Don’t forget feed for the goat and the hamster and his wheel needs oiling occasionally.
Hmmm, let’ see …
Hamsters: Live or ready to eat - $9.99 each.
Kaytee Forti Diet Hamster Blend 20 lbs. - $16.99
Cage, bedding, miscellaneous toys - $50.00 per hamster.
Operating the SDMB 24/7/365 - Priceless!
Do you ask your cable company, your local zoo (art museum, whatever), your liquor store, or your bookstore where the money goes that you give to them for products/services? Really, the only question is whether you think that the $14.95 a year is worth it to you in entertainment or learning. We hope it is - we think we have a lot to offer - but it’s your call.
I think the board has a lot to offer. It is a fun and informative place.
However I have asked one of my local Zoos about where the money went. I do not think a non-profit is the same as a business. Perhaps it is a poor choice of an example. Most Zoos and Museums are non-profits and it can be appropriate to ask where the money is being spent. As the Dope is not a non-profit, please consider this just an annoying nitpick at your leisure.
Kebert Xela, if you like discussing almost any subject with mostly smart and articulate posters the SDMB is a great bargain for $14.95 per year.
BTW: My brother was visiting and read the Straight Dope Motto on my Straight Dope Coffee Cup and he thought it was very funny.
“Fighting Ignorance Since 1973 (It’s taking longer than we thought.)”
Then he asked what was up with the ugly monkey?
Jim
I might if they were charging more than the “average” price for a given item, or if they were charging a lot of money for something that didn’t seem to have an especially high inherent cost- one of the reasons I don’t have pay TV is it costs far too much money, IMO, for what it is.
And since the “average” price (from the user’s point of view) of a messageboard on the internet is $0, I think people are justified in asking why they’re paying AUD$15 to be a member of this particular one. Sure, there’s some great people here and it’s a fun place to be, but I still feel it’s a legitimate question for someone being asked for pay for something- anything- to know, to an extent, why the something costs what it does.
And that should be USD$15, not AUD… :smack:
Smart consumers generally do. And for many, many reasons the comparison to a retail business is not a valid one for this purpose. Purchasing a tangible good offered by a vendor is not the same as paying for a subscription to an entity that merely offers you access to a forum whose content is created by its members. You’re damned skippy I’m going to ask whether money I’m paying is going towards enhancing that same environment, considering that’s all the vendor is offering.
Nitpick accepted.
Well, the reason it costs what it does is that the Chicago Reader has chosen to charge that amount. It is, quite frankly, in my opinion, none of my business what the Reader does with that money. The question is simply whether paying that amount is worth what I get from it. That is a question that each potential member has to answer for themselves.
Would you care to fill me in on some examples?
Come now, you have never marched up to a Sears Checkout and asked where the money for your purchase would be getting used and if they would use it to make the parking easier to get in and out of. I thought we all did this? 
Jim
You’ve never asked a retailer what their markup is on an item? Or a car dealer what they paid for a car? Actually, many retailers will advertise that up front. Also, you’ve never asked your local mega-mart what, if any, community charities they support?
It’s not unheard of, or even unusual for consumers to want to know how the companies they do business with use the money they are about to give them. Especially so when you’re paying a subscription for access to something. If I pay for a year’s membership to the aquatic center around the corner and I notice the facilities are really in need of some TLC but there seem to be a lot of people who have paid membership to get in, I’m going to want to know what they’re doing with the money.
Have you? What kind of response did you get?
Many do? Seriously? Cite?
I’ve been in retail, admittedly over 10 years ago. Our costs were secret.
I do not believe Kebert Xela asked this question.
Is the membership to the aquatic center worth what you pay? That is the real question.
That’s part of the question. You go ask the guy in the Pit whose college folded on him while he was getting his degree if that was the “real” question.
Not the same situation, of course, but there is a slight bit of analogy there.
I realize it is not your intent, but your post is effectively comparing a $15,000+ investment in education to a $14.95 membership fee. A college, house or car is a very different level of investment then what is effectively less than the cost of a good meal.
