Eh, Cecil would just blow the money on drugs.
I’m another who was a Charter Member but renewed late one time and lost the title. However I remain a Member because I wouldn’t be a member of a board that would have someone like me as a Charter Member.
us rookies dont rate, for either caps or punctuation
First happened a couple of years ago. There were announcements about it, etc.
Not my decisions, but what I am allowed/instructed to do, as the case may be.
Another announcement of an amnesty might make a nice Christmas present.
Send me an email, send me a PM. Ask me about it.
Mostly because when I first joined it was free, then somewhere along the line someone pried some money out of me for the privilege of doing something that was previously free, and then it went back to free, and I don’t see any point in continuing to pay.
Plus, if I’m going to pay, I want better performance as well as no ads. I don’t really want to cough up a bunch of cash for sub-standard performance and all-too-frequent outages and system freakouts.
There have been problems in the past, sure, but haven’t seen either of these situations in quite some time. We’ve had occasional problems, but the board is operational much more of the time than not. What are you talking about?
I fled here from an ill-moderated board full of immature people, and have been happy with the quality of the content at the Dope. Just showing my appreciation I guess.
There’s a flaw in the software, then, because I get to do all that stuff, just by reading a few adds about some mom having found some secret…
If I needed to rationalize my guest status, it would mean that I that I thought it was irrational. I always see paying for something (even by advertizing) to be an extra thing to do. Hence, you must give me a reason to pay.
I’ve been a member before (through donations) and there wasn’t much difference. The website does not seem to be struggling, so they don’t really need my charity, either. Those negate the two main reasons I would pay for something.
Of course it’s not a charity. It’s owned by a corporation. It’s not Mickey and Judy putting on a show in the barn!
Coming from my background (corporate IT for a Fortune 100 company), “much more of the time than not” doesn’t cut it if I’m going to pay for it. It’s fine for free, but not for something that people pay for.
Fairly regularly (several times a year) the board has login issues- I enter my username/password, and it doesn’t log me in, or it logs me in, I do a search, and it punts me back to the login screen AND resets that damned 2 minute timer.
If you’re going to hold us to the standards of a Fortune 100 company, can we also have the budget and the hardware and the staff? That would help a lot.
That’s on the order of finding fault because your Versa doesn’t drive like a Ferrari.
But Versa owners would probably bitch if their car was stalling for no reason and the repair shop couldn’t find a cause.
Yes, we’ve had issues. Most recent being the not so good performance around the period before and during and in the first days of the new server, which occupied some time and attention over the summer. That’s a pretty major deal, but it’s not every day you have a server replacement, neither. No real comparison to your stated situation, really.
Mostly, day in and day out, the system works. Maybe not as fast as you would like, maybe not with all the bells and whistles you would prefer, but it works. To imply otherwise is simply not an accurate statement of facts. We’re not claiming it’s perfect – what is? – But it’s not broken, neither, and to act like it is, that’s not reasonable.
I’m not bitching about it being broken or whatever; I’m saying that’s part of why I don’t want to pay; what I feel I’d be paying for is uptime and reliability since the content is free.
Since it’s free, I don’t have many complaints about the board at all, but if I were paying, I’d be annoyed.
I paid when it was pay to post, haven’t done so since - I have got a lot of enjoyment and knowledge out of the SDMB over the years, but as has been explained, there was a time when TPTB were looking to maximise the ad revenue, and as such they kind of wanted more guests (so they could sell the site to advertisers as one where x number of people would see the ads). I get the impression from Tuba’s posts in this thread that this is no longer the case, and they are now happy (more or less) either way. It’s a difficult line to walk though because on the one hand, the guaranteed revenue of the subscriptions must be good, on the other hand if “too many” people take out paid subscriptions the ad revenue might drop.
Bottom line for me is, if there were a ‘membership drive’ where TPTB said “look, we’re struggling and the board might shut down unless we get more members”, I’d probably pay up. At the moment, it seems the ship is sailing along just fine as it is.
I’m cheap. If paying for a service is optional or the failure to pay carries no penalties that concern me, I don’t pay. If the cost is mandatory and more than I think the service is worth, I do without. I could do without the SDMB. If tomorrow morning it were to disappear forever like other sites I’ve spent time on, I’d find something else. It’s lasted a long time without my contributions, I notice.
I could afford a membership. However, if I were to give money to support everybody who would like to have it, from Wikipedia to political candidates to the bloody dreadheads panhandling for Greenpeace in the city square, I couldn’t afford much at all. Not getting a membership here appears to be in my best interest. I haven’t noticed any arguments why I should other than it feels good for some people.
If I were to start giving out money for stuff I get for free, I’d give it to Wikipedia. If I were to start giving money to message boards, it would be Something Awful. That’s a one-time ten dollar fee. I wasn’t kidding about being tight with money. I don’t see that as a problem.
One could turn the question around.
I was a charter member because, hey, why not. Then I forgot about renewals and all of a sudden I was down to guest status, and would’ve been back to regular ol’ member status, if I ponied up more cash. Paying money for the content that I was helping create was always kind of a gift, more than anything else. But the idea of paying a ‘double gift’ in order to get back a (lesser) meaningless title?
Nah.