Technically that’s true, but if you install a third-party hack and it breaks the forum, vBulletin won’t help you to fix it, beyond suggesting a reinstall. I think that’s the biggest fear the SDMB people have.
Nevermind.
To be a bit of a pisser here, I’d like to point out that when the board’s had problems and been down for days, it’s taken far, far longer for it to come back up than it should have, according to Dopers who know vB well and have had to solve identical problems. Now, I don’t think that there’s anything unreasonable about the board going down at 3 AM and staying down until later on in the day (after all, [del]Jeffy[/del] Jerry’s got to sleep sometime) if there’s a relatively simple problem, but if it stays down for a week because [del]Jimmy[/del] Jerry forgot to close a tag some place and isn’t allowed to take the 30 seconds needed to correct the problem, that’s a whole 'nother ballgame.
We know that they can make quick changes to the board without it going offline for long periods of time (i.e. the adding and then removing of the banner ads for subscribers), so I would hope that they wouldn’t try to drag out the canard that “It’s a complicated process and we just don’t have time to do it right now, and when we do, the boards will be down for X amount of time.”
I really appreciate the thoughtful and detailed answer, Ed. It makes me feel much better, and I think, or at least hope, that all these members who pride themselves on their intelligence can appreciate the economic realities involved here.
Of course, good capitalists realize that prices do go up, don’t we? I hate to see a vendor I like undercharging just because I know he’s not being competitive, which puts his business in jeopardy. I think Creative Loafing/Chicago Reader could reasonably hike the prices at least a little just on the basis of energy costs alone (that’s what everyone else is doing).
I run a fairly complex site completely on vB. The database is MUCH smaller than here, but my site is *modded *up the whazoo. I have on occasions completely messed up something, which is why you are supposed to do regular (hopefully daily) backups, and you backup right before you touch anything.
But unless you delete your database, and don’t have a backup, you can always revert to a previous state. I don’t understand why it would take many days.
But how many Dopers would be willing to pay $20/yr (Don’t answer that!), like some folks have said they’d be willing to cough up? I’m sorry, but even if we get all the promised bells and whistles, I can’t see the content of this board being worth that much for me. I can even see the quality of the board going waaaay down with a large spike in the price as a number of people will leave at that point, and we’d get far fewer people signing up.
If the board has to have payments, then a multi-tiered system, with the option of paying more (somewhat like Radiohead did with their latest album release) if a person wants, seems to me to be the way to go. You can bet that after the first outage due to equipment problems, the Reader would get a lot of people coughing up extra money. Now, if TPTB decide to have an “outage” whenever they needed a few extra bucks from the masses, there’d probably be a stampede for the door.
Mighty_Girl, when we had a long outage not too long ago, someone here who runs a board that had had an identical outage prior to that, wondered why it was taking so long for things here to get up and running. I know next to nothing about these kinds of things, but if a Doper whom I respect says that there’s something flaky about how long it takes to get the Dope up and running after an outage, I’m going to listen. (I’ll not mention who it was publicly as I don’t know how they’d feel about it, but I will say that they’re one of the few Dopers whose word I’ll accept as gospel on anything they post as they Generally Know Their Shit[sup]TM[/sup].)
I am not saying there couldn’t be a reason, I just can’t think of one. My site has been down for hours due to server problems, never for days.
Maybe I am just lucky.
Um, I had hoped it was clear I was agreeing with you, and trying to remind others to be as well-mannered as you had been. You should know I don’t have anything against you, personally, and certainly hope that, when I am disagreeing with you, it will be particularly clear. 
See above; I wasn’t referring to you, then.
Moderators already have their hands full moderating this board with the relatively insane (in a good way) people we have here. Can you really imagine trying to mod a board filled with the sort of childish drivel that clutters up the more popular boards around the 'net? I have offered to be a moderator here, but I assure you I have no interest in moderating that kind of juvenile junk (it’s gonna be bad enough teaching freshmen in high school, tyvm!).
