We would all suddenly have to be much more polite, if we knew we were addressing a Fellow Member of the Club, one who had also ponied up to join. No more flaming the presumed “just registered 'cause it’s 3 a.m. and I’m really drunk and I stumbled across your website while I was looking for info on gerbils” posters.
I’d miss that. 
I’d like to thank Jerry Davis for visiting Fathom to try to help posters with their difficulties in connecting to the Straight Dope during the recent difficulties.
Jerry, a tip of the hat to you!
Well RTFirefly, don’t tell anyone but I’ve been a regular visitor to Fathom since it’s very inception. I don’t post but I do read. Let’s just say Fathom gives me a rather… ahem… “unvarnished” opinion of how the SDMB is working. 
jdavis
Administrator
Hmmmm…I must have missed your job annoucement 
When there was a BBS locally, they tried to get people to post by offering credits for each post they made. Otherwise they had to pay. But as long as they posted a certain number of times, it was free.
Next they tried to charge people a few bucks per month. that did raise money but not enough.
handy, part of the fun of being in the Spanish Inquisition is that NOBODY expects us. Perhaps it’s finally time to reveal our true intentions through a longer, more dramatic entrance:
[The door flies open and Cardinal jdavis, SDMB Administrator enters, flanked by two junior cardinals.]
Cardinal jdavis, SDMB Administrator: NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and fear…fear and surprise… Our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency… Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency…and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope… Our four…no… Amongst our weapons… Amongst our weaponry…are such elements as fear, surprise… I’ll come in again.
[The Inquisition exits]
I do think that weirddave has a great idea with everyone pitching in to buy an ad. Would that work? If not…
I would gladly pay a subscription for things to improve here. Also, while this isn’t a jab at anyone specifically who said they wouldn’t pay and would just leave, I must say that I really don’t care if subscription costs drive some people away.
When I signed up here, I think there were around 3K memebers. Now there are what, 15K? (I didn’t check but I think that is close.) Has my enjoyment of the SD increased 5x with the new members? Hell no. While I would miss a certain select few, I don’t think I’d shed a tear. This place was just as fun and cool and entertaining back then (content-wise, quality of posters, etc.) as it is now (ignoring the speed difference).
The sooner the better, I say.
[quote]
I tell him, “Yeah, I know, but I want these particular whiny, argumentative people.” [\quote]
Awww, shucks - that’s one of the nicest things anyone’s said about us.
Paying a subscription by credit card in a secure site is not a bad idea. Some posters object to getting a card due to the high interest. However, if you pay off the monthly statement in full, there is no interest. And there are a lot of cards available without an annual fee. In fact, Chase has a Visa wherein you get money back at a certain (very low) percentage.
There’s no free lunch. This has been a great forum. If banners are necessary, so be it. If an annual subscription is necessary, so be it. I pay $50 annual fee at an international chess site, and I consider it a bargain. That’s less than a buck a week. Perhaps one less cup of java a week.
Not everyone has perfect credit.
Not everyone wants a credit card because of varying reasons; they don’t want one, they know if they did get one the temptation would be too great, no one will offer them one, they don’t have the money to put on a secured card, they don’t want to end up like so many who barely live month to month with the fear of layoffs, they are in college and don’t want to start off their lives in more debt…list goes on.
Not everyone wants to pay for something they can get for free elsewhere. Granted the SD is a wonderful place I think I could do without the place and have other boards I can embrace and contribute to now. As a board operator, I have a free board, I don’t charge for it, I pay someone else to care for it and other sites I own…something that the SD might consider (no offense to Jerry as he does a wonderful job).
Nope there isn’t a free lunch, but you have to consider the masses here. There are a lot of teens, college kids and adults to whom $50.00 is a lot of money, finding money for lunch is a scary proposition at times for some of our members. I am not poopooing what you are saying but you have to consider the masses as a whole. Is it worth it to push out a good many contributors because they simply can’t afford it?
If the SD would consult an attorney and find out a way to accept “donations” towards a specific purpose (in this case being a new server) then I am all for it, I have fresh $25.00 worth of money just wanting to say thank you to the SD for some of my fun times here. As for a long term subscription? Eh, it simply wont work, I wouldn’t sign up (stop your cheering) and many simply can’t or wont afford it no matter how logical it seems to others.
