You can’t afford 1.3 cents a day?
The board will change from being a “commons” to a paid service. And that entails a clear set of guarantees and rules a.k.a. contract. In the earlier pit thread Bannings that I started, I was frequently told that since the board was a free service, the mods could do what they want. No longer. Their (and our) behaviour shall have to be governed by rules laid down at the time of signup. Shall be interesting.
Like a lot of others, I don’t care about the 5 bucks, but I kinda don’t like giving up my credit card number and my anonymity.
I’d be happy to send Anthracite 5 bucks in the mail plus a tip to handle things though.
There are many who can’t. I’ve been there. 
This is very tough choice for me. I’ve been unemployed or doing very-low-paying part time work for about a year and a half, and I allow myself few luxuries. My future is uncertain, and it truly terrifies me.
Although 5 bucks for a year is very cheap, I’m very, very scared. That five dollar bill might make the difference between making an important other payment or not.
But it might not, so I don’t think I’ll be asking for any charity.
My heart is thundering in my chest now, because I’m thinking about my uncertain future. Even a measly 5 buck expense triggers severe anxiety.
Likely, I will torture myself over this decision for a while, then pony up the 5 bucks.
But I wish to God this happened when I had a decent job. Hell, I would have donated a hundred or two to help get a new server if they had accepted it back then.
You know, I had this same thought. If we can’t drop the pretense of pricing something $0.05 less than a full dollar increment to make it look like it’s a dollar less here of all places, is there really any hope for humanity?
It’s FIVE DOLLARS, guys. Five.
I think Hugh makes some very valid points here. Will there be more clarification of the rules?
Well, it seems there’s plenty of people here who need that nickel, so maybe it was a good idea…
It would be one thing if it were CHARGED as 1.3 cents a day. But it isn’t. It’s charged as a lump sum, prior to use. Which can make it more difficult for people in tight financial straits.
Touché. 
Well, they can save in increments till mid-Apr (about ~17 cents a day).
At the risk of being flamed I can’t imagine not being able to come up with five bucks. I have been poor. I have been no running water poor, and food stamp poor. I have never been so poor as to miss five dollars.
I will be paying for a few folks, especially those with wacky home currencies that don’t mesh well with Paypal. I just think some people haven’t taken a close look at what $5 will buy you these days. It ain’t much, the Dope remains a deal.
I think there are many people who could afford it objectively but still have good reasons why they can’t really pay. If you are in a tight financial situation it might be hard to justify the expense for something that doesn’t pay the rent or feed anyone to your spouse/children/parents/whomever.
Going paid will be the death of the SDMB as we know it and probably the death of it in general. $15 for new members will mean we will get almost no new members which will kill off the board. We won’t get kids coming to the boards. We will have a greatly reduce number of people from outside the US. It is to bad a donation scheme could not be worked out.
I will pay because $5 or $15 isn’t much to me but I don’t imagine that the boards will be interesting enough to reup the following year.
I don’t begrudge them doing this, but I don’t think I’ll be subscribing to post. I’d certainly pay if I was an involved member already, but I’ve been here alot longer than 30 days without becoming a regular poster, and I doubt that’s gonna change before my time is up.
But what the heck. This is a great forum, and I may pay the money just to support it (since I’ll still be reading avidly every day with or without posting). I just hope the influx of new, active users doesn’t slow to a trickle… I’d hate to see the SDMB get stale.
And, sadly, here goes all hope of getting my mother to start posting instead of just reading. She adores the SDMB, but she’s even more timid about joining in that I am.
Why wait? I’ll just take offense now. Just don’t come posting to me when you start hemorrhaging! 
$5 is cheap. Especially considering you get my input! 
Perhaps I’m an optimist, but I don’t this subscription service will be the death knell of the Dope. Sure, things will change a little, but I believe people will pay for quality. And we’ll have less trolls & drive-by-posters, and any new users joining will probably be – please don’t take this in an elitist manner – of a higher quality and caliber.
In my experience, a lot of idiots have $5 too.
By the way, I agree that if people are paying, the problems of (1) vague and inconsistently applied rules; and (2) moderator abuse become more troubling.
If board management called me for advice, I would probably tell them to issue refunds in case of banning or suspension.
That’s a good point, too. There are people who will place eBay bids on a box of air; we could be getting a lot of those.