No-one expects the Teeming Inquisition!!
Things may have changed but the one time, about a year ago, I tried making a contribution (not to TSD) through Patreon, there was no way if your credit card was not attached to a US address. Even though there was a line for country, you had to fill in a US state. Maybe they’ve fixed it.
I guess that’s not how I have framed this proposal in my mind. I see it as
- a solid plan to start accepting donations (I mean memberships) again.
- a cheap thing to give members, in an age when anyone can download an ad-blocker, so “no ads” isn’t all that enticing. (although I would like to see the board fix the “no ads” thing for members.)
- a source of new “Straight Dope” columns, made easier for Cecil to write by crowdsourcing one of the hard parts.
Personally, I like the donation model of running businesses. I give money on Patreon to a couple of people who make all their content freely available. I donate to another message board that is funded entirely by donations. And that board doesn’t give you anything at all for donating, not even a title. And it only accepts donations for about a month and then shuts down until the funds start running low. Back before the pandemic, I ran a square dance series where the payment model was “each dancer pays the caller whatever they feel like throwing into the hat”.
But some people like the idea of membership and payment for services.
So I see this as sort of a hybrid model, where the board can ask for donations with a fig leaf of paying for membership. With the added freebie of new columns.
There’s no reason not to have multiple methods for people to contribute depending on their desires and ability. It doesn’t have to be just one. Doing all of these would likely mean that everyone who wants to contribute can do so in the way they want:
- SDMB subscription tiers
- Patron
- Bitcoin wallet
The SDMB subscription would be the only one which would confer membership benefits. Although it would be technically possible to link member benefits to the other methods, it would be a hassle for the admins to manage and would be unnecessary. If someone wants the benefits, they get a subscription. If they just want to donate, they use one of the other methods.
I’m not sure if Patreon would play nicely with the ownership structure of the SDMB, which is owned by a major corporation. And I don’t see what it’s better to ask for donations through a lot of disparate channels anyway. If we can get the membership module here up and running, I assume it will take credit cards and probably PayPal (which is often good for international payments).
I do like the idea of selling merch through Cafe Press or some similar model where you only pay for stuff that’s sold, and don’t have inventory lying around. There are probably similar issues with having it play nicely with the Chicago Sun Times, but that’s actually a separate service that might bring in a decent amount of revenue, and I’d like to see that explored, too.
That’s a good point about the corporate aspect. That would need to be taken into account. But I still think it would be useful to have a way to donate that is not tied to your member name. I’m sure there are many people who do not want their real world identity linked to their account here. If someone subscribes with their CC, PayPal, or similar financial source, they will have linked their real life to their membership. Certainly the SDMB won’t put your real name and address in your profile or anything, but there’s no guarantee that it won’t leak out in some other way like a board hack or whatever. If there was an anonymous donation method, then the only thing that is linked is that a real person made a donation to the SDMB, but it wouldn’t be linked to their member name.
As someone that uses an ad-blocker here . . . yeah no ads, instead I get chunks of blank screen which Block element can’t get rid of because there’s something like 99,999 different addresses to deal with.
I’d love to be a paying member again just to get rid of that but someone doesn’t seem to think fixing the ‘become a paying member’ problem is important enough to fix.
(And I won’t note my annoyance with the lower case ‘m’ in MPSIMS because there’s no one with permissions to fix it . . . and that’s another problem that someone doesn’t seem that interested in fixing.)
heh, yeah. I have an ad blocker on one of the browsers I use for this board, and I’ve sometimes mistakenly posted thinking I’d read the whole thread when I hadn’t, due to coming across one of those big white spaces.
I, too, would love to reinstate the “no ads” feature of membership.
A couple of months ago, @codinghorror offered to assist board management with setting up a payment method. Perhaps this proposal is what came out of that? (Although now I see “Account Removed” for codinghorror’s account; what’s up with that?)
At the same time, though, it’s been almost a year since TubaDiva passed and the board still doesn’t have an administrator, so many changes (like merging accounts; several people created new accounts after the Discourse move so their posts appear under two accounts). Why the delay? Or is the problem that board administrator is a paid position and no one is willing to accept whatever she was being paid?
