player is starting to grate on me. Going into a server knowing full well that within matter of weeks my work could be lost to the ether is making me rethink bothering to do anything at all.
I think far too many servers are the work of single individuals which places the load of maintaining and serving their userbase all on the shoulders of that one person. When the load gets to be too much or something unforeseen happens and that individual has to take time away from the game the server is left to it's own devices and the players simply move on or quit altogether.
tl;dr I can be a grumpy bitch sometimes and MC SMP needs more group efforts to run servers to ensure their health for the future.