Jim
If you realized it wasn’t my intent, why make your post at all? As you said, it wasn’t my intent to say the cost or potential benefits were in any way similar. My intent was that sometimes “is it worth it to you?” is only part of the question that needs to be asked, and that point is illustrated quite dramatically by a currently active thread.
That was a polite way of saying your comparison had no real value. This is a less polite way of saying it.
Jim
And in this respect, a message board subscription is vastly different from retail goods.
A 600ml bottle of Coke- just to take an example off the top of my head- costs about AUD$2.50 from the supermarket, cold.
That $2.50 is made up of providing the raw materials with which to make the drink and the container (and associated costs thereof, such as staff wages, maintenance, etc), the cost of transporting the bottle from the bottling plant to the supermarket, the costs of paying someone to put it on the shelf, as well as a profit for both Coca-Cola and the Supermarket to make the whole exercise worthwhile in the first place.
The cost that a car dealer pays for their car is well-known here- they make their profit from the “Dealer Delivery” charges (around AUD$2,500) and selling extras like spoilers, metallic paint, mag wheels, and so on. So I could go to a dealer and say"What do you guys pay for a car?", and expect a reasonably truthful answer. It’s not a “big secret”, but they can’t and won’t sell cars at cost to random people off the street.
In both cases, the “experience” or “enjoyment” we get from the product is a direct result of the company/companies we’ve given the money to- be it Coca-Cola and your local supermarket, or Ford/Holden/Mitsubishi/Toyota/BMW/Lada.
However, as Jetgirl says, what the SDMB does is charge USD$15 for access to a virtual discussion forum where the “experience” and “enjoyment” we get is wholly dependent on other users, who have also paid a sum of money to access the forums. The Moderators are volunteers, and the only input the Chicago Reader has is to provide the servers and the whole “Cecil” thing. It seems perfectly and completely reasonable to me for someone to say “What exactly is my USD$15 buying, besides the company of other people who have also paid money to be here?”
I’m not begrudging the Reader the right to try and run the boards as a business (although sometimes I think they may be better off as an independent entity with no affiliation to the CR besides the odd nudge-nudge wink wink nod to "Cecil’), but just as if Coca-Cola suddenly started charging AUD$5 for a can of coke in the supermarket, people would want to know why it cost so much.
If they found the reason acceptable (like a crippling global shortage of the necessary ingredients for the drink), then consumers could decide if it was really worth AUD$5 for a can of Coke- but simply being told “Because it just does, shut up and buy it or clear off!” isn’t going to encourage people to rationalise the purchase, IMO.
Your results may vary, however…
This is exactly what I’ve been trying to ask- thanks for phrasing the question with more clarity then I did. 
I really like the Coke analogy.
If a can of Coke was $2/US, and a can of Pepsi was .20 US, I’d buy the Pepsi, even though I hate Pepsi. And if the can of house brand cola was .10 US, I’d possibly buy it. But if Coke is .50/can, Pepsi .30/can and the store brand was free, I’d probably pay the .50 for the Coke. Seriously.
YMMV.
So, there’s two questions here:
(1) What do you get from this message board that’s different from the free message boards? And the answer is that you get a moderated board, so that spammers and trolls are kept to a minimum. The people who post here are generally attracted by the Straight Dope, and hence tend to be somewhat above average (as a group, anyhow) in intelligence, curiosity, expertise, etc. From time to time, you get celebrities like Cecil Himself or lower beings like Ed Zotti posting. And you are part of a message board that is trying to grow a community, rather than just be full of drive-by postings.
(2) Where does the money go? Software, hardware, and technical services upkeep. These things cost money. I guess there are some organizations out there who are willing to take the financial loss, for whatever reason, and provide free services. The Chicago READER is not: it’s a small, privately-held organization that can’t afford to take a significant financial loss on message boards. Your money goes to upgrading the server as needed, and to salaries for the tech staff (moderators and admininstrators are unpaid volunteers.)