Rysler:
Yeah, but the thing is, the thirty-days clock starts running when someone registers. (That’s true, isn’t it? Someone correct me if I’m wrong. At the very least, it’s when a guest makes their first post.) I’m another of those people who go through lengthy periods of posting inactivity…I lurked for a couple months before making my first post, but I can easily see someone doing the reverse. That is, it’s entirely plausible to imagine someone stumbling across the board, reading it, liking what she sees, and registering to make an off-hand comment in a thread that caught her interest, all in the same day. Now she’s got thirty days to be sufficiently acclimated to the board to want to plunk down $14.95; she’s got no more leeway to lurk, look, and listen.
I’m just saying that, to the extent people are going to spontaneously register, that’s a good thing. New blood is important. And we want guests to be posting once they’ve registered. But once they register (or at least once they make their first post), they’ve got thirty days, period, to make up their minds. (And if they let their guest status lapse and then decide later on they like the place after all, they get banned when they come back. Yay!) I just think that that’s too little a time for too high an initial fee.
The Pit fosters more sense of belonging and community than, arguably, any other forum but MPSIMS. The only reason I put Cafe Society ahead of it is that the Pit yields a charged and volatile togetherness. As long as you’re the Pitter rather than the Pittee, all is right with the world. Even being Pitted can be cathartic. And surely, banding together to bitch at the small annoyances and injustices of the world is nothing if not social.