In that case, Charter Member just doesn’t do some of us justice.
Amazing…
I’ve begun posting wrong information, in hopes of winding my post count down.
I can’t live with myself, thinking of all the respect I’ve lost for all those past posts I’ve put here on SDMB.
WTF, I think Cecil has more posts than him.
Bravo sir. Well played.
:: bows down ::
We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!
Dude!
I am not a person who laughs easily. I am still laughing. Bravo!
For someone who thinks it’s meaningless, you’re being a real pain in the ass.
Hmmmm…
So, according to the SDMB, 14/3280 = 0.00
Whew…good thing I decided to check this further. I originally had a smart-ass comment in here, but then I decided to run the math myself, and it checks out. 14/3280 = 0.0042682
Damn thats was a good use of 1/14th of your posts. Bravo!
Most humorous post I read today and **Terrifel ** had a great one already.
As to the Op, I was surprised when I looked at this pitting yesterday as I thought **levdrakon ** was joking in the ATMB thread. It appears he was serious. That is just crazy. Reminds me of the crazy complaint against the SDSAB’s in another recent pit thread.
Jim
Count me in Lev’s camp. I’ve been around here for a good long time. I missed the deadline to become a charter member - I don’t remember the reason why. Things happen.
That was a one time offer, as far as I know there is no other way to be a Charter Member. So I have paid double since then. No, this isn’t a lot of money at all. Nor do I think it’s a bad deal, I’d probably pay twice that.
Not the end of the world, but it’s a simple fact that we’ve paid twice as much. And it’s a simple fact that a fairly minor mistake (missing the deadline) has permanently put us in a second-class category.
Yes, it is a second-class category. Perhaps the literal meaning of Charter Member is trivial, but there is an obvious strain of elitism in being a Charter Member. Justly so. There are many Charter Members who take pride in that designation, as they should. On the other hand, Lev and myself have supported the board just as much, paid twice as much, but can’t get that public stamp.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Obvious strain of elitism? Since it’s so obvious, you won’t have a problem presenting examples of it.
I misspoke. There’s a lot of “you can take my charter member tag when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.” It starts in post 7. I’m not going to quote them all here for you because, frankly, it’s a pain in the ass and I don’t want to take the trouble.
On the subject of the discount, Ed comes in and says they’re going to switch to an ads/no-ads structure but they’re still going to let you pay half the going rate. There’s absolutely no reason for the PTB to give this discount, but they seem commited to it anyway. The whole point of the original discount was to encourage people to actually join so they would have a base of paying customers. The business model was essentially to get people in at the start with a discounted rate so there would be an initial influx of cash from the large user base that could be expected to join. Then the slower stream of new members will pay an increased rate which will help to make up for their smaller numbers.
As for people “saving the board” with their money:
(later quoted and bolded for emphasis)
Fidelity, loyalty, faith, et cetera.
The fact is that WhyNot nailed the economic side of things. Charter Memberships suck for the guys pushing the pencils and making the numbers balance. The group of people most dedicated to the board and likely to stick around are the ones who pay the least. The people who are just getting started have to pay a premium. Around the time the board was going to switch to P2P people were talking about donating time and money to the cause of keeping the board running. (I’m not going to search for it because you only get one search every five minutes now and I’m not sure I’d find it on the first go and I don’t want to mess around with it. I trust you remember this happening because, for instance, it still happens now.) Then the PTB announce that they are switching the boards to subscriptions to get money to keep the thing running (well, wheezing). The brave and dangerous thing to do would be to wait until the day after the deadline and subscribe at the plebian rate and donate the extra ten bucks to the cause. (Original rates were $4.95 for early subscribers and $14.95 for late subscribers.)
The new fee structure proposed by Ed is frankly madness. They know that the membership is somewhat fanatical about not seeing ads, and a goodly percentage of those people are Charter Members. You can either post for free and see ads or you can pay a fee to not see them. The fee is to offset the cost of you to the board for not looking at ads. They’re giving a discount to the Charter Members. So if you keep your discount you’re essentially taking money out of the hands of the people you’re nominally supporting.
