Courteously?
From Unca Cecil?
I think I know where the blow ended up.
That’s interesting, but off-point. Fred wasn’t introduced to this discussion as an analog for the Reader in any way other than to highlight how a private individual or organization may want to keep financial information private.
So Fred isn’t offering you a service, nor is he going to ask you for money. He’s just someone you know who doesn’t want to disclose how much money he makes. That’s it – that’s all the point that Fred is here to make. And I think it’s a good one.
Brainiac4
Oh that’s fine with me. You win. Yep you’re right. Boy is my face red. 
That’s certainly why I stated in my previous posting:
I trust you will take this posting in the humorous tone which I intended. 
Let’s face it, “Dopers” (including me) have an absolute obsession with:
• presenting the proper argument (or an attempt thereof)
• stating answers to 20 decimal places
• posting rebuttals with lots of cites for the facts as well as scans of text going back to Roman times (with the requisite Latin translations).
But wait a minute - let’s suppose Fred does offer a service (lawn-mowing for example) and then he decides to …
NO - just kidding 
As far as I’m concerned, this is my last posting on this subject.
I don’t really have a dog in this race, but I’ve been lurking on and off this message board for a while and I think I will probably subscribe. I think a better analogy would be this:
You have a job. You are an excellent employee, but you are constantly coming in late and missing work because your car keeps breaking down. Finally you sit down with the boss and tell him that your salary is not enough to buy a new, reliable car. The boss is happy with your work and doesn’t want to fire you for your poor attendance even though he has every right to do so. After lengthy discussion, it is agreed that you will get a raise, in part because the boss likes your work, and in part so that you can get a reliable car.
A few months later, you are still coming late to work and missing work. The boss asks how the extra money is being spent. Is this question out of line? Does the boss have any right to know how you spend your pay? Is it appropriate to say to the boss “you have no right to know”?
Is not accurate. Chicago Reader is boss. You pay us fifteen dollars, we give you message board, and maybe your car don’t get set on fire. What you say? You wanna know where fifteen dollars goes? It fire insurance. Back to the posting mill with you!
There wasn’t some happy little roundtable where the posters said ‘Hey guys, this place doesn’t run so good’ and the CR said ‘Okay, well, we need some money to make it run better’. What happened was, they realized we’d mugged them for a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. They were running a charity and probably couldn’t even deduct it. They’re possibly still in the red. From their perspective, it should never have been free, so any silly claims of entitlement based on the fact that it used to be free are void.
Yes.
No.
Yes.
I think the problem lies in how the PTB keep answering the question about finances. It usually goes like this:
Q: Hey the server still sucks, so how is the money we gave for subscription being spent?
A: The Chicago Reader is a private company and we don’t have to tell you.
I think most people would then like to know why- which is a question that has not been answered until CK’s last post in this thread.
Is this question an appropriate one to ask to strangers? No, but probably neither is this one. Like that other question, this one certainly does not deserve to brushed away on the notion of common courtesy.
Why do I get the feeling that, like history, I’m endlessly repeating myself? The WHY has been clear from day one when Ed announced the switch to Subscriptions … to cover expenses related to the operation of the boards. Those expenses include the hard costs like server etc, and the soft costs, like salaries of the Tech God et al. So, the WHY has always been open and clear.
The details, like how much is spent for this and how much is spent for that… well, I can only shudder at what this audience would do with such information. “WHAT? You spent $3.24 for a wombat-free zisquizzle? Hell, I could get it for $2.49.” “$2.49?? Phooey, I know a guy who can get them, including the left-handed versions, for $2.29.” Endlessly circling…
Ed also made it clear that there was no promise of equipment upgrades. There has been performance improvement, even if it’s not exactly perfect.
If you can think of a more courteous way of putting it, wolf, we’d be delighted to use that in future. The problem has been that people don’t quite get the courteous responses, but they understand “none of your damn business.”
Would that be so terrible?
I don’t think I’m exaggerating if I say it could potentially trigger World War III.
My only cheese with paying is this:
I was an original AOL boards user. For some reason, at the time, and for only a little while (3 weeks?) I questioned my need for a subscription. For the stupidity that was hesitation, I’m not, nor can I be, a Charter Member. I should be! I object to the continued two-tiered charge. We should all, once we’ve rejoined, be able to get the HALF(!) price.
Don’t know why I really care – just the brat in me, whining, like my baby boy…
In itself, no, but people don’t understand why their wonderful suggestion wasn’t taken up… and then get angry and annoyed because they’re not being listened to. And then they leave in huff, or a minute and a huff. Or they continue to repeat their suggestions, yelling into the silence, getting more and more phrustrated, sooner or later finding some postal employees to slaughter…
And, RSSChen, I feel your pain. But, there’s that old folk-saying, “He who hesitates is out the extra $7.”
