For those of you who don’t do this, why not? Not a challenge, just simple curiosity. It’s really cheap-- $15/ year or something. Anybody have a good reason?
Cite please … seriously … if such a thing exists … it’s extremely well hidden … I thought this “membership” thing was strictly by invitation only … but don’t forget, it’s about $5 in shipping to mail that many pennies.
Back at you: why? What would I get that I don’t already get free?
Because the benefits aren’t worth it to me.
Thanks for reminding me…
…and…
…Done!
I would happily pay the fee and did for quite a few years. Then I decided to change my email address to one set up solely for this board but through disuse I forgot about it as time went by. When it got to be about time for renewal I checked and learned that I had overshot the deadline by about five days, having not gotten the notice from Jerry that it was coming due. I wrote to him explaining the situation and asked to be allowed to pay up and retain my charter membership. I heard bupkis in return. I probably would have acceded to paying the regular fee with no charter membership had I been given the courtesy of a response, but I wasn’t so I didn’t.
There are several rules around here I’ve never understood and making charter members lose their designation over nonpayment of the fee on time is one of them. IMO, once a charter member, always a charter member and a person should be allowed to retain that status once they’ve paid the fee even if years have lapsed. The reason for this is that if they had joined as an original member they will always have been an original member. IOW, letting the fee lapse doesn’t suddenly erase the fact that the poster first joined when he did. The established policy all but guarantees that once a charter membership has lapsed the board will no longer get money from the lapsee, and it seems self-defeating to me. But I haven’t been asked to run the board (thankfully) so it isn’t my decision to make.
At the moment it’s because PayPal is refusing to accept my money. They’re claiming my bank is at fault but I suspect it’s really PayPal that’s screwed up. Nonetheless I’ll wait until I can speak with my bank tomorrow to confirm they haven’t put a ban on PayPal.
That seems to be what this thread is lacking - an explanation of exactly what the benefits might be.
according to the e-mail reminder sent to me this morning
I’m not especially sure that the main privilege of my current membership status isn’t just the feeling of smugness of having been a member for a long time and some life changes.
I’m not selling anything, just asking.
Under user Control Panel, left column at the bottom. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/payments.php
I guess for the same reason I don’t pay my library to borrow a book.
mmm
Ah … cleverly hidden behind the list of all my moderator warnings … no wonder I’ve never seen it … talk about dredging up a ton of bad memories …
Ah … PayPal … yet another list of warnings … now I’m depressed … I spent the $14.95 on a pizza pie to cheer myself up … maybe next month okay?
Argument in favor of paying: Just adding a wee bit to the chances that SDMB will continue to exist.
My case against: Basically, just inertia. More specifically, I’ve grown up to be an old Luddite and I’ve never used PayPal and can’t be arsed to figure out how, especially how to pay on-line without having to actually create a PayPal account. In previous discussion right here on this board, I’ve seen it mentioned that one can pay on the PayPal site with a credit card and without a PayPal account. But I’ve also seen discussion that some people either weren’t able to do that or couldn’t figure out how or something.
The ads don’t bother me. Literally. I don’t use adblocker or any other such thing, yet I never see a single ad on this site. Not a one.
Thanks for the reminder. I’ve rejoined
Okay, I just arsed myself to start working through the payment procedure, and got as far as getting into the PayPal site. It tells me I need to enable JavaScript. Okay, I could do that. But it also tells me I need to enable cookies.
[Pit-worthy rant]
EVERY SINGLE fucking web-site that tells me to enable cookies does the same fucking thing wrong: The message doesn’t tell me what site-name is trying to set the cookie. It just says to enable cookies. Dammit, browsers have had some form of selective cookie blocking for many years now: You can build a black-list of specific sites from which cookies will be denied. If you will tell me specifically the name of the site that’s trying to set a cookie (it might simply be [noparse]www.paypal.com[/noparse]), then maybe I will take the trouble to dig through my blacklist and see if by some chance I’ve blocked it, and I’ll unblock it.
But no, I’m not going to erase my entire cookie blacklist just to use the PayPal site because your web programmers can’t be arsed to mention, in your error message, the name of the site I need to unblock.
As I mentioned, it’s not just PayPal that does this. EVERY damn site I’ve encountered that absolutely needs cookies behaves this way.
[/Pit-worthy rant]
So there’s another reason I’m not a paid member here.
You should get an option to pay thru Pay-Pal as a guest. I’ve never had a demand for cookies or going to Pay-Pal’s site.
I’ve been on the internet for more than 20 years and I have not yet paid one cent for access to anything, except the internet itself. (And when I started, it was called a "freenet, taken as a tacit promise that it always would be.) I don’t want to spoil my record.
I remember seeing a list of benefits to paid membership somewhere along the way. I don’t recall what any of the benefits were (except maybe showing your number of posts? something like that?) but I do remember thinking, I don’t need any of those things! I’m certainly not bothered by ads.
It isn’t me being cheap (for a change). I would happily donate money to the board if they asked, or made it clear that they needed the money to stay solvent. I send $25 to Wikipedia every time they have a funding drive. But nobody from SDMB has ever implied that they need financial help.
Paypal and I are not friends. The only reason I don’t subscribe is because there is no other way to pay for a subscription. I would be happy to pony up $15 do eliminate the adverts; but not using Paypal.