Is this place as good since they started charging?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Heh. So true.

I think there have been a couple of negative consequences of the board going pay-to-play:

  1. Less participation overall. This has become really noticeable now that we’re in the yearly summer slump.

  2. Less chance of an answer in GQ.

IMHO, the negatives of the decreased participation are more than offset by the increased quality of the average post. We just don’t seem to have as many of those posters who weren’t jerky enough to be banned, but who didn’t really contribute positively. We have fewer drive-bys, and also fewer posters who seem to be here only to flirt.

In other words, the signal-to-noise ratio is a lot higher.

The GQ is more troubling, but you take the bad with the good, I guess.
I’ve been here over 5 years now, and I still look at the boards almost every day. I find that there’s always something interesting or entertaining or informative to read. I’ve always gone through periods where I get bored with the boards and stay away for a few days or weeks or months. But I keep coming back. In many ways, I think the boards are really better than ever.

As far as the moderators–I just don’t see what there is to complain about. (And they look so cute in their jackboots and little moderator hats.)

62

Technically, Lynn is an administrator, not a moderator, so you still haven’t had a mod give you the time of day. :smiley:

(Don’t forget the moderator underoos, Green Bean.)

63

I hope you’re only joshing me here.

64

P2P should not be used in this context because it’s more commonly used to refer to peer-to-peer, IMHO.

65

Although I’m primarily a lurker, I had no problem coughing up my subscription fee both for the ability to use search feature and to ask the occasional question(s) that I’d like answered. Even though a lot of the oldtimer posters that I enjoyed reading have moved on, there are some equally entertaining and informative newcomers.

I get my moneys worth.

66

What about it?

67

What’s this about another SDMB-like board you have to be invitied to? I never heard of that before. What’s the URL?

68

:check’s Revtim’s join date:

You’ve heard of it, I bet – it’s the Unaboard.

Another spin-off board would be OpalCat’s Fathom board.

69

Yes, but I don’t recall needing to be invited or sponsored to join it.

70

You simply need to try to prove you are not a banned troll or addgoblin returning, or supply a work/registered student or educator/government e-mail for reference sake. Inviting/sponsoring is not technically correct, although if a Member I know vouches personally for another, that usually, but not always, counts.

I still don’t know why my place was invoked in this thread. While I will talk about it if someone brings it up, it’s not like I advertise it, and it was not impacted by P2P on the SDMB in any way at all.

71

Yes, the dread “addgoblin”, so much worse than the “subtractgoblin” or “arctangentgoblin”. I meant “assgoblin”…

72

Hm, I thought it was a medical term, some kind of hemogoblin or something.