And if you’re going to create new content, it needs to be marketed better, like through Twitter and other social media.
What makes you think I haven’t already been stoned?
I’d assume so. After all, it is mandatory.
Being stoned is mandatory?
Well, I’ve been doing it all wrong.
As Dylan famously said, “Everybody must get stoned.”
Point taken. I kinda like The Boardroom as the name for the forum, but you’re right, it might be better to retain the original meaning for SDSAB and call the larger group something else. The Membership has a certain inscrutable aura to it, but open to suggestions.
Working on it.
Ain’t arguing, but getting this to happen was a challenge even in the old days when I could pay people to do it. You need someone who’s really into it. The Straight Dope tends to be a self-organizing community. Let’s see what emerges.
I think almost everyone is ok with paying for a membership, or buying Dope merch, or paying someone’s membership for them, or even kicking in donations if needed.
What I object to is using money raised thru the board, which we all use, and paying Ed’s salary to write a weekly column that was usually only published in give away newspapers that people line bird cages with. Cecil died two years ago due to lack of interest, let him lie in peace. I have seen no great clamoring for his return. As I said above, even posters on the board barely mention him anymore. What kind of super marketing idea is going to bring back a dead column to a new group of younger readers? It’s certainly not the same old guy that couldn’t hold onto enough readers then to save his column.
But what was Ed an expert in? Using a telephone? Having his staff do research and experiments for him? I was not aware he had any special knowledge. I’m sure you could find a lot of takers for a job where all you do all week is call/email a few people for their opinions, do some research on the internet, and turn out a very short column once a week. Why take the guy that was writing the column when it was cancelled? If the board needs new blood to survive, and it does, Cecil needs new blood if you bring him back from the dead.
Yeah, this whole idea is silly. If people who pay extra to find questions for Ed to choose from, but have no input, SDSAB is gone and so are the Teeming Millions if the questions aren’t coming from them.
Almost everyone here wants memberships. People have been trying for a year to pay, and were told it wasn’t possible. Suddenly, the board is in desperate need of cash and may not be able to continue operating, the solution is to pay out money to Ed to try to revive a failed column by doubling membership fees. How about first we try memberships, donations and swag and see how the board does financially. My guess is it will do just fine. But putting the onus of Ed’s salary on the board income helps only one person, Ed, at the expense of all the board users. If TPTB, whoever they are now, are so sure of the success of the return of Cecil Adams columns. let the columns earn their own way, not suck funds from the board.
a source of new “Straight Dope” columns, made easier for Cecil to write by crowdsourcing one of the hard parts.
His columns were always crowd sourced as far as I know. What’s seems new here is he wants people to pay extra to ask him questions.
Yep, the old keep it simple method. If people are trying to give you money, make it as easy as possible to do so. I think so few people actually use bitcoin, you could probably cross it off the list.
I really think this is an underappreciated idea. Like I said above, the Dope has many artists and photogs, from novice to professional the different designs would be phenomenal. Years ago there was a poster called, I believe, lobstermobster , who drew some hilarious stick figure drawings of, among other things, Dopers she had never seen before. I would have paid money for some of those. Pros aside, think how awful some of the amateur stuff will be. People will buy it just for how bad it is.
I don’t know if it works on anything but Windows machines, but if you use Chrome or Firefox on Windows, download NoScript and your problem is solved. No blank screen, no spaces, no ads. I just have mine set to block everything, but if there is something you want to see on the page, you can temporarily allow it.
I’m an artist.
I’ll submit a portfolio.
I’ll donate a design to put on tees or cups.
Let me know. I’ll fit in quick.
I have no life but I’m having Surgery in July.
Cecil, my man. My talents are yours for the taking.
Good god, Ed. Will you at least just try the simple donation model before doing a bunch of extra work?
Let’s face it, you can’t Torquemada anything!
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Meaning that I would be in too, I can also contribute with some art if you need it.
Or cups of tees?
