I just realized that often when I arrive, I read a lot of posts without being logged in. I only log in when I need to post something. I probably contribute to that 25%. I don’t really have an opinion on this idea, though, so I shouldn’t say anything.
Arnold, nothing but the hassle of actually registering. What keeps people as permanent lurkers instead of registering to post? Same diff. I think Anthracite feels pretty certain that not many people will bother to register and then have nothing to say. Thus the benefits of reduced viewing will remain. And the few that do will be a small percentage, probably noise to the already number of registered users who post almost never. (You know, those folks that registered in 1999 and have 6 posts to their name, yet read all the time.)
Not saying I agree this is appropriate, just ‘splainin’.
Considering the number of registered users who have nary a post to their name, I doubt that Anthracite is thinking along those lines. But it should still at least modestly reduce the load on the server.
Why not? Every little bit helps.
That’s a very valid point. I think Irishman essentially said what I would have (except three times as often 
) If they all register, then we are no worse off at all - they continue to read, as they currently are doing. If they do not, then we are better off from a resources standpoint.
Making the BBQ Pit Members Only also forces people who really are “spying” on the pain and discomfort and troubles of the Board to register, so at least you know where they are coming from and what their ISP is. This might also help reduce some voyeurism from other places which shall go unnamed.
I do feel that the large majority of unregistered lurkers will continue to lurk, although I don’t think we would know without trying. And if some, or all, register, well, we’re no worse off than right now. And it can be quickly and simply undone too.
Just a suggestion, Arnold. There may indeed be many reasons why it’s not good or workable (such as the SDMB/Reader wanting “open access” for all as a business case), I just do not know of any from a Member standpoint specifically.
You know Arnold, one potential drawback is that Boardreader and related sites will not be able to make indexes of the whole SDMB, like they currently do, which can be searched “offline”. If having sites like Boardreader index the SDMB is a long-term desire, then my idea limits its ability.
Anthracite, thank you for the suggestion. I went through my old files and I saw that this idea, unfortunately, like all of the other ideas that have been proposed/discussed in the past six months in ATMB, was already considered by the staff and rejected about eighteen months ago or whenever it was we were trying to find ways to improve the performance of the board / make pay-to-post a viable alternative.
I can’t remember now why we rejected it, but I can ask my colleagues again to see if maybe some of those reasons are no longer valid.
Correction - all of the ideas that I have seen in the past six months in ATMB on how to implement PTP and/or how to make the board faster were already thought of by the staff and extensively discussed a long time ago. Not all of them were rejected, but this idea in particular (restricting access of some/part of the board to Members only) was discussed rejected.
Some ideas were considered good and implemented; some were considered good and sent on to the Chicago Reader management for further action.
I say this because I have received a few e-mails in the past months saying “why are you ignoring all the good suggestions on pay-to-post etc. in ATMB?” If you read the technical issues FAQ you will see that some of us (namely, me, Arnold) are extremely bored with this subject, so we probably we won’t answer these kind of posts in ATMB. On the other hand, if you don’t say anything, the posters that make the suggestions may take offense. Hence this additional explanatory post.
May I ask why the PTP idea was rejected?
dantheman: some ideas some were considered good and sent on to the Chicago Reader management for further action.
Sorry, I was looking at this and was thinking “PTP” - but may I ask why this particular idea was rejected?
from my previous post:
um…
pssst - dan
sounds like it has not been rejected - it is the CR’s decision to make - the SDMB staff don’t get to make the call, so quit carping. 
or not.
Fair enough, Arnold, and I thank you very much for being straightforward with us that . I think what you said was brutally clear.
Since the Reader doesn’t care, and the Staff are bored with being bothered with suggestions, I fear that this really is the end.
Looks like you won’t be getting that steak dinner if you’re not going to try. Pity too - unlike that creep who bet manhattan and backed out, I hold to my bets. It would have been at least a 20-oz porterhouse, maybe stuffed with garlic and grilled with some light ancho chili seasoning. Or maybe marinated in Tennessee Bourbon, then served with cole slaw and garlic mashed potatoes. Or…ohhh…it could have been a Thai strip steak, rubbed with fresh ginger and cinnamon stick, served with roasted onions, and matchstick green and red peppers.
I should have realized it, hh, but I got lost in his syntax!
Anthracite, some comments on your last post.
[list=A]
[li]You forget to consider the possibility that I am a vegetarian. (FTR, I’m not, and your steak does sound good, but if I told Mrs. Winkelried “I’m cheating on you with another person’s steak” I would be in trouble. Mrs. W. is justifiably proud of her steak skills.)[/li][li]”The staff is bored with suggestions” should be amended to “the staff is bored with old suggestions”. If someone comes up with a new idea that I’ve never seen before and that I think would actually make a difference, I’ll be all over that poster like a cheap suit and suggest that we try it. On the other hand, when I see suggestions of the type “Why don’t you guys get a faster server?” “Why don’t you charge people for posting?” “Why don’t you take donations?” “Hey, I’ve got a novel idea, you could offer people that pay extra vBulletin features!”, in the privacy of my boudoir, I add a tick mark next to the list of items that the staff / SDMB posters had suggested many moons ago. It’s like a horse race to see which idea gets suggested the most.[/li][li]”The Reader doesn’t care”. Granted, they don’t care enough for my taste, but I have not given hope on the Reader eventually implementing some scheme to help the SDMB. Otherwise, frankly, I would have quit as a moderator a long time ago.[/li][li]”My idea would work”. i) So would many other ideas that have been suggested: get rid of all posts more than x days old, get rid of all fora except Comments on Cecil’s Columns / Staff Reports, only allow members to view threads and stop taking in new members, etc. Each of those ideas was deemed to have significant drawbacks. ii) But let’s go with your suggested reduction of page views of 15% - I’ll even up it to 20%. I mentioned a couple of times already that we had considered that idea, rejected it, and I can’t remember why. Let me give the obvious (to me, but perhaps not to other people less familiar with SDMB history) answer: We implement that, instead of chugging along at a poky 15 km/h, we’re racing at 18km/h. Let me quote from the technical issues FAQ (which I encourage everyone to read):[/li][quote]
Q: Oh come on, how expensive/hard can it be to beef up the SDMB server?
