PAY-PER-POST?!?!?!?!?!

The BBQ Pit
201

They did this at somethingawful.com, which is part of why I don’t post there anymore. If you were already registered at the time they changed over, you kept your account, but if you got banned you had to pay to get it reactivated. Coincedentally, at the time this happened people started to get banned at an alarming rate. There was a long list of rules you had to follow to avoid being banned, and sometimes they would make temporary rules like ‘no posting between 9:45 and 10:00 PM EST’ and ban all offenders.

As much as I love this board, I won’t pay to post here. I’d have no problem affording it, it’s just the principle of the thing.

202

And what principle is that?

203

I’d vote for that. I’d certainly like to see this tried first. Maybe it’ll work, maybe not, but it’s worth a try. (Hey, it seems to work for InstaPundit.com, and he specifically TELLS people not to donate.)

204

God, what a dweeb. Can’t you see that this issue was already answered? Don’t you read the whole thread before you…

Oh. Oops.

205

Can anybody give me an example of a business that has survived on a program of charging the suppliers of its content, without charging the people using the content? Pay to post, but not to look?

Can anyone give me an example of a message board that went subscription-based, and then thrived?

I can supply any number of real-world and Internet examples of businesses supported by donations (PBS, my local community radio station, etc.). And yet, they haven’t tried it because it would feel weird, and they’re not sure it would work on a long-term basis.

They’re not sure the pay-per-post system would work on a long-term basis either, and if they’re not “feeling weird” about it after all this feedback, then they damned well should be.

I don’t have much against the idea of paying for the privelege to post, on principle. I just wouldn’t do it. It would feel weird.

I would, however, pay to get a banner posted on the site. I’d pay for an Evil Nazi Groundhog t-shirt. I’d cough up money for a donation. I’d pay to put up a classified ad in a classified ad forum. But ask me to pay to be able to respond to posts here, and I’ll be gone.

They’re going to kill the goose before it has a chance to lay any golden eggs. Any business school drop-out should be able to make some sort of profit off of thousands of well-educated, opinionated, generous people who flock to a site to argue, boast, or exchange opinions, and who have an enormous loyalty to the site in question. Use some imagination, try some options.

None of the alternatives have as good a chance of killing off this board as the pay-per-post scheme. None of the schemes, including pay-per-post, have any evidence supporting the conclusion that they’ll work. What possible reason can there be for not trying some alternatives first?

Oh, yeah. Other sites that panicked because of the current economic slump are doing it. But it’s not working for them either.

206

Last post info for Kyberneticist

The date is: 03-15-2001 03:22 PM

The title is: Little graph of SDMB lag, for the curious

Link is: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=1195291#post1195291

but it’s bad. Maybe it’s been deleted???

207

Well, at this stage I think I might go and lurk.

Ah, it’s not if I contribute anything interesting to the boards or anything. I tend to kill more threads than I stimulate, so without me posting the boards will thrive! :smiley:

208

I’m not going to pay for something that I have been able to enjoy for free until now, especially when my money is not going to the people who are actually providing what I am enjoying. I’ll just find whatever free boards the posters I like are moving to and go there.

209

When my message board became a bit more popular (we get between 800-1000 posts per day) than I wanted to pay for - I went to a kind of half subscription model. I upgraded to vBulletin (which makes UBB look like a drawing on a cave wall, btw), and established a group for subscriber accounts. Regular users still had all the functions that they were used to - normal posting privileges, ability to use vBull tags, and whatever else. For a small donation of 5 bucks (for a year) the users can upgrade their account, to have access to private messaging, image attachments, polls, custom avatars and titles, and other fun stuff.

The response was generally very good. Every once in a while someone would post (this was back when I had announced the change but hadn’t implemented it) something nasty, saying that they refused to pay for a message board. I reminded them that I didn’t expect them to: regular visitors (which is still my majority) will still have full access to the forums. The benefactors would simply be getting something extra.

Also, I did a good bit of polling before I implemented the subscription model, and I found that five dollars is about as high as I can charge without running people off. I’d pay 5 or maybe 10 bucks for the SDMB, but if the cost is higher than that, I’m outta here.

210

First you assert that the Reader would be unable to provide any backing to the SDMB if it were non-profit. I point out that the Reader could still make corporate donations . . . oh, but now you say that there would be no difference between that set-up and what it has now. So I reiterate the reasons I stated to begin with and furthermore suggest that there are precedents for corporate-nonprofit relationships out there such as RMcD House . . . oh, but now you “fail to see my point”.

You’re being deliberately obtuse, Civil Defense. Quit busting my chops.

211

If the primary concern about this boards future is related to monetary costs, why not shift it back to the usenet?

Usenet access is easily obtained through google or many other online sources, probably even bundled with most of your internet services at home. It is with mine.

