Donations to a for-profit entity are not something the IRS is cool with.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. There was a radio station that was about to go under because they couldn’t afford to pay on air talent, many of the folks in the town showed up and did DJ work for free. The IRS got wind of it, took the station to court and lost. Seems if there’s no evidence of people being asked to do it against their will, it’s okay. (Besides, you could always get around it by charging $1 for the services, etc. Several execs at major corporations have done that in lieu of a normal salary because the company was in such dire straights.)
Just a couple words from your friendly neighborhood vBulletin fanboy.
It’s a night-and-day difference between vBull 3.0.7 and 3.6.x. The features for both users and administrators are far too lengthy to list, so I’ll just mention a couple of my favorites.
- The plugin/product system that lets you add functionality on the fly. I installed one that lets users pick which forums they want to search when clicking “New Posts.” And one that adds an arcade.
- AJAX functionality that allows you to quick-reply and edit posts without reloading the page, saving a little stress on the server.
- Reporting a post creates a new thread in the forum of the admin’s choosing.
- Infraction system allows mods/admins quick access to warning bad behavior and banning socks/spammers. I can (and often do) ban a spammer in 2 clicks.
- “Multi-quote” allows you to add text from several posts into your response. You have no idea how handy this is until you get used to it and go somewhere that doesn’t have it.
- Sig limits that let the admin specify all kinds of restrictions on signatures.
Also, the limit on the database size isn’t a vBulletin thing. There are giant boards that use vBull without issue.
Regarding avatars - even if the site allows them, individual users can disable them on their screen.
And comparing updating vBulletin to the newest version to upgrading from Exchange 5.5 to 2003 is like comparing building a paper airplane and a real airplane. 
Thank you for real data. I did not know that the upgrade was that simple. I could only compare it to my experiences. Of course many people in my company had no clue as to how hard the exchange upgrade was. Some of the admins had hinted the upgrade was difficult, I took them at their word. Perhaps you should Email them directly with your experience.
Jim
At the risk of sounding like a cranky bastard, I’m going to say he shouldn’t even bother. Why? Well, you remember when the board was down for a couple of days because of a harddrive failure? Someone who runs another board that uses an older version of vB was bitching about how long it was taking to get things up and running, and noted that they’d had a similar problem with their board some time in the past and that it didn’t take them but a few minutes to get it up and running again.
Almost any time the Reader has had to do something for the Dope, it’s been met with much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, no matter how simple it is. Hell, the time they had a pipe burst in the basement which wiped out their net connection, they couldn’t even be bothered to call one of the mods so that they could pass the information on via the “spin off boards.” A Doper had to call the Reader and ask what the hell was going on. We’re a buncha redheaded step-children. (Oh, and remember the temp board? That was cheap to use, but nope, they didn’t want to bother to do that, either.)
It should be done on a test server first, of course, but in my experience it’s pretty straightforward. Back everything up, then click next about 20 times, and voila. 
I wonder how those stories turn out.
If you donate your time for $1 to a for-profit entity, and you are a $250,000/yr exec, I would assume the IRS would be on the entity for something along the lines of “value received.” We may not hear of this, but hard to believe that wouldn’t be the position of the IRS.
I dunno, ask Lee Iococca, as that’s what he did when he took over Chrysler.
I think that a lot of those $1 salary guys get stock options in lieu of salary that can end up being worth way more than the salary would have been if they do the job well.
Anyway, I agree with the majority on most of the points made here. I don’t think any of us who have been here for a while want animated smilies or avatars. As I said in my OP, I would still pay my $15 if things were just as they are now, slow speed and all. It’s fine with me if the Reader happens to make a healthy profit on us which I don’t think is the case.
I just didn’t like the crappy way some people were treated six months ago because they expressed some well deserved skepticism about difinitive statements made by an Administrator. As it turns out, those people were right. I think that it’s fair to ask just exactly what the fuck were these secret better things that were supposedly already in the works and are they still coming.
I just recently took a week long course in writing proposals. we were told that one could EITHER charge out a flat rate for all donated labor (at about $16 per hour- the ‘average’ I believe) OR charge out what one would reasonable pay for that sort of labor/work. don’t know if that helps.
I was unaware that donating small amounts of time or equipment to a for-profit business was a big deal. I’ve done it many times. I “guest-deejayed” for the local radio station one day just because it was fun. I donated a couple of old computers I didn’t need to a company I worked for because they’d make handy testbeds. I’ve made patches to open-source software and sent them back to the company that originally developed them. What’s the big deal?
Horses have bedrock?
If any of these events comes to pass, you got some 'splainin to do…
Lewis Carroll explained it best:
See, and “Jam Today” is one of the two bands my fictional characters play in (the other is “Snails without Butter”).
From ATMB
(bolding mine)
This seems to be contradictory.
The problem many people seem to be having is that you frequently do.
Speculation is cool. Making clear definitive statements when you have no authority is bad. Criticizing your customers when they doubt you and not apologizing when you ended up being wroing is unacceptable.
She’s still here and still very much in power.
Must be completely acceptable by the powers that be.
Then again, by re-upping to post, we all share in the repsonsibility of her continuation at her post, attending to her duties and catering to her whims of will.
What can I say, trainwreck for trainwreck, it’s among the most entertaining $15 I’ve spent this year. But then again, I’m in a weakend condition and easily amused.
I’d just like to say, as the OP of the ATMB thread that spawned this whole mess, that, like most of the other posters in this thread all I really want is the ability to search old posts and fast access. No avatars. No spiffy features. No JPEG sigs. That’s all.
Is it really to much to ask?
When this all came up before, and I made the comments about it being a familiar tune, TubaDiva went out of her way to impugn my character and call me dishonest.
There’s probably still much she’d like to promise me, but I think it’s pretty obvious who was being dishonest.
The problem can be explained easily:
They changed us from a fan club into a customer base, but still treat us like a fan club.
I don’t foresee this changing. Ever. And I wish the admins would just be for-fuck’s-sake HONEST and say, “Sorry! You get bupkes.”