I was a member until some time this year. The increasingly problematic ads served by this site turned me off of giving it money. Despite that, I still lurk and rarely post at the same level I always have. I’m comfortable with that level of hypocrisy.
Never had that experience. I want a refund.
I was wondering about that, too.
sorry, just a joke.
Why do people pay for anything?
They won’t get the goods or services if they don’t pay
The money is used for charity/nonprofit uses
The weird case of tipping
Paying for the Straight Dope isn’t any of these things. It’s not hugely different from CBS or your local top 40 station asking for money. As for the “not seeing ads” thing, the ads aren’t that obtrusive. Since they’re so easy to ignore (and as others point out they probably earn more than subscriptions), there’s no incentive to avoid them.
I enjoy the heck out of this site, and I like having Charter Member under my name. I also happen to be fortunate enough that the subscription fee won’t cause me to lose my house or forego groceries. I’ve donated to Wikipedia and Jigsawaday also, because those bring me pleasure, so why not?
But, no, I’m not going to send you a small fee so you can share your multi-million-dollar royal inheritance with me. 
The Superbowl brings me pleasure, but I’m not in the habit of donating to whatever network happens to be broadcasting it; this is because they’re already covering their costs (turning a profit, in fact) with ad revenue. Such is the case with the SDMB.
FWIW I’m a member of another discussion board, one that doesn’t host any ads. It’s entirely funded by member contributions, and I’ve donated a fair bit over there.
<bolding mine>
I gotta tell you, ThelmaLou, your mocking responses to those who elect not to be members (and who have answered your question in good faith) indicate your OP was very much a challenge.
And nothing approaching ‘simple curiosity’.
mmm
Cruel, cruel Procrustus! Bad! B-a-a-a-a-d!
To those who feel like guests are free riding, look at it the other way - they provide the content that makes this board valuable. If you required everyone to pay to post, then this board would have far fewer members, and as a result, not as interesting to you.
The fact that you’re paying for the servers to stay on isn’t that much more important than the people who actually create the content. An empty server humming along with no content at all is useless.
Do you ever use Wikipedia? Have you ever donated to it? Then you’re just as much a free loader as the rest of the guests here. Probably worse, since you probably don’t edit or contribute to Wikipedia either.
I don’t know if I can convince any of you to change your thinking, but there it is. If only the SDMB (it’s not the Reader any more, is it? Who owns this place now anyway) would move to a patronage model, I think it would go a lot better. Probably the main problem is technical - there’s no good way of rewarding high value patrons with status symbols on this message board, since there are no graphics and any customisation is fraught with peril.
Yes.
Specifically, you. 
I am a relative newcomer here. I don’t recall bring asked for anything other than a username and password when I signed up so that I could post here. I had noticed that it said “guest” on some posts, and other things on other posts; I didn’t pay much attention to that and I suppose I thought it had to do with tenure, I’ve seen comments to indicate that some have been here a very long time. Huh. I had no idea that I was in steerage and someone in first class wanted to spit over the railing, so to speak.
Hear, hear. I’m finding post #1 to now be very disingenuous. I don’t know what her problem is. I pay, for reasons I’ve already stated. And if others don’t pay, I’m fine with that. And it’s certainly not a class war, paying members are better than non-paying. I haven’t encountered that, until this thread.
Maybe this does belong in the pit: ThelmaLou pits non paying dopers
ThelmaLou, just admit, were you the woman in the viral video, excoriating a young man buying groceries for his family at Walmart with food stamps! :rolleyes:
I paid up when we first went pay-to-post, even though I generally do not pay to use websites. I was in grad school and was on the fence about renewing when my subscription was up, both because of limited funds and limited time – there was no option for free posting then, and I wasn’t sure I should be paying money to have one more thing distracting me from my studies.
I’m fuzzy on this now, but it’s my recollection that on renewal day paid subscriptions expired earlier than I’d thought, so I found myself suddenly unable to post when I’d expected to at least have the rest of the day. This meant I also lost Charter Member status and could never regain it, so my subscription would forevermore be the higher Member price. My biggest incentive to resubscribe at that time would have been to lock in the lower rate, and with that off the table I figured screw it.
I had mostly decided not to resubscribe anyway (otherwise I wouldn’t have left it until the last minute), but the strict enforcement of the Charter Member policy still left a bad taste in my mouth. I didn’t like thinking that even if I’d renewed on time that year, and for many years afterward, I could still instantly and permanently lose Charter Member status if I was ever even slightly late. When free posting returned then so did I, but the few benefits of a paid account aren’t worth $15 to me and this Charter Member business killed any chance I’d pay out of loyalty.
There are a variety of reasons why I don’t pay.
[ul]
[li]The click-bait ads are funny. They amuse me.[/li][li]The non-click-bait ads are interesting, for two reasons. First, they actually sometimes tell me about things I might be interested in purchasing. For example, I recently I ordered a Reyn Spooner shirt for my son, and now I have an ad at the top of the page showing attractive RS shirts that I would not have expected them to sell. Cool - now I know I should check RS more often. Second, it’s fun to see how my browser history affects the ads that I get. It’s downright uncanny, sometimes, to see how the ads change along with what I’m up to (I’m getting a lot of hotel and travel-bargain ads at the moment, probably because of my recent on-line travel-related activity).[/li][li]I’m well aware that if I stopped enjoying the ads, I could use an ad-blocker to get rid of them.[/li][li]The SDMB is the only message board I take part in that offers paid memberships - the others are free to users and rely on advertising revenue. I do occasionally donate to help keep sites that I like (none of them message boards) active, but I’ve never heard a convincing case for paying to use this board.[/li]
[li]While I am sure PayPal has improved, many years ago I had such a terrible problem with them that I would never in a million years use them again. Yes, that’s not particularly rational since it was probably 10 years ago that I had problems. But hell hath no fury like a customer scorned. I will hate them to my dying day. If the only way to pay the SDMB is via PayPal, then they will not get any money from me.[/li][/ul]
I gave my reason in this ATMB thread. I certainly think it’s a good reason. Other than that, I was happy to pay up.
I pay so that the mods overlook my transgressions. I get warned and banned all the time. I just message the mods using the Charter Member Hotline. My message just has an arrow pointing to the words “Charter Member” under my name and the word “Ahem!”. And the offending warning vanishes and/or my posting privileges are reinstated. I don’t insist on the handwritten note containing a grovelling apology from Cecil as is my right and due, though I could.
They were still a bitch for me a couple of years back. OK, yeah, maybe they’ve…
naaah. If they didn’t improve in the 8 years between moving out of the US when it took me three years to close the damned account and two years ago when their sign-up process for someone using the Spanish banking system would have taken over a month (and that while actually being in Spain, I don’t want to think what would they make of me trying to sign up while abroad), they won’t have improved now.
People really care about the “Charter Member” title? I like having the discount, but couldn’t give a damn about the title.