Ok ok ok... Lots of drama... I'll try to address these issues and give a bit of context to the situation.
First of all I launched my patreon a few weeks ago because I was simply not able to juggle between IRL responsabilities which included a part time job and university with managing the site and the youtube channel and I wanted if possible pump out more tf2 content in a sustainable way. The reception to the campaign was decent but the overall outcome wasn't.
Also, before you start spreading rumors with little or no information no you can't host the wiki on a 5$/month host, well most the time it will do decently but in high traffic events like challengers cup, lan finals, and other cups/events that is not enough nor a sustainable situation. Insomnia lans and other events have brought more than 300 concurrent users to the wiki at times and there's no way it can handle that load on a shitty $5 shared hosting. Just to give an idea, before this insomnia the site was already in a 2GB ram VPS and we actually had to move it to an upgraded VPS server (courtesy of EVL) for the week of insomnia lan because not even that VPS could handle the traffic.
I hosted the site for more than 1 year paying out of pocket back when it started, then after that we were lucky to get in contact with Hypernia (who were also hosting ETF2L) through Canfo and they offered us a sponsorship which unfortunately was terminated with very little warning early this year after some internal restructuring on their part which included dropping all sponsored projects (including ETF2L). We had to move after that and EVL and a couple generous people stepped up with resources and donations.
Unfortunately last month I was informed by EVL's Jeer that our partnership wasn't working out and they had to either downscale our host (which would leave the site very vulnerable in high traffic events), or move out by the end of November. By the way this is a completely understandable decision on their part and I dont blame them in the least, I actually am very thankful for all the help Jeer provided me over all these months. Point is, I had to make a decision by the end of November.
At the same time I actually got in contact and reached out to liquipedia (thanks to tsc for linking me a tweet) for the possible merge of a tf2 wiki. I had very interesting talks with the liquipedia head admins and they were very receptive about merging our wiki, unfortunately, not all conditions were ideal and we were not able finalize it in time by the end of November (it is still pending tho and I haven't made a full decision on that).
Anyway, after some talks with ffc (which by the way is the most amazing person ever and has been the heart and soul of the wiki lately) and some close tf2 friends I decided to buy a VPS for the month of December and January and test if the wiki would be financially sustainable with ads, before a possible merge with liquipedia (because you know, that merge would include ads to the wiki anyway).
Through last week I've been swamped with IRL stuff and I also had to set up the host move (which I had a lot of problems with corrupted backups, setting up the vps, etc...) hence why the wiki was locked for 1 week. If you check my steam profile I haven't actually played tf2 in like 2 weeks, I dont think in the last 3 years I've been this long without playing the game. Last thing I opened on steam was SFM and was to work on a comp.tf video.
So, Im currently testing ads on the wiki to test how it works and how it performs, nothings permanent, it's just that yesterday I was in a hurry for a friends birthday and I ended up setting up the ads you see currently without much afterthought, my jacket actually got stolen with my home keys later on and I just got home to this shitstorm, but I'm looking at the feedback and I promise I'll look into it and adapt. My intention is to have similar ad placement than liquipedia to test how it performs but I wasn't able to get it done yesterday on time (I also think they might have a custom inhouse extension for that which I couldn't find anywhere).
If you wanna help out I'm also selling my backpack, and that should help covering a bunch of server costs (and a new jacket ;___;) My life changed drastically this semester and I have currently very little time for the game right now and if it wasn't for the wiki and the youtube channel or the i55 fragmovie (which I still intend on doing) I would have probably just quit.