Who’s insulting you? I would like to know what you mean by “professional service”, exactly? Do we drop all threads and posts that are not factual and backed up by extensive research?
The “the Net should be free!” argument doesn’t seem to be accurate, either from a new or an old perspective.
As far back as the late 1980’s when I was online, the only way you could get on the early “Net” was by paying. You either “paid” by working at a research center or government office, or “paid” via your school fees, or, if you were lucky enough in the early 1990’s to have an ISP with actual Net access (rare around here), you “paid” your ISP.
And the whole pupose of the Net is people providing content. I said back in 1990 or so “USENET works solely on the fact that people like to talk more than they like to listen.” It’s an oversimplification, but true in many cases.
Saying that one won’t pay for access to a message Board that gives the level of content and information that the SDMB does because the “Net must be free!” or because “we’re paying THEM for OUR content!” is a level of splitting hairs that sounds, well, I’m sorry to put it in these terms and I don’t want to be insulting, but it sounds contrived. It may not be, as I know several highly-principled people (EFF-types) who feel that way too, but even they can’t really provide a good business model for a totally free, un-government subsidized Net.
As for not being able to afford it - I’ll take people at their word that they cannot afford it (or that they cannot budget for it) and not insult them and tell them that they “can if they wanted to”. Obviously they can’t or they wouldn’t post such. There are tons of other free message boards out there, so they’ll find an online home somewhere else.
Who said anything about that? I said I’d like to see action against posters who engage in namecalling and trolling. I said I find it rather odd to ask people to pay to be insulted by childish lackwits.
Let me make this clear then. If I am being asked to pay money for the boards to operate and for them to be moderated, I expect two things as a result.
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The boards will operate. This is hit or miss at the moment, but maybe with fewer posters and enough money for decent serving that will be alleviated. Even at current levels the uptime is acceptable, so this isn’t a big concern.
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The boards will be moderated. I see no particular sign of this happening now, and no inclination for this to change. If I want halfwits to insult me, I’ll login to Stormfront as Jewy Jewman, Rabbi at Law, and I’ll do it for free.
As for whether I’ll sign up, I’m pretty much in for the first year. But if the boards haven’t made the changeover from a rowdy free for all (in all senses) to a paid forum for the exchange of ideas to some degree, that’s not going to continue.
Crucial how? Are you somehow arguing that if you had a cellphone where you could listen to random conversations but could never join in, that would be valuable to you?
Look, if you want to view the $14.95/year as vanity publishing, that’s fine with me. I have no illusions about the value I add compared to the value I receive. I’m gonna pay the money so I can jump into a conversation and say “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.” when the irresistable urge to do so arises.
Originally its own thread. But got closed. I don’t think it has to do with Subscription complaints. It’s a complaint about the Admins. Whatever. The more I see lately, the less I’m surprised.
How very fucking nice it must be to sit up in your white castle and preach down to the peasants. Nice fucking life you must have. Your attitude is despicable. Who the hell are you to tell people what they can afford? Bad enough we have this coming from members, but ADMINISTRATORS? Houston, we have a problem.
Do you know what kind of people your board attracts? Do you think it’s only nine-to-fivers with spare time at work? How aristocratic of you. Hate to break the news to you, but there’s a lot more than that going on with your following. How dare you shame them.
A lot of them walk the streets every day, for work. A lot of them are home sick, being paid a percentage of the wages that once fed their family on a paycheque to paycheque basis. SDMB was a place where they could go, let go of their grief for a while, and zone out. Not to mention, it’s also a place where they can vent, ask for help, and to some degree socialize.
Ed, you’re assuming that people have money to go out for a burger. You’re also assuming that they’ve got so much money, it’s falling out of their pockets and into their couch cushions. That’s a hell of a lot of assuming, my friend. I’ve lived through days that it was either my cats eat or I eat. They ate.
