Oh, one thing that I should add:
If this were a pay site, I would expect The Powers That Be to upgrade the servers and/or hardware behind the scenes. I wouldn’t want to keep paying for the hamster hiccups, gateway timeouts, slow responses, etc. that are common here.
Ordinarily, I don’t bitch about that stuff because this is, after all, a free board.
I would pay something…but I don’t think $25 a month is the way to go. Too expensive for most people.
I don’t mind paying around $30 or $40 a year. But my prediction is that if this became a pay site, the number of posters would decrease dramatically. GQ would no longer be the powerful and useful resource it is now. In the end it’ll probably become a site I’m not willing to pay for.
For that reason I’d rather see banner ads than subscription fees.
No, I’ve been active on a couple online boards that went to “pay-to-post” and just quit posting on them. I don’t pay for anything online aside from the online service itself, and that I only pay $10 a month for.
Wouldn’t pay a mandatory fee. Would donate something every once in a while, every couple of months maybe. Wouldn’t buy overpriced SDMB crap.
I’m a pay member of the the Something Awful boards. I liked their pricing scheme - $10 flat fee, another $10 if you want to use the search, private messages and post images. $5 turns off the banner ads. $5 changes your avatar OR $10 changes somebody else’s avatar. Well, that last bit is really just fun, not necessary.
If it were a subscription service, I wouldn’t have done it. But a flat fee, I have no problem with.
I would pay to be a premium member of The Straight Dope (think Salon) if it would keep the boards free for everyone. $25/year seems right.
I lurk more than post, but enjoy this site enough to pay to keep it up. I also click on ads on sites I like a lot, just to give them numbers, even if I’m not interested in whatever is being sold.
Twiddle
Absolutely. That’s the only pay I’d pay to post. Hell I(almost) never get responses to my threads… I can be ignore in real life for free!
Maybe a plan like weatherunderground.com does: Banner and window ads, but if you pay an annual fee, the ads go away.
“Peak hours” can be pretty frustrating.
$25/year seems good to me.
And to help the fight against ignorance, maybe a system of giving Dopers credits/rebates for correctly answering questions? 
You know, I REALLY like this idea. Even if ads don’t bother you that much, you can pay as a way to support the board. It doesn’t create a class system, so there is no worry about premium vs. non premium members. The ads don’t even have to earn much money, the main goal is to give users the opportunity to pay.
What SCR4 said.
Absolutely not.
Maybe because I have no credit card:dubious:
I wouldn’t. Not that a lot of people would even notice I was gone, I’m sure. But this board doesn’t exist in a vaccuum, there are other places I can interact with people.
I like the system LiveJournal has, where everybody can use it, but paid accounts get you perks that the free users don’t get. Having ads that go away if you pay is a nice idea. I would probably pay something like $25/year, which is what I pay for LJ, and possibly a little more.
I wouldn’t pay because the board as we know it would not exist. You’d lose a lot of members straight off and you wouldn’t get new members joining at the same rate. While I like the boards, there’s no way I could justify that/any amount of money on my limited income. There’s places I can go and play for free. One of the joys of the SDMB culture is that you never know who will answer the questions – go to being a pay site and that would change.
I like the LJ structure too. I’d be willing to tolerate ads (and announcing that you kill popups is not what potential advertisers want to be reading 
).
I would consider it, if it was something reasonable. I pay something like $25 a year for my Salon Premium subscription and it’s well worth it.
But, if I’m going to be a customer, I want to be able to access the site. None of this slow hampster business. None of these timeouts cause the servers are straining. None of the hiccups where half my threads open fine and the other half spend the night loading.
I’d pay. Been posting for a couple of months, and I’m addicted. Have complaints about how long it takes to post. Would an annual fee make the hamsters run faster? Annual fee $50 or less would seem reasonable. We all have computers, and have to pay some kind of server fee. None of that came free, we had to grub for it from somewhere. One more payment to guarantee residence on “Easy Street”, isn’t that right SDMB? Considering the number of members here, the fee shouldn’t be too high, as long as the service we get in return is top quality. Somebody do the math. What would it take to keep us ALL happy.
It’s an interesting board, but “pay-to-post”? No, thanks.
I think pay-to-post would be the worst option as far as moneymaking is concerned. Banner ads, e.g. Google ads, which I hear can be quite lucrative, would be a better solution. The enhanced paid membership makes sense, so long as Dopers’ paid or unpaid status remains confidential.
But the best way of paying for the SDMB is buying books by that Cecil guy.