I think the SDMB was the greatest place on the Internet until 2009 when Dave Hartwick joined. Then it became utter crap.
Prior to that it was like the internet Garden of Eden. Apart from the requirement that anyone who didn’t fit the mold be driven away.
I guess I was thinking of a charge to post per post, not to subscribe.
We’re a much sexier bunch now, that’s for sure.
It was always absurdly cheap (like $8 or $15 annually) and the money (IIRC) was primarily just for the hardware and admin costs. It always struck me as nonsensical that someone would dump countless hours of their valuable time into reading and posting and when asked to support the board with a miniscule amount of money would act like they were being mugged or that the 2 to 3 penny a day cost would be a severe and intolerable financial strain.
To, me there’s not a whole huge lot of difference from when I started posting here in 2000 (shit, it’s already been almost 14 years? Wow.) The main thing I notice is that posting became more tightly moderated over the years, and posting rules seem to be stricter, but I don’t notice a substantive change in relation to before and after the brief “pay to post” model was implemented (and, frankly, I don’t even remember when that was or how long it lasted.)
One mistake, at least to me:
Either charge to post or take it out in copyright.
If I’m paying you for the space, it is my publication. Charging people to submit material on which you then claim copyright was double-dipping.
And the number of “Have the Boards Declined Since Pay-to-Post?” threads got downright embarrassing.
It’s not as if the site owners made any money from republishing posts on the board. Can you cite any examples?
I never said anyone was harmed or unjustly enriched - I said it was a mistake to to both.
Poor form, off-putting - that sort of thing.
Not monetary as such, but it (I believe) effectively meant that every short story or bit of poetry you put up on the SDMB when we were doing collections of such, that you were giving up sole ownership rights and the SDMB had full license to use that submitted work as it saw fit.
Not that you would have every gotten paid for your deathless prose but it did seem a little over reaching to me. I still submitted.
I think the waves of content actually flow from week-to-week. There are some weeks when I’ll post 100 times on a wide variety of topics. And then a few weeks later, I’ll realize that all of my notifications are for those same topics and that I haven’t posted to a new topic in a long time.
Okay, I keep seeing different claims on this. Did the SDMB limit posting to paid subscribers for a time, or did it not? I’ve gotten answers that deny this, but with a snarkiness that belies the validity of the answer.
I was here very early on, obviously, but left when it became pay-to-play, and took a while to get over that ‘disbarment’ even though it was a brief time (or so I recall). I really should be a Charter Member, but I missed the window due to having been driven away by PtP. I would have subscribed for the nominal privileges now granted, but pay-to-post was just too much and (as the props found out) too limiting to the community. The options now are a good balance; I wish I’d had them (known about them) in the Charter era.
Isn’t there a pay to join forum somewhere that is fairly popular?
You can be a Total Farker (Fark.com) for the wee price of $5 a month.
That’s a month, not a year, but a month. And they are much larger than the Dope is.
Did you not read post 17?
This is not a tl;dr thread, in my estimation.
You know, if this is a stunted, worse version of the SDMB… Well, it’s still the best forum I have ever seen (with perhaps exception of Randi.org’s, which has refused my application like three times now) in terms of rational discussion, overall tone, tolerance of nutbags, and the like. You know, the things that matter in a forum.
I think it’s gotten less fun and whimsical as it’s gotten more partisan, but I guess that’s a reflection of the U.S. as a whole.
Frankly, I think the worse thing that happened to SDMB was sanitizing The Pit. To me, it’s akin to scrubbing down Manhattan with bleach. You’d think that smelling clean would be an enhancement, 'til you realize that the mild stench of urine is actually part of its charm.
Well, I don’t recall having to worry about squids when I joined.
There was no post 17 until you put it there. :dubious:
(I did not realize PTP went on so long. Explains why I was elsewhere, though.)
Bwuh?
Hyuuumurrrr.