Paying members are treated differently than Guests (allegedly) . At least they should be when it comes to matters of board functionality. Mod treatment should be even across the board, but that’s not what we are talking about. We are discussing board functionality, which as a non-paying member, you and I really don’t have a voice. Sure we can give our opinion, but we post at the pleasure of Creative Loafing. But if the paying membership clamors for some simple functionality, and TPTB refuse to give it to them, that’s not an indication that they give a hoot about anyone’s opinion and will run this railroad the way they want.
And they do. Why anyone pays for this board is a mystery to me, given the lack of customer service they receive for their fee.
Well, I payed again recently for the following reasons:
It seems it’s still a better deal for the Board to have us pay, and
I wanted my location shown without having to put it in a signature (post count = meh?), and
Hi, Opal!
Personally, I’ve always gotten all the customer service I expected or felt I deserved for the piddling sum of money I pay to play. At $0.04 a day, I don’t expect too much from anyone, let alone a mostly volunteer staff.
Well, the idea was that the ad revenue model alone would be sufficient to carry the day and we wouldn’t need to be bugging users with subscriptions. At the time this was proposed it was a perfectly valid theory and there was plenty plenty business and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
There’s been a lot of water under that bridge since we crossed it - hell, there’s been a tsunami of bad business news from most everywhere – and it turns out the Straight Dope needs subscriptions AND ad revenue. We’re also checking behind the sofa cushions for loose change.
Well, I am a guest, and i don’t really care about post count/location. If you really want to know, you can find out.
To me, the argument for is just to make it easier to know where the person is coming from. Knowing the location helps you correct for regional biases. Knowing post count seems less important because we have join date: but it lets you know if the person is a serious poster, or just an occasional one, and you can modify your statements accordingly.
I do think it’s sad that they’d rather have subscribers than guests. It means that advertising isn’t working. Which means they may have to change strategies in the future. Perhaps they should use ads that are harder to block? For example, http://www.angrybooth.com uses text-based ads.
Edit: Wow. I didn’t know my adblocker blocked google text ads (I just checked) Anyways, from now on, I will not view the dope without ads. If I could afford a membership, I would pay, but I can’t.
I’m going to start following you down that path. Apparently clicking on the additional profile page to doesn’t affect board performance at all. In that case, I’m seriously considering clicking on every guest’s profile. Just because. It won’t hurt anything, after all. It’s just fucking annoying.
TubaDiva, I guess you missed my question in post #13: Who would decide whether to display Guests’ post counts and locations, and what would be the best way for me to go about presenting my request to that person? Thanks.
The wiser solution (although probably not the most technically feasible one) would be to change it from guests not displaying location/post count to guests not being able to view location/post count, while the information would be visible to members.
Those who don’t care can continue to loudly proclaim so, while those who do care will see the info that matters to them. Win/win.
Your subscription has been paid (assuming I did it right). If your membership status doesn’t show up soon, PM me. Whatever happened, I have verified that it hit my credit card. So let’s cross our fingers.
I, too, would be interested in the answer to this.
TubaDiva had said, “Seriously, it’s not my opinion that matters here. If/when policy changes I’ll gladly implement it.”
She failed, however, to say whose opinion does matter. I would guess it’s Ed’s. But that’s only a guess.
Yes. There’s something about the level of vehemence with which certain people “don’t care” and the effort they go to in order to express their lack of care that causes me to take away a very different message to the one being typed out.