I find most of what I read in Cafe Society to be more intelligent than the sort of junk that clutters the web. As I pointed out, sports threads are filled with much better discussions of sports issues than normally found in regular life. I think the same can be said about the discussion of most other things. Now, perhaps I just don’t read the fanboi postings in Cafe Society, and, thus, simply have ignored a problem in that regard. But I would still contend we have a higher quality discourse even in Cafe Society, or IMHO, or even in MPSIMS.
To get to the heart of what I was trying to say, avatars, themselves, are not the issue (or smileys, or sigs). What is at issue is a re-thinking of the philosophy of why we are here. In the past, we have been here because it was place for those who found Uncle Cece’s wisdom fascinating to congregate and share thoughts. Clearly, there is an upper bound to how popular the site will be if that remains its purpose. If the owners of the Reader want to try and capitalize (literally) on the general popularity of the site, by making it even more popular, marketing to a wider audience that doesn’t necessarily think that Cecil Adams is that big a deal, I think the Board will lose quite a bit of what I think makes it enjoyable, and a place I spend an inordinate amount of time habitating.
PS: Anyone who cannot see the difference between avatars and graphical smileys either isn’t trying hard, or is blinded by their desire to make some point. Graphical smileys are simply emoticons with attitude; I am quite happy the Board doesn’t offer the more obnoxious ones that I find quite fun to use in other places (such as AOL or AIM).
I don’t agree, unless they are going for the business plan Dead Badger pooh poohed back on page 2. ie “ring 'em off and milk 'em”. There are a bunch of people who will stay if they bump the price, sure, but if they are going for the apparent strategy of building new membership, it might not be such a good idea. That’s trying to set up a more exclusive club, ISTM.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Creative Loafing wants to make this place even more “high falooting” by staying way behind forum fashions. “The Well” (Salon’s forum, though originally independent, ISTR) charges a whopping $10 or 15/month. From the preview page it looks like usenet, ffs. It’s the anti-avatars dream, right down to the spending extra money not to do it. 
Though for their money they also get webspace which doesn’t seem restricted. They also have your real name readily available to all other members. A little radically retro, you might say.
On the other side, my website with a Gig of space only costs $4/month and Live/DeadJournal is free or 19.95/15 per year. To bump the price around here they’re probably have to add a feature or two for most newbies.
I like a multi-tiered idea, or rather two-tiered with buyable add ons.
I hang on those boards as well - and Brainiac4 makes the same comments (which is why he referenced it). I like this board for what that one ISN’T - and I like that board for what this one ISN’T. Part of that is the whole avatars and smilies. (The other part of it is that people over there are just so darn amusing - in a way people over here aren’t. On the other hand, we have our own sort of amusing posters).
That is an excellent, pointed counter-argument. Hmm… How about we permit avatars (and other personalizations) in MPSIMS and Cafe Society and forbid them in GQ? Ie, make some boards about the community, and others about the text. Interesting compromise, no? (I think Exapno might second this)
Also remember, a strong sense of community and in-crowd may TURN OFF new users.
And as for keeping SDMB’s character, it’s all about it being referred THROUGH cecil’s columns. Ie., if people start coming here not because they love Cecil (search engines, etc), they will more likely not be the type of people who are here already.
Nod
Ok, I can see where you’re coming from. But that’s exactly the wrong place. You’re looking at it from the “big-picture” of internet becoming more rich. My point is that it’s a meaningless analysis (that gets Web 0.1, 1.0, 2.0, etc going nowhere), and you have to examine each question on its own merits. Answering “why should we have avatars” with “we’re gonna see more images/videos/etc in websites” is a total non-sequitor. Total non-sequitor. Talking about specifics, like how it helps to identify posters (or how that’s undesirable), isn’t. Your 20-year experience with the Internet is a strength, but it’s also a weakness if you begin thinking you can analyze specific concerns with sweeping, nebulous generalizations. Like I said, it’s a hallmark of evangelists and it gets silicon valley absolutely nowhere.