As for the meaningfulness of the Charter Member tag, it disappears if you ever miss a resubscription deadline, for whatever reason. I mostly lurk and sometimes post, but I joined at the cut rate for searching purposes. Then I let it lapse because the place stopped being as fun a place to read. Then I came back because I had a funny joke about pants. All more or less on a whim. No charter member tag, but my subscription, from the accountants point of view, is worth twice what yours is. If I pay to not see ads, I’ll be paying twice as much as you. So either I’ll pay to offset the lost revenues from ad dollars or, because there are so many paid up charter members only paying half price, they’ll set the pay scale so regular members pay more than the offset and charter members pay less and it evens out in the average.
So yeah, having people subscribe saved the board. If everyone had waited an extra week to sign up then every charter member would have, at this point, given an extra 24 dollars and change. ($10 intro discount, 1/2 price after that, I think there have been 2 re-ups.) So you saved the boards. You also guaranteed a future revenue problem. Six of one, half dozen of the other I would say.
Eh, it’s all backwards justification. Y’all would have done the same exact thing at the time even if you hadn’t got the title. And that’s great! But now that you have the title, you’re going to justify why you should get to keep it, or why you “deserve” it.
Actually, there is a reason – it was promised during the original signup period. The deal was, if you signed up as a Charter Member and maintained your subscription, you would forever get the 50% discount. IANALawyer, but this seems to constitute something of a contractual obligation, or at the very least an ethical one, to continue a discount structure. I appreciate that TPTB are holding fast to that.
I’ll probably go the free route so I can determine whether the ads are so bad/distracting that paying to avoid them is worthwhile. I wonder whether a whole bunch of others will do the same. And it might be a good number of them will be Charter Members, who will lose that status if they let their subscription lapse and then re-up later, as I did.
Right, except they’re changing the entire model of paying them. No longer are you paying a subscription fee in order to retain posting privileges. Rather you’re paying to offset the cost of your not seeing ads. The subscription cost is zero. Half of zero is zero. Unless they have the same type of lawyers as they have sysadmins (underpaid, overworked, and not really in the business of running the place) there’s no way you would win that case in court. Just because you promise 1/2 price subscriptions to people doesn’t mean they pay half price for anything you offer in perpetuity. In any case, are you seriously suggesting that the fine noble people who saved the board from insolvency are going to turn around and sue the place?
Yeah, I have no idea when I’m supposed to resubscribe. I probably won’t either–I already lost my Charter Member tag and the ads don’t really bother me that much. Half the time when I browse I’m not logged in anyway, so I’m seeing the damned things already. Ooh—flashy!
On this subject, there have been suggestions that people be able to retain their faux-custom label and still see ads. Doing the good thing for the team, as it were. One could argue that if they really cared they’d have done that already. But probably that makes the baby jesus cry or something.
What were we before? Anyone remember? Was it Registered User, or was that down at the methadone clinic…
In any case I don’t give a rats ass about the title, but I do like the discount. Take that away and I’ll have to lurk twice as much to get my money’s worth! 
Before the Lord of the Rings movies came out, the online fanclub, run by Decipher, had a deal going where if you paid to join the fanclub by a certain date your name would be listed in the movie credits. The idea was a big hit. There was a long lead time, and thousands of people signed on.
The date came and went and it was then too late. If you hadn’t come across the information you were SOL. But there must have been a hundred or a million whining and bitching people who said things like “It’s not fair. I never even heard of it, why can’t I do it now?”
Um: you can’t, that’s why.
I take the same view here. I joined very recently and am quite content with the situation: some people had the opportunity to become Charter Members here and they did so. There are rules for maintaining a Charter Membership. If it matters to you, you mind the rules and pay on time. If you snooze, you lose.
I like SDMB very much. It’s worth $14.95 not to see ads, and besides I have had many years’ worth of amusement, at that rate, in the little time I’ve been here.