Dex, you’re right. If some can’t afford the $5, they certainly DO have bigger problems than the SDMB. You’re assuming that they’re neglecting these problems to be on the board. Some problems aren’t solved overnight. How pitiful that you’re suggesting to people who are interested in sponsoring those who can’t pay, to set up a food delivery service, clothing, and shelters for this imagined mass of members who can’t cough up the $5 fee." IMAGINED? Get a grasp on the situation.
Your demographics of SDMB are fucked if you don’t see that. And by the way, is my $5 going to pay your salary? Hope to hell that if it is, you gain some respect for the people who made it a success.
I’d like to take this opportunity to those of you who have offered to sponsor memberships, to thank you. I’m glad that some people see that if we leave a few behind, a few is too many. Unfortunately, the administration seems to think differently.
The Replies Were:
Well. I have one thing to say:
“If you gotta flame, do it here. This is the place for all complaints and other discussion regarding administration of the SDMB”
Bad enough LynnBodoni restricts Reeder to one thread. But to have ALL members’ complaints with any tangent that can be related to the new memberships, restricted to one thread, is creepy.
No offense to dropzone, but who the hell put him in charge? And I repeat, this thread wasn’t about the subsriptions. It was about the Administrator’s attitude towards those who said they can’t pay.
I tend to agree with CM. Who the hell knew that Dropzone’s thread was the moderator sanctioned complaint zone? Perhaps if an actual moderator had started it, it would have been clearer.
Anyway, I can’t be too sympathetic with anyone who can’t fork over $5 for this MB. We all have to make priorities, so if you can’t forego one beer in a bar over the course of a year in order to post here, then how important is it in your life anyway?
OK, here’s my unscientific study results:
Homeless woman outside El Famous Burrito on Wed night:
Homeless guy outside Merchandise Mart who “plays” the most disgusting looking guitar I’ve ever seen:
Bonus; This guy uses the Internet at Chicago’s main Pulic Library and could conceivably be a member!
Guy who lives in the shelter at Evanston McGaw YMCA :
And a little bit up the food chain…
The woman who lives next to my mom in a retirement home in WI on a (pathetically low) fixed income and has health problems:
I agree with what you are saying here, Una, but all you’re explaining is why access to the net (and the information contained therein) is not free (I remember when the free ISPs got bought out by the bigger ones). Following your thoughts, my reposnse is “Why should I have to pay twice to read and contribute to the information on the net?” (One for the ISP, one for a subscription.)
I’m not sure I understand what you’re meaning here, laigle. Yeah, I have seen some Mods “abuse” their power (not terribly often, IMHO, but sometimes), but I surely wouldn’t call their moderation “non-existent.”
LilShieste
John Mace and MikeG: You might want to scan through some of the past posts in this thread (there are 4 more pages before this one)… I think you might have overlooked some.
LilShieste
MikeG, that was a superb post. 
Comparing this message board to the New York Times still doesn’t work, for a couple of reasons. One, the NYT website is primarily for republishing on the web articles that appear in the paper. That is subsidized by sales of subscriptions to that paper and advertising revenue. The NYT pays its writers because they write articles that are intended to appear in print. Subscribers pay to receive the paper. Advertisers pay to place ads that those subscribers will see–and the web site also sells banner ads and those godawful fucking pop-up ads. Sure, the SDMB could sell banner and pop-up ads, but I will gladly pay for the site to not have that happen, honestly.
gex gex, perhaps you weren’t aware of this, but the Reader is a free paper, and I highly doubt that the existence of this message board in any way boosts advertising revenue for them. Members of this board who don’t live in Chicago don’t get the Reader, and there is no obvious direct link between the two entities. The Reader started out subsidizing the message board as a sideline to putting Cecil’s column online. It’s grown so much that they can no longer justify the cost.
The movie theater model doesn’t work, either. We’re not going to be paying to sit and be passively entertained, we’re participating here. I think the party analogy is still the best one. The Reader has been providing us with a room to have our party in for five years now, but they’re tapped out now, we’re sucking down too much beer and they’re asking us to start paying for it ourselves. We’re not providing content here, not being published, we’re coming here to mingle and have conversations, some serious and deep, some light and fluffy. Some folks will decide that they like the company here and want to continue to participate, so they’ll pay. Others will decide otherwise. The point is, it’s not a huge injustice to be asked to pay to keep the party going. You might choose not to, and that’s fine, but QUIT WHINING about it.
