In the announcement thread, Jerry tells us he finally fixed whatever the hell happened and he’s ever so graciously offered us a three-day subscription extension to compensate for the loss of posting over the weekend.
So here’s my question. What ever happened to free posting? The idea was first brought up in March, for Christ’s sake, and in April, when everybody thought you guys were just making a play for one last round of subscriptions, Ed tossed out a “June or July” time line. So why in the world does Jerry think it’s meaningful at all to offer me three days of posting when my subscription doesn’t expire until next year?
Jerry’s the tech guy, he’s not the one who is making the decision about free posting. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing more he can do than that. Well, that and get the board back up quite quickly this morning.
While I’m in favor of going to free posting*, I wish that they hadn’t announced it in advance. Despite all the hedging Ed did in his announcement, I knew people would complain if it happened later than expected (and these things always do). In my opinion, it would have been better if they had held off the announcement till there was a firm commitment and timetable.
*don’t get me wrong, I’d pay a heck of a lot more than what they are charging
No, you fucking mental deficient, I want to know why, in light of the “free posting any day now!” talk from last spring, a subscription extension for next spring should matter. I hear they’re ass-kissing over in ATMB; maybe you should be there.
My complaint about the whole thing is this: when Tuba made her first amendment to the posting announcement, saying posting had been disabled, she said something along the lines of: “we asked you to stop posting, but you persisted, so we disabled posting”. Why does that irk me? There were several people in the Pit communicating via thread titles, as that was all that would show. Not only that, but there was a sticky in the Pit from Rico saying we could continue to do so, prior to Tuba’s announcement that posting was disabled. So, it seems to be that we were being chided for posting in the only way possible, a way which had been endorsed by a mod of the forum in which we were doing it. Of course, she changed that part of the announcement this morning. I’m not all, “OMG Tuba sucks!” It just irks me to be chided for posting on a board that we pay for, in the only possible way at the time, in a manner we were given permission to use. Or am I missing some details here?
This. Also those of us who do intend to continue paying if/when the board goes free, will also enjoy it. And those Charter Members who intend to stop paying will also get three advertisement-free days come April, even if the board goes free before then. After all, still you are a paying member for the duration you paid for, even if the board goes free tomorrow.
That is the only part of this that really irritated me in any way. I understand that tech problems happen and I don’t demand irrational levels of perfection on internet message boards, even if I am paying to use them. Shit happens, you know? But Tuba’s initial response was kind of condescending and seemed to be blaming us for the problem. I was enjoying the silliness in the Pit just fine and then that announcement went and put a sour spin on a situation I viewed purely from a lighthearted perspective. Perhaps she realized that and this is why she modified the announcement almost immediately.
I’m not really a grudge-holder either. I’m just backing you up.
[Prof. Pangloss]Think of it this way – if you renewed today, you sat out for free while others sat out on their subscription time.
If you renewed on Friday, you’ll still get the extension if they don’t go “free” within the next year… [/Pangloss] – and I’m not so sure they really will, either!
Was the board really down all weekend? I saw posts being made on Saturday. (Hmm, then again, maybe they weren’t new threads though.)
As far as Tuba’s post goes … yeah, she’s usually condescending, even when shit like this isn’t going down (sometimes the attitude I get from her as an admin is that she’s barely tolerating our presence – not always, certainly, she can be friendly too; it’s just … sometimes she really seems like she can’t stand to answer questions from us peons). But in fairness, I can well imagine she was plenty irritated/frustrated with the situation. It is annoying to clean up dozens of meaningless posts, and the Pit stuff was pretty stupid. Still as others have said, Rico gave us permission to vent using that forum, and people did, so her snark wasn’t justified. Glad she deleted it.
To the topic: I dunno, I paid up and probably will continue to contribute to the board even after free posting, so the extension is a nice enough gesture. (Especially since that wasn’t no three day outage.) That said, I do feel sorry for the people who took Ed’s mention of imminent free posting as gospel, and thus let their memberships lapse. Seems a shame to have lost those posters.
So what if the subscription extension is meaningless? Currently, we’re paying for posting. We “paid” for three days’ posting that we didn’t get. Anticipating any grumbling about contractual obligations, we are gracefully extended a nickel’s worth of extra service.
So some people may not receive the full benefit of that nickel because the subscription model may be discarded.
All I wanted to say is that none of the free messageboards I post on have ever gone down. Shouldn’t I expect a better product/service out of something I’m paying for than something I get for free?