Guest Membership under the New System

About This Message Board
1

Under the new paid membership plan we have the following situation:

[ol]
[li]Paid registered members have unlimited posting and searching abilities (well, the 30 second rule will probably still be in effect).[/li][li]**Non-members ** can lurk and read all they want, but they can’t post or search.[/li][li]Those who register for the free Guest membership can post as much as they want for a thirty day period but they can’t search.[/li][/ol]

I, like some others, think that there can be a better way to treat the Guests in order to: 1) Keep them around and hook them into stepping up to a paid membership; and, 2) Prevent trolls and sock puppets from abusing the Guest privileges. And so, my suggestions:

[ol]
[li]Do not expire Guest membership in 30 days. Keep them on but limit them in other ways.[/li][li]Let them search, so that they don’t keep asking questions already discussed to death (‘ends in -gry’). Maybe limit the Guest profile so that they can only search once a minute or two to slow 'em down, but not discourage them entirely.[/li][li]Severely limit posting. This is what will want them to eventually step up to a full membership. Let them have unlimited posting for ATMB, but only only one post a day for Comments OCC, Coments OSR, & GC. But absolutely no posts in the other forums. If they want to discuss, pit, or debate, then they gotta step up for the full membership. But, this lets visitors ask the one time question, or a comment on Cecil’s column they’ve read in the papers. (Or, alternatively, just one post per day.)[/li][/ol]

So think about the new member we’d like to have: They read Cecil’s article and come here, or they hear about us from some other source. They may have a question to ask or a comment to give. The responses might keep them interested for a while, but they can’t go hog wild with large numbers of posts. Their ability to search and post (in a limited way) might keep them around for months. Then, finally, they can’t stand it anymore… they must debate something or comment on the last episode of Friends. Then they will finally step up for the paid registration.

Meanwhile, a sock puppet can’t use the Guest membership to pit someone (well, if they do in GC, it will be obvious). Trolls won’t be able to keep coming back several times in one day to goad those of us with impulse control problems.

Anyway, just my humble suggestion.

Peace.

2

GC? Do you mean Great Debates or General Questions?

3

Oops. General Questions.

Certainly don’t want newbies cutting their teeth in Great Debates… unless they want to pay for it.

Peace.

4

  1. Not really possible with the current software. We could change the trial period, but I think that 30 days is too much, really, as people should LURK for longer than 30 days before joining into a message board. However, this wasn’t my decisioin.

  2. Search is the most taxing function. It’s also one of the most attractive features we have. Thus, it’s gonna be limited to paying members.

  3. Again, not possible with the current software. We can’t limit the number of posts a trial member gets. We could limit the forums that trial members could post in, but we get enough threads started in the wrong forums as it is. Personally, I argued for making some forums free and others pay to post, but I was overruled, because of the problems with threads in the wrong forums.

5

Solution;

Keep GQ free and switch a mod over to GQ to clear out wrong forum posts.
You`ll need less mod support in the other forums once the change takes place.

6

I strongly second the notion of keeping GQ free. Along with the column forums (which don’t get nearly as much traffic) it’s really the heart of the SDMB. It’s also, I think, a true public service. People come their with real questions and get real answers, often from real experts.

The other nice thing about GQ is it has very clear and easily understandable criteria for what belongs there. True, there will be the occasional misdirected OP, but rather than move them, under the new regime, you could just lock them down. If threads that don’t belong in GQ become a serious problem, you can always switch later.

I also want to make a plea on behalf of international dopers-to-be. In some countries, 14.95 USD is actually quite a lot of money. In addition, things like credit cards are not nearly as common. In some cases, even people who did have credit cards might not be able to use them. Many credit card companies, for example, will refuse to approve Internet-based credit card transactions originating from certain countries, including many in the mid-east.

These factors will make it nearly impossible for some international posters to join the SDMB. This would be a real shame because its wide international character is one of the very best things about this board. People from places like Ecuador, India, Pakistan, Russia, China and the middle east bring an amazing first-person perspective. When they are interacting in the same GD thread . . .

Therefore, I humbly request that there be some procedure for exempting people from certain countries from the new payment scheme. It might be as simple as simply giving IP addresses associated with these countries a free pass. If really necessary (though I really doubt it would be), I’m sure there would be no problem setting up a committee of dopers to vet and approve requrests from international dopers for free membership.

These people make up a relatively small group. Yet they add a value completely disproportionate to their numbers. Just a little bit of spice makes the whole dish. Let’s not let the SDMB become all white bread and mayonaise!

7

One of the hopes is that prohibiting searches by guests will cut down on the number of searches. The searches are a big time-devourer, and fewer searches will mean (we hope) speedier board performance. Hence, no searching by guests.

We did discuss allowing guests to post in certain forums. We concluded that such a scenario would just mean that people would post stuff in an inappropriate forum. Like, if we let guests post only in GQ, for instance, then we’d wind up with lots of IMHO stuff in GQ. That would increase moderator work, and be a general nuisance. So, the decision was all-or-nothin’.

8

While I understand the desire to cut down on the number of searches, is it possible with the current software to allow guests to search only in GQ? That seems like it would cut down on the number of repeat questions quite a bit. After all, does it slow the board down more for a guest to do a search, or for a guest to post a question, and a member to do a search and post a link?

9

A polite way of saying the discussions about what to do ranged from pinky-lifted tea chats through heated arguments to no-holds-barred mud wrassles, I take it? :smiley:

10

Thanks, Lynn, for considering and responding to my proposals.

Too bad vBulletin doesn’t have those features.

Peace.

11

I don’t believe that we had ANY tea chats. However, as I am not physically able to attend mod meetings any longer, it’s entirely possible that some were held without me. As for the mud rassling, well, sometimes that’s what the mod email seems like, but for the most part it’s quite a bit more civil, though not on the tea chat level.

12

The moderating staff has been discussing payment schemes for YEARS now. We have considered the ideas that posters periodically propose on the boards. We’ve done research into how other message boards manage to survive, and how they don’t survive. We’ve examined advertising revenue sources. We’ve looked at the various options that vBulletin allows us. In short, we’ve pretty much considered every option that people have come up with. We have to come up with enough money to keep the boards going, as the SDMB will drain ALL of the Reader’s bandwidth and computer resources, if it’s allowed to. And the Reader, not unreasonably, wishes to allocate that bandwidth and those resources to the areas which bring in money FIRST, so the SDMB, even though it’s incredibly popular, has always been one of the last priorities on the Reader’s To Do list.

Some people are up in arms about the upcoming subscription policies, and feel that things have been going well up til now. However, the choice is not whether or not to keep the SDMB free. It never HAS been free, it’s just that the Reader has borne the cost until now. And now, the Reader has told us that if we want to continue to play here, we have to pay the costs of keeping the board going. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

13

Heck, if Lynn, TubaDiva, TVeblen, and/or Gaudere had been having no-holds-barred mud wrassles, then I don’t think we’d need subsctiptions in the first place. I know I sure would have paid to see that! :wink:

(insert other moderators as appropriate, according to personal tastes)

14

No, I think I’ll be just fine with them, Chronos…unless there’s something you’d like to say to Arnold:slight_smile:

15

I think you’ve hit on a good business model for the SDMB:

Pay-per-view.