All the benefits of the board could be realized(except for smilies, but I think we’d cope) in moderated usenet groups. And at little to no cost. A few people may have to bug their ISPs admin to add the groups, but simply charter up a few groups, cite costs of maintaining a web-based forum as the reason for their creation and I’m sure that most admins would carry them. Make them all moderated and have a “subscribe before you can post” rule where someone has to self-register their email address before they can post(cuts down on automated spammers), then let the regular mods do their thing.

alt.straight-dope.general-questions.moderated
alt.straight-dope.great-debates.moderated
alt.straight-dope.bbq-pit.moderated
alt.straight-dope.cafe-society.moderated
etc (the naming scheme doesn’t have to be this, can be anything, these are examples)

I wasn’t around when the transition was made from usenet to these boards, there may have been very good reasons for the web forums over usenet, but if we try again, learning from those experiences, and have moderated groups, do those reasons still hold?

I have left feedback that I would not pay to post. I don’t post often enough to get value out of it and I already subscribe to several web forums. I’d go back to lurking. I have also left feedback asking why transitioning the boards back to a usenet-based system wasn’t considered an option in Ed’s list.

Steven

(something I just thought about on preview, if you turned the machine(s) running the SDMB into NNTP servers, we could all subscribe to those servers as news providers if we didn’t already have news feeds that would carry the groups and the current machines would probably last much longer/be easier to administrate. Being an NNTP server is much easier on a machine than being a webserver. The groups could still be registered on the regular usenet so the load would be even more evenly distributed, with many posters/readers picking up feeds from their regular providers. Only those without newsfeeds would have to use the Chicago Reader’s news server.)

212

Just to make sure that you understand . . . and I’m typing slowly here . . . the fact that McDonalds Corporation provides for 100% of the expenses of the (I presume) non-profit entity Ronald McDonald House tends to confirm my point rather than detract from it. If the corporation is putting up 100% of the nonprofit’s expenses anyway, why did they bother setting up the nonprofit in the first place? Unless . . . [Church Lady voice] oh, I don’t know, what could it be, oh perhaps [/Church Lady voice] . . . that there are advantages to having them separate?

213

From what I understand, you’re suggesting that analogously, the Chicago Reader provide 100% of the expenses of the non-profit entity the SDMB? If so, I fail to see the purpose in separating them. They already provide 100% of the operating expenses.

If that’s not what you’re suggesting, I apologize for misinterpreting. I’ll get it someday. :cool:

214

heavy sigh

You ever see the SNL skit where Jerry Seinfeld plays an elementary school teacher?

Never mind . . .

215

What of those of us at the library?
How could we possibly pay?

216

The SDMB people are missing a perfect chance to make money and impress their advertisers.

Instead of a $20 yearly membership fee we should have to pay .02­¢ per post, so, literally, that would be my two cents worth.

217

I hope the SDMB management gets over their ‘distaste’ for taking donations. Paypal and Amazon donations are a little different than charity - they are a valid model for collecting revenue for a commercial web site. A number of editorial web sites are using this approach now (InstaPundit was mentioned, but there are plenty more). I suspect you’d collect enough revenue to at least pay for the bandwidth charges, if not the hardware.

218

Just to put my 2 cents worth in… (sorry, not literally)

I was a member of several horse racing forums that could no longer afford to continue. In the last few weeks of their existence, most of the posts were “We’re now posting at … Join us there.” Which is what would happen here. The community did not change much, it just moved.

I don’t think it will be that big of a deal, except that the Straight Dope boards will just die.

There is a small chance that the Straight Dope column would get weaker, as it seems that most of the questions in the column recently come from the forum. They, of course, could not use any posting on another forum without getting permission from the author, which is, of course, implied here. But that’s a small chance.

219

why was Kyberneticist banned?

Why was Kyberneticist banned?

(yes, they are two different threads)

220

Well, you might find yourself having to explain your decisions to a Judge.

And I think that for many Judges, strong suspicion (such as posting from an anonymizing website, having the same IP address as a previously banned poster, having a similar posting style to a banned poster, or criticizing the moderators on the first post) would be insufficient justification for forfeiting somebody’s $20.

Also, if you banned a poster for some inappropriate comments, that poster might very well be able to point to arguably similar comments by other posters that did not result in banning.

And note that even if the Chicago Reader convinced a Court to see things its way, it would still be out significant time and money.

How likely is it that somebody would bother to sue you over twenty bucks? It’s more likely than you might think. When people put money up, they feel a much stronger sense of entitlement. Note that many U.S. states have “consumer fraud” statutes that give wronged consumers the right to recover multiple damages and attorneys fees. I hope that the Chicago Reader’s legal department is checking whether these statutes might apply.

You could try throwing a forum selection clause or an arbitration clause into the user agreement, but that might not help too much, since people could ignore them and still subject you to a lot of trouble. It’s also possible that courts wouldn’t enforce such a clause.

Another problem is that someone might initiate a “chargeback” on their credit card. My understanding is that without a signature, the merchant usually loses (and gets hit with a chargeback fee).

In any event, this is all sort of academic, because – let’s face reality – this board will, in all likelihood, unravel if you charge people to post.

Which is a shame, because, for all its faults, this is a great bboard. (I wish I could offer something constructive about how to solve the financial problems.)

(standard disclaimer about legal advice)