If your situation in life is such that you do not have $5 to spend on something you want and you don’t have any friends who would give you $5 for something you really want. . . well, maybe there’s a good chance what you have to say is not worth too much either. Maybe you should be looking for a job or at making some friends out there or meditating about your situation in life. I suppose there could be exceptions but I am hard pressed to come up with one because anyone who posts anything worth reading would find someone here to sponsor them with no difficulty.
If I were in such situation here is what I would do: I would go out into the desert and fast and meditate for 40 days and 40 nights about why my life sucked so badly. At the end of the 40 days and 40 nights I would probably buy 5 gallons of gasoline, douse myself in it and set myself on fire alive in bonzo style.
I also have a hard time believing that people can’t afford $5 for a year’s worth of entertainment. That implies that over the course of a year these people do not buy a single book, movie ticket, piece of jewelry, extraneous clothes, a drink, food from a restaurant, video games, movie rentals, ice cream, chocolate, etc. I simply don’t believe that.
The question then becomes this: Is the SDMB worth enough to you to pay the $5 subscription, amounting to $20 over 3 years? That is a totally separate issue from being able to afford it. That’s wanting to afford it. If your principles, likes, or dislikes dictate that you won’t pay the fee, that’s well and good, but c’mon, quit blowing smoke up my ass. You pay for the internet and you’re here already, so we already know that you indirectly have an entertainment budget. If this doesn’t fit it, fine, but don’t say you don’t have the money. That’s outrageous.
Ok then… maybe we should take our party over to “Room B”; I hear they have the same kind of beer, and are still offering their services for free.
I agree that we come here to carry on conversations, make some new friends, etc… but please stop suggesting that we are not providing content to the board. There is content on a message board, and it comes from its posters.
LilShieste
And after that sort of post, I’d happily supply the can to carry the gas for you.
Asshole.
IMHO the SDMB is priceless.
In my mind, though, we would not be paying for the SDMB, just the hardware and software that allows us to participate in the SDMB. I just don’t see the point of paying that, if the hardware and software can be provided elsewhere at no charge to its posters.
LilShieste
Like I said… priceless.
LilShieste
But my point is, it’s not, like some people are suggesting, the same as professional writers for the New York Times providing content for their paper. The SDMB is not and never has been making any money from the content we provide. That’s what I’m talking about. Of course the boards wouldn’t be worth paying one penny for if there were no members, but I’m not talking about “content” in the same way you are.
I, personally, want nothing to do with your ass, smoked or otherwise (to our mutual relief), but you’re kinda forgetting students who get access in school, people who access the SDMB on a library computer, etc.
Must be nice to have never needed money, but that really doesn’t describe everyone.
Good point, but it depends really on where you draw your boundaries, doesn’t it? There are various levels of “costs per service” just to get on, such as nearly-free dial-up, AOL, DSL, broadband, etc. There are also various levels of “content service” that include the SDMB (Net with SDMB, Net without SDMB, net with SDMB and pass to lesbianenemanursesinbondage.net , etc.).
You stupid cunt! Could you be any more insulting??? Why aren’t you dead yet???
Seriously, though, that last part read wrong. I mean there are lots of other nice places to post on that are free, and that there is no “closed door” to the SDMB. So you can’t afford it now - maybe you can in a month. Or six months. Or a year. Maybe Kerry’s win in November will usher in a golden age of unbridled economic growth? What I’m saying is - if someone can’t pay, they’re not left out in the cold. Fathom, LJ, chat, Snopes, and other places can provide a place to hang out on similar grounds and with similiar people. And I can’t speak for anyone but myself but I assume they will always be welcomed back by their friends here. Why not? It’s sad to lose friends by any means.