C K Dexter Haven
As you can see by my previous posting (which I know I said would be my last on this subject - sorry) I was quite willing to be a little less sensitive concerning “where the money goes”.
Since you brought me back into this brouhaha (and I’m not upset about that), I will address your question.
Why not have this topic (and all future ones) become closed threads with an approprite web page explaining why we don’t discuss this topic - ever?
This would free up the mods, the Admins and the Powers That Be to attend to their regular business. Should the subject ever arise, just have a mod close it and post an appropriate link. Just a thought.
"WHAT? You spent $3.24 for a wombat-free zisquizzle? Hell, I could get it for $2.49.
Yes, but if the people who run this board weren’t so cheap and would spend $3.34, they could get an enhanced version of the wombat-free zisquizzle, a self-enabling logistical firmware that allows multi-channelled heuristic encoding.
WHAT? For just 10 cents more, you’d get the fully-configurable web-enabled groupware version. :rolleyes:
Here’s what bugs me: Ed makes no promises, but does say this: “For now we’ll just say this: If board performance improves, we won’t be surprised.”
Now, this whole subscription thing cropped up in response to the increasing sluggishness of the server. Many offers of donations were declined (for the sole purpose of upgrading the server). Subscriptions were finally settled upon by the owners. This, John Carter, is I suppose where I got that the “spirit” of the subscription was to upgrade the server. No, it was never stated, but I think it was implied. Now I’m getting the impression the owners had no intention of upgrading and just wanted the income (something may have been done since the board is running a bit faster, but we know not what, and failures are still happening).
I feel sort of hoodwinked. I don’t feel victimized, and I’m not crying foul (I’m a big boy, and I read the agreement and paid the money), but I am feeling a bit disillusioned, I guess. And from the impression I’ve gotten from this thread, there is no one at the Reader who has the subscriber’s interests on their radar scope, much less in his heart. The server may start deteriorating again, and the Reader will just smile and keep collecting the dues. If folks jump ship, no biggie to them, since this is all just low-hanging fruit to them in the first place.
Where in the world did you get this impression?
I don’t see how you can come to this conclusion, since they was never any explicit expression of a quid pro quo between subscriptions and improved service. To the contrary, TPTB went out of their way to state that there was no guarantee of improved service. Anything to the contrary is an unsupported inference on your part.
Despite the numerous and repeated statements that it was to cover continuing operating costs, that had heretofore been absorbed by the Reader? I’m getting the impression you are willfully ignoring facts which contradict the basis of your whining.
A wholly self-inflicted injury, to be sure.
Through all the tribulations, there has been net growth in the paid membership, so this ominous prediction that the board with wither away and die is idle speculation as well. Though the part about the low hanging fruit is right; and if your whining pushes them over the edge, and the board gets the axe, you can go to sleep at night knowing it was all your fault.
psychloan, your extended metaphor falls apart right here:
Getting a “reliable car” (i.e., upgrading the servers) was never, ever part of the deal. It was never suggested as part of the deal. No one at the Reader ever said for a moment that the switch to paid membership was to upgrade the machinery. The choice was “Members can start paying, or the SDMB can stop existing.” If there was an improvement in board function (which is, obviously, debatable), it was a happy side effect and never a primary reason.
Frankly, I don’t care where my subscription fee goes specifically. I have bigger fish to fry than chasing my 2 pennies per day or whatever it is; the board works most of the time (which is more than I can say for my brother-in-law), and when it doesn’t it comes back up pretty soon.
If I didn’t think it was worth my money, I would stop paying.
Now can we please lock this thread?
By searching on google, I found the following, which had been posted on another message board:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=69647
What’s your point? I see nothing in that statement that ties the adoption of paid subscriptions to getting a new server or improving service.
Not to mention that that thread was from May 2001, about three years before the switch to paid subscriptions.
I think the closest we’ll get to an accounting is this, from Ed’s thread announcing the switch (in my mind I suddenly hear Bruce Willis saying, “Ed’s thread, baby… Ed’s thread.”):
There’s mention of “periodic server upgrades,” but that doesn’t sounds to me like any kind of promise. In that same post, as has previously been quoted in this thread, Ed says:
And it has improved noticeably. Good enough for me.
If you see nothing, it’s because you didn’t read it. The quote clearly mentions performance issues; upgrading the server to address those issues; and the possibility of switching to paid subscriptions to pay for the additional server expense.