I donate to places I frequent like archive.org and Wikipedia. I’d donate to the Dope as well. Generously.
But I would condition my generous donations on there not being any badges!
Good way to discourage people from creating topics. I think that would be a very bad idea.
Why on earth keep coming up with complicated ideas which will discourage posting and/or starting topics when we have no idea whether optional memberships which mostly get you the right to special titles with your name will work? We’ve got people volunteering all over the place to pay up on that optional basis, some of them saying that they’ll pay extra. Let them do it, and see what happens. If it doesn’t bring in enough, then re-address the issue.
We still haven’t been given any idea how much is needed to keep the site going.
We seem to keep getting told that something can’t get done because we haven’t got an admin to deal with it. Maybe ECG has been authorized to deal with those things and I missed it.
I know that Ed’s the admin; but I don’t know how much time he wants to put into it; nor should he have to put more time in than he wants to. If we can raise enough money, paying at least one additional admin something would compensate for their time.
$10-$20 annually. I’ve always bought the membership since it’s been available (whatever cost that was. Apparently, I must have been late once as the “charter” disappeared from my “charter member” status. ) But even with 50K+ posts and 20 years under my belt, that’s pretty much all I’m willing to do. I don’t want another monthly subscription on my credit card, and whatever the cost of the membership has been so far – that seems fair. $5 or $10/month just seems nuts to me for a message board, but that’s just my opinion.
I’d pay $5/month and pay for someone else as well. I post here and get a lot out of this site. And I have no conditions for my donation/fee. If I thought this site wasn’t worth my money, I wouldn’t post here.
Nor is my $5 per month contingent on my getting a say in how the place is run or how much transparency there is. I don’t get a say in other sites that require monthly payments; I don’t know why my lousy $5 should entitle me to get a say here.
As far as I know, Ed makes all decisions about the board. It’s also a paid position, so I would assume he puts in all the time that is required of him. I don’t think he does any of the tech stuff, that’s up to the mods right now. As a for instance, I think the new titles rule in the Pit was decided by Ed. Even tho the mods could have physically done it on their own, they needed the okay from Ed.
As for paying, I want to see where the money goes first. I would also like to see what exactly we get for being on the expensive Discourse plan rather than the mid level plan. If all we get is stuff like animated gifs, like buttons, more badges and being able to put pictures in posts, I’d rather do without those and go to a mid level plan. We also need to keep in mind how many of our community could not pay the $14.95/year that was required for membership before. I thought Ed’s idea of doubling that was going to cause even more problems. Now that people are talking about $60 to $120/year, that’s going to make it even harder for those people to become/stay members or Charter members.
In that case, I think we need a separate pool of money from those of us that can afford it. Put a mod in charge that can receive messages from those in need and sign them up accordingly. There is no reason for the rest of the board to see who has to ask for a little help or for those that gave a little extra cash to know who needed it. Keep it all anonymous. The old threads where people going thru a rough spot had to publicly ask for help made me cringe.
Good, because if the boards go Pay To Post again, I’m leaving. It completely wrecked the place last time and despite what all these people here with plenty of random cash to throw around suggest, the sort of people you’d want to attract to the boards are already paying for several other monthly subscriptions to stuff like Netflix and Spotify, and aren’t going to shell out even more to hear what their (grand)parents think about the hot-button issues of the day.
Take a look at the basic subscription rates for some of the more popular services
Peacock $4.99 (there’s also a free level)
Hulu $5.99
Netflix $8.99
Spotify $9.99
I’ve been on this board for 22 years now, but let’s be realistic about how much entertainment we provide, and price ourselves accordingly.
Also, put me down for an annual rather than monthly subscription.
Pretty much this. I might occasionally make one time donations because I currently have the extra income to do so (that may not always be the case) and I spend money on sillier things. But I do have less interest in a monthly subscription option. As a charter member I used to pay two years at a time just to minimize hassle.
And of course just piling on the “good thing there is no thought of pay-to-post because that would be a disaster” train.
I’m another vote for I’ll happily contribute the equivalent of $10/month. My only caveat is no pay-to-post. I think p-to-p is the end of the SMDB.
I should clarify that I would not pay anything if Ed remains as admin. He’s never here. I’m not contributing to the remuneration of an admin who is not also an active participant, and who (as the only admin) appears to have been an obstacle to doing things.
A “tech admin” doing helpful things like ecg has been doing should be remunerated if we can afford it. A stipend for all mods would also be appropriate, if the funds are there.
That’s why accounting transparency is critical here. I’m happy contributing, but only to board running expenses and to people who are actively and positively contributing to running the board.
Just to build on this a little, I think picking an amount for Charter Member/Member to renew can’t be priced too high. If you double that amount to $30/year, how many people will just drop it and post as guests? IIRC, the only perk for Charter Members/Members is the title, so dropping down to guest will make no difference in the way they can use the board and will save them $30. Then you just end up having to make up all that money from the people that can/will donate extra. And let’s be real about this, doubling the price of any product overnight is going to result in fewer people buying the product.