A: Any hardware upgrades done in the past have almost immediately been met by increased demand, and the board speed went back to its usual, not-so-fast (at peak times) self.
[/quote]
I give the 18km/h speed a month at most before it goes back down to 15km/h due to the influx of additional posters. And in the meantime there will be a renewed flood of irate posters/potential new sign-ups/more people signing in to read the board insted of just browsing without signing in/questions in ATMB saying “why did you do that? the board is still slow for me so what have you gained?”/and probably a new round of “well, if you want to make the board faster, here’s the way to do it” threads.
[li]Now, if anyone has an idea on how to make us go from 15 km/h to 150 km/h without spending money and without restricting posting/viewing capabilities, please step up![/li][li]Again, as mentioned before, if you propose an idea and no one from the staff comments on it, it means that the idea was previously considered and rejected or passed on the Chicago Reader administration for further action.[/li][/list]
Arnold, I can understand that the staff is bored with seeing suggestions that have been offered before. But the threads in which said suggestions have been offered are scattered hither and yon, in different fora and over a couple years’ time. If we continue to rehash the same old ideas, it’s because (a) we don’t always know what’s been suggested before, (b) we don’t know whether it has been passed on to the CR as worth considering, and © if it’s been dismissed, we don’t know why.
For instance, the not-so-novel idea of charging for a package of advanced vB options.
Or SDMB classifieds, along the lines of the online classifieds that the CR already runs, but linked to this MB.
Or banner ads, along the lines of www.baseball-reference.com 's page sponsorships.
Or SDMB-specific merchandise.
All of the above have been discussed in more detail in this recent Pit thread. I can’t tell whether the ideas were ignored there because they’ve already been beaten to death, because the discussion didn’t take place in ATMB, or what.
But I’ve never seen where significant problems have been pointed out with any of the above.
Obviously, the only thing that will produce a long-term improvement in how the board functions is to find ways to turn the popularity of the board into an identifiable revenue stream for the board. The ideas suggested above create the opportunity for such a connection, at seemingly negligible risk to the CR.
Needless to say, I’m curious as to whether these ideas have problems with them that I can’t see, or whether the SDMB staff likes them and have been forwarded to the CR, where they’re awaiting action, or whether they have only been given passing consideration in the first place (“SDMB merchandise? Why bother? We’ve already got the Straight Dope[sup]TM[/sup] merchandise with Slug’s drawings on them”) as they’ve been dismissed out of hand.
I don’t know if you can satisfy my curiosity, but I think you can understand why I’d be curious.
RTFirefly - yes I read that thread. I didn’t see anything in there that we (the staff and other posters) hadn’t thought of long ago.
I don’t mind reading suggestions. But I definitely don’t want to take the time to respond to each one - that’s the prospect that bores me to tears. If people want to ignore the warning in the FAQ that the staff doens’t want to rehash the issue, then they should feel free to continue the discussion. What you should not expect is a moderator/administrator to go in there and debate the pros and cons. A “We thought of that already” will immediately result in “why don’t you like that idea” and then when I explain why I’ll get “well you’re wrong and let me demolish your reasons one by one. Now what do you have to say?”
As RTF said, we don’t always know what’s been suggested, and what the current position of the Reader is on these matters. I guess this is why a significant proportion of this forum’s threads are in some way related to such suggestions.
Is there any chance of an official, sticky, once-and-for-all type thread at the top of ATMB, listing in the OP all the reasons already supplied and rejected - preferably with reasons why. It would be a once-off job for an Admin to dig them all up, rather than making ongoing replies to new threads. Posters could then see at a glance if their own pet scheme is or isn’t original, and could post accordingly in that thread alone. Either that, or the thread could be closed to all but admins, and could be used for updates on what’s going through the minds of the honchos at the Reader.
I usually don’t bother answering new threads.
I don’t have a justification for all of the ideas that we didn’t adopt. Like I said before, I know that some ideas were rejected but I don’t remember the exact reasons why.
If I post a list of ideas and just say “rejected” or “referred to the Chicago Reader” then I expect to see a bunch of people asking “why was it rejected?” and/or “when is the Chicago Reader going to do something about it?”
Having a sticky thread on the subject would seem like we are inviting further discussion on how to improve the board performance. We are not, as said in the FAQ.
When the Chicago Reader does decide to implement a scheme to generate revenue from the board, there will be an announcement in ATMB.
All of the above has been said before. I have now reached my point of surpassing boredom on the subject and do not plan on posting further in this thread. Thank you to all of you who care enough about the SDMB to want to improve it. The staff will be reading any suggestions in ATMB for those who care to share their ideas.