Many have accepted and said they would pony up and help out, its now up to the SD to take that and make it work. Not everyone can contribute and to those people I am willing to pat them on the back and tell them “it’s okay, you are still valuable to this community, but since I can help, consider part of my ‘donation’ in your name too.”
The other option would be…and this was brought up on Fathom once, I think by RTF.
What if the SD separate the message board from the Chicago Reader, run it as a non-profit and donations will not be scrutinized by the IRS? I have a domain name that the SD can have…it’s not being used and was originally meant for The People Pages which I have not received any response to transfer the files over in 6 months. It still has a little over a year on the current registration…
With a member base of thousands of people, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be talking about $50 per annum. But let’s not start creating trouble where there isn’t a reason yet.
Hey, Jerry! There’s a 1.5 GB P4 over there in the corner, It’s got 512MB Ram and a bunch of other stuff, but I can’t…quite…figure out what’s wrong with it. Can you help?
The inquisition is easily destracted.
I hope we can find a way to keep the boards accessible for everyone. There’s no way I can find much if any dollars to pay for a subscription. Aussie into US dollars is not a pretty sight. IMO you would lose most of your international subscribers.
I also think the ‘you are a guest and must behave’ whip would cease to be useful if people are paying to be here.
I know this is jumping way ahead of things, but I have a suggestion.
If we are forced to start paying, I’d really like to see at least some fora remain free. Considering the history and purpose of this site, I think it would make a lot of sense for the fora about columns and GQ to remain free, while it would make more sense to charge for IMHO, MPSIMS, and the Pit. GD is, appropriately enough, up for debate. This would allow the site to continue its purpose of fighting ingnorace - people could continue to come and get answers to questions and discuss Cecil, while the less relevant, though just as popular, fora could be the money makers.
Just a thought.
It’s a good idea, and it can be done in vBulletin. But it is an Administration nightmare for a Board as large as the SDMB (but not the UnaBoard, since we only have 30 members :D).
I don’t know why. Other businesses (hotels, bars, restaurants, amusement parks, etc.) throw out disruptive paying customers all the time and they are not obligated to give refunds to anyone thrown out for being a nuisance.
IANALawyer, but I believe paying for a service comes with the agreement (implied or specified) that the payee will behave himself. If he does not behave himself, the agreement becomes null and the offended party is not obligated to give a refund to the other party.
I am not a database administrator so I don’t know if the following suggestions are technically or administratively feasible, much less if they would improve response times, but here goes.
1-Keep all forums open on weekends. Keep ATMB and both Comments forums open all the time. Each day Monday through Friday close one of the remaining five forums.
2-Either disable the search function or greatly limit its use, say by a seven day window.
3-Purge the database of old posts.
4-Limit board access to one view per user ID.
My guess is that option 1 would help a lot, 2 and 3 not much, 4 I don’t know.
Quoth jcgmoi:
I think that limiting the search option would be a double-edged sword. If folks can’t search for old threads, then they’d be starting new ones, instead of noticing that we’d already answered that exact question five weeks ago. We do currently purge old threads occasionally, on a case-by-case basis, but that addresses a different problem: While it’s true that we have finite drive space, and deleting old posts helps with that, the much bigger problem is that we have finite processing power, and according to the techs, the size of the database has little or no effect on that. The only things that could help the speed problem significantly (other than the little tweaks which Jerry is continually and valiantly making) would be for the number of users (both reading and posting) to decrease, or for the Reader to get a new server.
I’m not sure what you’re suggesting with point 4… Do you mean that a person would only be able to view one thread each time they log in? Or that a person could view each thread only once? What about non-members viewing the boards?
Closing and opening Forums is easy, and has nothing to do with the database. But the chaos of closing Forums on a rotating schedule, or even randomly…shudder.
My guess is that (2) reduces the functionality of Search such that it is unusable, and (3) doesn’t really do a great deal for Search speed, unless a profound number of posts are deleted - something the SDMB seems loathe to do.
What other board has the experts that SDMB has? I think that we have every profession covered, and by very intelligent professionals, with the exception of eye doctors. For some reason, there does not appear to be any ophthalmologists or even optometrists here. We also have writers, poets, philosophers,etc. If you know of another one, please let me know.