Originally posted by Stink Fish Pot:
This has been something that has been brought up time and again, at least since I’ve been reading the boards. As you have noted, the closest to this is Jerry who has, I believe, always been part time. I’m guessing that TPTB are reluctant to hand over what little cash is available to pay someone full time. And so the problems continue.
Bring in a full time tech guy and you need more money which means more ads.
1.) I run Chrome at home with an adblocker and I didn’t have any problems before my account was upgraded.
2.) It’s my impression that anybody who’s been infected here has very obviously been infected by the site: e.g., their browser is hijacked while they’re viewing a SDMB page. I don’t think any of the complaints have been about nonspecific computer oddness.
3.) Leaving the SDMB now would be locking the barn door after the horse, if you are indeed infected: an empty gesture that won’t fix the problem you already have. Your better bet would be to install and enable a Chrome adblocker and keep running your antivirus software (you *do *use antivirus software, right?). There’s a sticky around here somewhere for how to clean your computer of malware, if you want to get really serious about making (more) sure you’re not infected. Ah, here it is: How to protect and clean your computer from malware.
This is a very good suggestion.
I think this highlights one of the biggest problems with the SDMB; it’s this weird chimera creature that isn’t all of one thing or another. On one hand, it’s trying to generate revenue; on the other hand, it doesn’t have the robust (potentially custom) site design or staff of a revenue-generating website. And IIRC, the SDMB has even *turned away *in the past people who’ve offered *free technical help *just because it didn’t like them or questioned their motives (and not in a “they’re going to hack the site” sort of way but rather “they’re trying to make the staff look bad” sort of way–and who the hell cares, if they can in fact make the site run better?).
Not knowing the ins and outs of running a board, I always ask this question whenever this issue arises: how come all the other boards of this size manage to carry on without these problems and without (apparently) teetering on the edge of bankruptcy?
My WAG has always been that they’re also hosting all of the SD archives and paying salaries out of the ad revenue, which mainly comes from the board. Or something like that. But it is, after all, only a WAG.
Why don’t you pay for your own membership?
How do we know they don’t? Just because it’s not shouted from the rooftops doesn’t mean that everything is hunky dory. I know of many boards that have donation drives and struggle financially. They start out as a labour of love but eventually get too big for one or two dedicated people to run effectively. I think one thing that stymied this board was their refusal to accept any kind of voluntary financial assistance from its members. If this board had a “donate to keep this board running” link somewhere there probably would’ve never been a need for paid membership and/or advertising. A lot of people have begged to be able to donate money to the SDMB at various stages in its history but Ed was never interested. It’s not just money either, it’s technical expertise, server hosting etc. Posters here have tried to keep the place free by offering services and money, none of it ever accepted.
OK. I (sort of) lied. I knew there would be some things I would need to clean up after my post, so I’m here just for that.
Of course it’s nonsense. It’s called a joke. Like this thread. When you read it, you realize that the only people who suffer from this problem seem to be people who don’t pay to post, however there is a lot of hand-wringing by those that don’t suffer the problem. **TubaDiva’s **response struck me as a bit ridiculous, as instead of immediately looking for the problem on her end, she wanted people to send her screen shots. Screen shots would help, for sure, but it was her tone that was off-putting. If my computer gets infected, the last think I’m thinking of is helping out the SDMB by gathering screen shots for them. I’ve been around long enough to usually ignore **TubaDiva’s **tone, since she does seem to have a difficult time communicating with the written word, but this time, she was a bit too snarky for her own good. How about "We are working diligently to fix this problem and appreciate your patience. We understand how important it is for our members (paid or unpaid). To help us get to the bottom of this, please send us any screenshots you may have of the error. Since none of the staff have seen this error, it would be helpful to see what’s popping up. In the meantime, we will create a dummy account that posts like the free accounts, to see if we suffer the same fate. That will speed up the process of solving this issue for all. Thank you again for your infinite patience.
and this
Those two snippets that you quoted from me aren’t even from this thread. They were from another thread, and they were written tongue-in-cheek. I have never paid to post here on principle. When I couldn’t post, I went away. When I could, I came back. Most people who have been around know I’ve never asked to be sponsored, but there are others who like donating money to the boards, so I have on 2 occasions given permission for people to sponsor me if they so choose. With the problems for non-paying members, perhaps I should ask for someone to pay for me.
The think about the SDMB is that there is no business model. This place existed before Ed et al. decided to make a buck from this site, so they tried to retro-fit a money making scheme into an already-existing community.
I have never seen an outpouring of support (financial or otherwise) to keep a board and community going as this one. Members have offered to pay more money to post. Members have offered their technical services for free. Every suggestion has been rebuffed. Perhaps this problem, of screwing up someone’s computer for daring to post here without paying for the right will scare some money out of the freeloaders while getting others to move on.
This is no way to run a message board, Ed. I, like most others here, are on other messageboards with less members. Some with more members. They all have two things in common. They run the same software SDMB does, and they don’t download malware to folks that post. And that included the message boards that are free.
I don’t think TPTB are doing this on purpose. On the other hand, their approach to solving the problem has been weak at best.
NOW, I will go away. I apologize to anyone who was confused by my sense of humor in any other posts. I tried to make this post humor-free.
If I may ask, what is this principle that prevents you from paying? Subscribing at the moment is essentially voluntary; you seem to have no problem with the notion of people choosing to donate. Yet you don’t do it. If you honestly can’t afford it, I’ll take your word for it and hope your circumstances improve. But I’d hardly call that a principle.
That’s not true, actually. The board was hosted on America Online starting in 1995; we did this because they paid us (in retrospect, quite generously) to be a content provider. In 1999 they stopped. We moved to the web and have tried to make money in other ways. It’s not as though there were some pre-existing community upon which we greedily descended. There was an earlier Usenet newsgroup, alt.fan.cecil-adams; I don’t know if that’s still around, but it was independent of us and we have never interfered with it.
Thank you for posting a sticky.
The first one is from post #159 of this thread. You posted it today.
The second one is from a different thread.
I assume you mean the second one was written tongue-in-cheek. Fair enough, didn’t realize it, my bad.
I’m curious, what is the principle?
If you are advertising that it’s ok to sponsor you, wouldn’t that be very similar to “asking”? Seems like a minor difference between the two.
Which brings me back to my question: why don’t you pay for yourself? Did Ed spill BBQ sauce on your favorite shirt? 
Bump, this is not a thread that should fall off the front page.
So has any progress been made to eliminating the guilty ad provider? Has there been any steps taken to prevent this problem from causing further user issues?
I gotta say that I am curious as well.
YMMV
If you missed it, there’s now a board-wide Announcement post on the subject. (I.e., it shows up at the top of every forum’s TOC page.)
I’m continuing to inquire, but the news so far is not good.
Speaking of alternative revenue streams, any chance of getting the store back up and running? And/or getting some shirt designs that people might be interested in buying?
It’s on the list of things to do (the secure server died and must be rebuilt), but frankly it’s a low priority. Merchandise income under the most optimistic scenario will never come remotely close to replacing ad revenue.
Shrug. I’ve known some folks who support a very large site mostly off of merch. Granted, theirs is a site that lends itself to very marketable items, but.
That, and folks who sneak a quick peek at work without logging in and nuke the computer :smack: