Um,… oh, titles. Honestly, I had no idea I had a new title until people started asking me about it in threads, and I’ve had to answer the same damn questions again and again every week or so since.
I expect my special title will be gone in August, and then I will be a “mere” Member. I let my subscription lapse for a couple of months and I lost my “Charter” status, and BFD.
The idea the “Charter…” indicates fidelity blah blah OR cheapskates is just absurd. It is entirely meaningless,or it should be. WTF does anyone care about these things for? I would be fine with MEMBERS, GUESTS and MODERATORS. Well, ok, there’s an Administrator too…
Exactly. As I said, it represents a token of gratitude. And I don’t think said token should be revoked. It isn’t about the lesser subscription price. Surely some of you have cards, congratulation letters or tokens, or even trophies of some sort that you hang onto for the sake of sentiment? This is a sentimental thing, and even better, it won’t clutter up a drawer!
Yeah. For that matter, anyone that cites their post count as a means of assessing their perceived “value” is full of crap, too.
I mean, it’s nice to perhaps get a modicum amount of respect as an “elder poster” and whatnot, but to try to use the “fuck you n00b, I’ve been here forever” tactic is so passe.
What gets my respect is the occasional '99 or '01 join date who posts something and they’ve got a post count of 300 or so.
Harborwolf, give it a rest. I’ve left you to your little Hillary-bashing thread. Ooh, ooh! I created the internet!
Hey, sometimes people get excited. Take a deep breath there fella.
Flander, speaking of that, I seem to recall a couple Charter Members getting their membership comp’ed because they were broke. By what reasoning should a Charter Member be allowed to keep their title if they don’t pay their own bill?
General rule of life I’ve noticed: the cheaper something is, the more people will bitch about it. It’s as though something cheap must be simple to do or make, therefore making it conform to whatever their current whim is must also be simple, therefore the only reason for it not conforming perfectly to their current whim (and you have to do it for them, they’re paying customers after all) must be your laziness or incompetence. And because it’s obviously so simple, they therefore know how to do it better than you and will not hesitate to tell you how it ought to be done.
I’m with levdrakon on this one. There was definitely a lot of “I saved the board back in the day, you can tell because I’m still only paying half price for it” going on in the ATMB thread. Seriously, we all love you because you haven’t let your memberships lapse, but if you really thought the boards were going to go under because of lack of funds you would have done, and then re-upped as a regular member.
On a related note, there was much gnashing of teeth on the subject of the disabled search and charter memberships. “I desperately want to stop paying in protest, but then if the search is reinstated I’ll have to pay full price again. Whatever shall I do?”
I dunno, it always struck me as odd that some people, like the OP, who registered in 04 and only has about 300 posts have “charter member” status, and some people, like levdrakon, who registered in 02 and has 6300 posts, doesn’t. I mean, when you think about it, who has really contributed more to the board? These titles just seem spurious.
That being said, don’t some things tend to accrue value only if they’re in danger of being removed? I feel that people who don’t really notice this “charter member” thing underneath their names may get a bit rankled at the possibility of the board revoking them. Sort of like, “hey, I didn’t really care that you gave this to me, but now you did, so don’t go taking it away!”
Truth be told, if my membership rate got jacked and the board wasn’t significantly improved first, I’d be inclined to take a pass, 20000+ posts (all of them gold, Jerry, gold!) notwithstanding.
I just went through the entire thread again, and I don’t see where anybody said they “saved” the SDMB, let alone that there’s (quote) “a lot” of it going on in the thread. So, bwah?
Unless you care to interpret my comment as having to do with “saving” the board, in which case (A) that’s certainly your prerogative to read things into other people’s communications, as it’s a free country, and if it pleases you to see a face on Mars, hey, more power to ya…
And (B) it’s one post out of a two-page thread, which hardly constitutes “a lot of”.
