I am perfectly willing to pay my $20, but I do like the idea of at least trying the PayPal donation idea for a while, like someone else has mentioned. Just trying it. I’d pony up my $20 donation right off. So would a lot of us. Others would pay $10. Some would pay $15. or $1. Some would pay nothing. But I think the odds are decent that enough income would be generated through donations (especially of the board let people know when they were in need). I think it’s worth a shot!
I really hope they consider this option first. If it doesn’t work, go to the pay-to-post.
Exactly. Not only that, you’re gonna get some really NASTY people-I say it’ll be even harder to ban people. The higher ups and the ones in charge of the board won’t want to alienate potential customers-they’ll lose revenue.
I agree that there is probably no other option. I also agree with all those that worry about how the nature of the board may change for the worse. I agree that $20 is my upper limit, as a gamble, until I find out what the board is like once PTP is standard. My problem is that USD 20 is a lot more money in other countries…
Having people check in from other countries is part of the fun, in my view. How about a smaller fee, i.e USD 10. Yes, most people would be prepared to pay that much, therefore more people should stay with the SDMB. I believe that more money overall would be generated if the fee was USD 10, as opposed to USD 50.
I hope the Powers That Be keep in mind that the initial payment will be a bit of a gamble, as none of us know how the nature of the board will be changed. Perhaps USD 10 for the first year, with USD 20 for the second year and for all subsequent years, or 5 years for USD 50 ?
Actually, I usually DO have a better reason than “I just don’t like him or her”, it’s just that I’m tired of explaining my reasons to the TMs. No matter what my reason, there’s gonna be SOME people who just don’t like it for one reason or another. I do have to explain to TubaDiva and Ed if they request it. However, nearly all of the time they don’t request it. I’d damn well better have a good explanation if they DO ask for one, though.
I agree with matt and yosemitebabe, as well as a few other posters, with the idea of some sort of system of donations.
Perhaps one could take the donations idea one step further and ask those who are willing to pledge an amount of money in order to keep these boards open to everyone do so. I’m sure that there would be some way to keep it honest, and set safeguards. Could we at least not try this for one year and see the results, instead of imposing a set fee and alienating a number of regular posters or discouraging the influx of new members?
Different situation, Shayna. That was almost a year ago, and I believe that mandatory pay to post was not being discussed. I would hope that the Chicago Reader would tolerate “feeling weird” in order to prevent the loss of thousands of SDMB posters.
If there is a more contemporary discussion of the Donation idea, I would welcome a link.
What did I tell you? Sam Stone has made an excellent summary of negative network externalities. I think we have a Harvard case study in the making here.
OK, I’ll state my own position: I’ll contribute a “suggested donation” of $20 if and only if the SDMB turns itself into a non-profit. Otherwise . . . see ya, wouldn’t want to be ya. I’ll be at About.com if anybody needs me.
I think the flaw with making the SDMB an entirely non-profit entity would mean that funding from the Reader would be cut completely. FWIU, the administration is not charging subscription fees to fund the entire project, just to make up for what the Reader itself won’t fund. Without the support of the Reader, we’d also be faced with basic connection fees, the necessity of hiring new support personnel, and housing and storage.
Why couldn’t the Reader make a large corporate donation? I believe that they could even keep their corporate logo on the board by virtue of their status as a major “benefactor”. Or am I wrong here?
Erm, then why bother separating them into a different entity if they’re just going to invest their money right back into the SDMB? What’s the difference in the funding as it is now as compared to a corporate donation? Sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.
To state the last point more directly: it appears that quite a few of us would prefer making a non-mandatory donation rather than a mandatory payment on our credit cards. Doubly so if we can be assured that the money is actually going to support the SDMB rather than into the Reader’s unrelated SG&A.
Along the same lines, why isn’t Ronald McDonald House officially part of McDonalds? (OK, I’m assuming here that it isn’t, but you see my point . . .)
If everyone who CAN’T see the further information is using Netscape, it’s probably a table tag issue. MSIE will display the content of a table even if it’s missing its end tag </table>. Netscape won’t display the table at all, or any hint that there is one, unless the end tag is present.
