The only thing you can safely assume is that I wanted to talk to Buckleberry Ferry, and that it was none of your business.
Well, thanks for the compliment, and really, I pretty much agree with you. I’m assuming the Reader must have some sort of economic reason for running the board, because I don’t see a business doing it just because they’re good folks. It’s just not smart. If the SDMB does owe money to the Reader, I don’t even see why they’re keeping the board going. If I had a business, I wouldn’t want some bunch of people on the internet sucking a hole out of my profits. Even with the subscription model, I just can’t see a business running a service unless it promotes the company or makes a profit.
So, I agree. I have no idea why the Reader keeps the board open, subscription or non-subscription. But I’m sure they must see some benefit to it, and I assume there will be an extra benefit from converting the board to a subscription service. It’s a shame, but it’s their decision. It’s also my decision that I don’t want to make the effort of making a payment overseas when I don’t have a credit card or use Paypal, particularly for a service that I don’t think is worth paying for anyway. I’m really not whinging (much). Just saying, this is what I’m doing.
I probably should have tried to say it in one post rather than three, though… 
I have no idea what type of business arrangement Cecil and the Reader have, so it would be unfair of me to illustrate even theoretical business models knowing full well I could be off base. However, while the board may not seem to offer the Reader any direct benefit, it does a fairly competent job of marketing Cecil.
Sure, but how many of these snivelling threads are we going to have to wade through? Jeeeeezuz, stay or leave, just STFU with your bitching and whining and $4.95 is going to force me and my family into a cardboard box.
If you can pay, swell! If you can’t for one reason or another, there have been many solutions posted here, including donations. If you can’t or won’t for some reason or another, the door is right there.
We’ll miss ya. Bu-bye.
Gawd, it will be nice and quiet when the pay-status goes into effect. Right now it sounds like a hospital nursery.
I respect your opinion. Obviously lots of people agree with the fact that EVERYONE can find $5. I don’t think so, but that’s not the point.
The point is, it shouldn’t be coming from Administration. It appears very unprofessional to me.
Imagine going to McDonald’s and the girl saying, “WHO CAN’T AFFORD TO SUPERSIZE IT? PUH-LEEZE!” Admittedly, that’s a bad example because the people I’m talking about can’t even afford a McHappy Meal. Open your eyes. It’s all around you.
For the freakin’ umpteenth time, I’m a woman. Should I change my name to “Boo Bees 4U”?
And I’m not trying to be radical. I speak my mind. Sometimes people agree with me. Sometimes people think I’m off my face. So be it. I won’t curb my thinking to fit into anyone’s comfort zone. Plus, if everyone thought like you, you’d be (in essence) talking to yourself on the boards. In the long run, it might save you the $5, but then you couldn’t accidentally screw up members’ names. And that would take away your fun, wouldn’t it?
Only if you’re willing to back it up. 
“I’m a woman” would be a cool user name.
Any old-timers out there who wont’ be signing up might note that once the subscription model goes into effect, you will never see anything you wrote on these boards again.
The search function will be disabled unless you pay up. Want to reference something that you wrote a year ago? Good luck.
That’s right, you’re going to have to pay to access stuff you wrote when the boards operated on the understanding that you were writing it for a public forum.
I just spent the past few hours archiving my old posts to text files. You may want to do the same.
No, but that’d make an awesome license plate.
You guys are FREAKS! And in some masochistic way that Freud didn’t have time to write about, that’s why I’m staying. That makes me the bigges freak of all.
xoxo Boo Bees 4U
You won’t have to pay anything to access your past posts. You just won’t be able to mooch CPU time off the Chicago Reader to have them all sought out and wrapped up for you.
If your past posts are so valuable, you should be grateful that the SDMB stored them in a searchable index for free for so long.
So all this time I’ve spent creating content for these boards, I’ve been mooching? Even when I was begging the Reader staff to consider other ways of raising capital, when I and hundreds of others were offering to help in any way we could, to keep the message boards alive, I was mooching?
This is the sort of idiocy that we were trying to prevent.
Wow, are you a bitter bitter man.
You make it sound like the adminstration is doing something inherently dishonest here. They aren’t. Going to subscriptions does not make this a private forum. And just because one of the pay perks will be a search engine, doesn’t mean they are cheating you out of access to “your works”. Who the fuck are you anyway - Shakespeare?! I guess I missed the fact that one your inaliable rights as a human being was a search engine.
I wish I was better at speaking my mind but I’m just stunned by the overwhelming EGO of that sentence.
And I’m unsurprised by the nastiness of that one.
If we’re not creating content here, what are we doing? If you’re not proud of what you write, why are you here?
Yep.
This is hilarious. You offered to help in any way you can, but you won’t pay $4.95 a year. So how are you going to help? Let me guess, your contribution towards the bandwidth bill is all the valuable content you have provided the Reader, free of charge.
This must be another one of your valuable little nuggets of content. Maybe I will put it on a T-shirt and make a fortune.
It’d look good on you.
In the spirit of fighting ignorance, I’ll point out that this is completely and utterly false. You’re still free to access anything you wrote. Simply set the viewing options for the forum to display threads from the beginning, and have fun clicking “Next Page.”
Also, please point out any guaratee made to you by this site or the Reader which states they would keep your “content” accessible for free and forever.
I didn’t think so.
Nah, it wouldn’t match.
I will gladly send you one, however. One size fits all, including whiners.
I just thought people might like to know that if they’re looking for their old stuff, they’ll have to subscribe to avoid scrolling through the three million plus posts on the boards to do so.
And with that display of the insular and viciously defensive future of the boards out of the way, I’m going to say my goodbyes, and leave.
Yeah, I know. I won’t let the door hit me in the ass on the way out. Very clever.