And (C) as for “saving” the board with our subscriptions, Ed says we did, right here:
Charter Members were the ones who got on board right away in that first 30 day signup period, the ones who didn’t wait around to see if the whole idea would even float or not. Because nobody knew if it would even work: there were a lot of dire predictions that the boards would wither and die without a constant influx of new posters attracted by free posting, who wouldn’t come if they had to pay to post. And there were a certain number of people who predicted that the SDMB would in fact be dead in a few weeks, and who took themselves off.
Sorry that apparently certain people were out of touch and couldn’t get on board the way they might have wanted to, but hey, those are the breaks sometime. I missed the chance to buy Xerox at 15, too, but you don’t hear me whining about it.
So that’s what “Charter Member” means to me under my name, and if you don’t like it, then I guess it sucks to be you.
levwasn’t just whooshing/trolling in that Bosnia thread?
Wow. That’s amazing. Really.
Anyway, now he’s concerned over who gets to claim greater “loyalty” to a message board?
Well let me come right out. I have no loyalty to this board. I cheat with other boards. I might even endorse another board for President. Judas be my middle name. It happens to be a strangely addicting place to spend some time and saves my wife the aggravation of listening to me ramble on. Nothing more. It’s worth what they ask for anyway.
Feel free to tear “Charter” from my epaulettes. Just don’t charge me more. I am a cheapskate.
NightRabbit quality not quantity. Have read what Lev posts?
For the record, I read here for years before I joined and posted. I didn’t realize then that having an early join date was desirable. I acknowledge my post count is low, and that is because I enjoy reading a lot, and only will post if I feel I really have something of interest to share.
I love these boards, and when they went pay I paid at the very first opportunity, probably the first day the till was open. Right now I’m paid until 5-10-2009. I paid early, and continue to do so because the boards are valuable to me. I thought it was very nice that they offered the special title for those of us who paid up back then. I won’t leave if they take the title away, but I’d like a chance to keep it.
I think it’s pretty pissy of those of you to devalue the title for me because I don’t meet your criteria of a VIP.
You know, if you locked me up in a jail cell and wouldn’t release me until I’d written a list of 1,000,000 things I might ever possibly give a shit about, I can say with full confidence that “whether the word ‘Charter’ appears before the word ‘Member’ on somebody’s SDMB title” would not appear on that list. Just sayin’.
But hey, who am I to dismiss an argument just because of its mind-boggling trivialty? I’ve written two-page logical analyses of the intricacies of grocery checkouts just for kicks, so let’s roll. levdrakon, you hold that, because Charter Members pay half the price Members do, a Member can be said to have more loyalty to the boards than a Charter Member with the same join date (assuming, of course that the Member has paid his or her subscription fee each year since joining).
First of all, loyalty is a state of mind, and therefore a function of individual will and intent, not of amount of money spent. Second, I don’t really need a second, because loyalty has nothing to do with amounts of money, so that whole position makes absolutely no fucking sense.
Well, shit, there you have it…a topic so pointless that even I can’t overanalyze it. Guess I’ll be on my way now.
Funny, the quoted letters on the screen read differently, but every time I read them, it seems to me that you are saying “I got my dumbfuck arse kicked so damn hard it was glowing as red as my face and setting fire to my tail (tucked, as it was, neatly between my legs) and I sailed in a graceful arc right out of the Hillary thread and landed with a soggy splat in the pit”.
In seven years of posting on these boards, I can think of few comparably appalling examples of someone being so utterly, mind boggling, blinkered while unjustifiably accusing their opponents of being the ones who were biased.
It seems to me that the obvious answer here (one I suggested in the other thread, but also one that’s been suggested probably 50 times before) is for the board to charge for custom titles.
You wanna keep your “Charter Member” title? Pony up $7.50 a year. You want “Joined in 99”? $7.50. “Has a large dick”? $7.50. “Titles Suck”? $7.50. “Pays More to the SDMB Than Everyone Else”? $7.50. “Not Wearing Pants”? $7.50. “LOL”? $7.50. “Eats Butter”? $7.50. Don’t care about titles? You pay nothing, and get “Member.” Everyone’s happy, and the Reader gets additional revenue.