Unless someone can do a Gallup-type poll on “would you be more likely to visit/join the SDMB if it allowed tasteful avatars”, the decision over whether or not it makes a potential difference has to largely be based on looking at other sites with successful business and operations models. My impression, including on the tech-only academic sites I am on, is that avatars are a common theme, with the implication that they are or will be expected in a professional site of the current, or near future. Others have a different impression; perhaps some sort of survey or study is needed to assess what the Straight Dope is on avatars.
Again, “everyone else uses them” and “let’s ask users” is a little bit removed from the specifics of the issue. Una, what do you have to say about the actual purpose of avatars (easily identifying posters, putting an emphasis on who’s posting as much as on what), its role on SDMB, and if that role is different depending on which part of SDMB we’re talking about. Or even, in fact, if strengthening social bonds all over the forum will detract new users from joining. Avatars and other personalizations are in direct contrast to the usual anonymity of the internet that often catalyzes participation.
And anyway, stop trying to monetize/popularize the board, and start trying to monetize Cecil’s brand and accumulated works. I still don’t see a “Give the gift of the Straight Dope” link on the homepage, the covers to his book are still extremely unappealing, a google search of “do people have sex with animals” reveals no links to Cecil’s column in any of the first 10 pages (incidentally, a friend linking that column and a few others is what originally got me hooked), and no “email to a friend” link anywhere!
Focusing and improving the core brand (which is hugely un-exploited) will make you much more money than SDMB (which, beside free-to-post, hasn’t got all that much more potential).
Seriously, please point this out to Ed.
A quick note about banner ads from Business Week:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_46/b4058053.htm
TPTB sure picked a great time to implement them.
Apologies if I don’t remember who said what since I last posted, but to all those who have posted about avatars used successfully at certain sites. I think that the use of avatars at technical or professional sites is much less of an issue than at a general purpose site. On a technical site one can assume that the range of expertise is deep and the overall expertise high without knowing anything about the individual poster. On a general site, in which some people are here just for the fun and community, that’s no longer true. Sites have cultures. The culture of this site has always been plain, with the emphasis on the content, which means the words. Avatars are a major, major change to that.
And as far as I know, nothing technical is done on these boards that affects only one forum or specific forums. It’s all or nothing. So no avatars on GQ while allowing their use elsewhere is probably a non-starter.
I do agree that publicity and promotion is needed and I’ve always been baffled why nothing has ever been done. Good promotion always brings back the money invested, although I realize that quantifying the return is next to impossible, which is the rationale given for not spending the money. Short-sighted but extremely common thinking.
And it’s internet prophet, not internet profit. Sorry, but that’s been bothering me. 
Then those new users can sod off. I’m here because I feel like part of the community.
(bolding added)
Not to get into slippery-slope territory, but we allow people to adopt pseudonyms with very few rules about what can and can’t be used. What’s so different about small graphics? Unless you’re using Lynx or disabling graphics and stylesheets, you’re seeing some amount of “eye candy” right now.
Does it help if you think of avatars as an extension of user names? Embedded graphics are the devil, but avatars don’t seem to me to be that bad.
I guess my main objection to avatars is not really the avatars per se (since I’ll just turn them off), it’s that their implementation would generate a feeling of having done something, of having gained a new feature, when in fact they’re merely window dressing. To me they’re a complete irrelevance; they add little to the board that wasn’t there before, and certainly have nothing to do with what this board is about. I can’t imagine there’s a single person who has left for the lack of them, or turned away because they weren’t here. Personally I like the style of the board as it is; the more cluttered posts get with extraneous crap, the harder it is (for me) to read threads as a conversation. But as long as I can achieve that myself, I don’t really care what options are available that I’m not using.
To my mind, new features come in two categories: those which deal with the board’s fundamental purpose (discussion and debate); and minor fripperies. It bothers me to see too much energy expended debating the merits of something as trivial as avatars and smilies, when there are so many more interesting things that could be done, some of which wouldn’t even require TPTB to make any software changes. With all the new types of community website that have emerged in the last few years, it’s a bit depressing to be talking this much about something as basic as avatars. They’re not going to make us any more interesting.
Like what?