Please place all SDMB subscription complaints in this thread, you cheapskates!

The BBQ Pit
61

The initial signup wave is going to generate bucks; let’s say a generous $20,000 dollars. Not too bad.

According to Ed Zotti, the board gained 3500 current members (members who’d posted within 30 days) between November 2002 and today. That’s about seven members a day.

Let’s say that the board drops fifty percent of potential signups when they hit the credit card screen. That’s a pretty generous estimate, as anyone who’s been in the commercial web development game knows. That’s say, 1300 signups per year. At $14.95 per, that comes out to $19,000. Or, about $2.71 per active member, given Ed’s count of current members.

And the next year won’t be as good, if only because the initial signup wave will be a thing of the past. It’s likely to shrink considerably as fewer and fewer informative posts are made, enticing fewer and fewer people to register and reply.

Is there anyone here who thinks that any number of alternative schemes proposed would have made less than this paltry amount? Can you envision a Straight Dope Message Board Classifieds Section, with each ad costing, say, five bucks, selling six ads a day? Because that’s all that it would’ve taken to beat this plan. That’s it.

They’re killing off the board for peanuts.

62

You think they are. You’re entitled to your opinion, but you really have no idea what will happen. Nor do I. I guess we’ll see, won’t we?

63

Devil’s advocate: his numbers seem reasonable to me…

64

I respectfully disagree. When you reach the point in your life (and I have been there, but a long time ago, and never again if I can help it) when $5 is that scarce, you really need to log off and get a little proactive about getting some change in your pocket. Don’t have five (“can’t afford”- again, no disrepect to anyone without means ie credit card or paypal to transfer funds) fucking dollars? Get your sorry ass off the computer and go earn SOMETHING!! Shit, I can wonder the streets and find five dollars in change, let alone beg if I had to! Don’t have five dollars? SELL/PAWN THE FREAKIN’ COMPUTER!! If you ain’t got five dollars, what the hell do you need it for?

There shoud be no “I can’t afford it” excuses. If you can’t afford five dollars for a year, you really need to find better use of you time. Get the fuck off the internet!

Jesus! What a tool!

65

gatogespado: Well, this point has come up in various threads about poverty. These days, computers are vital networking, research, and job application tools, especially if one intends to try to get a job out of state. So that’s a BIG reason not to sell it right there.

Plus, IIRC, many of our poorer Dopers post from the library…

66

Well, I’m glad you were at least being “respectful”. :rolleyes: I’d get pissy about it but it is The Pit so feel free to be all the asshole you can be.

To try, once again, to make the point - for some people in financially difficult situations, the five dollars is not the issue. The issue may very well be justifying this to themselves, to their significant others, to the Fairy Fucking Godmother, whomever. As I admitted, most could probably find the five dollars in spare change fallen beneath their car seats, in the sofa cushions, or under the bed. That. Is. Not. The. Point. If you can remember that time, long ago, when you were having financial difficulties, and if perhaps someone else was lending you financial support, how would you feel explaining to them that five of their dollars was spent so they can entertain themselves on a message board?

Being a self-righteous and judgemental prick about ** some one else’s financial decisions** gets you what exactly?

Oh, and fuckity-fuck-fuck! I love The Pit. :smiley:

MeanJoe

67

Sure they do, but he’s assuming that because he’s unwilling to pay, lots of others will be as well. Something Awful has proven that that isn’t necessarily a safe assumption.

If the place has good content, people will come. And they will pay. I believe that. And if they don’t, if the plan doesn’t work out, I suspect that they’ll try something else. They haven’t run this place for five years with no fees without deriving some sort of corporate benefit for themselves, no matter what we’ve been told. It’ll still be here years from now, I’m sure of it.

68

Yes, I apologize for being a bit of a dick, but (like all Thursday Nights) I’ve been drinkin’ and tend to get a bit “excited”. Living where I do, and having the economic benefits that I enjoy, I find it very difficult to imagine someone who cannot generate a five-spot needs to spend the kind of time I (or anyone else) does posting to a frivilous message board. They really need to get out and generate some income for themselves.

I was pretty hard up for duckets in the early ninetys. I went from job to job and “had back luck”. Bullshit! I blew every opportunity I had! I had no one to blame but myself. I refused to allow myself to get to the point where I counld’nt generate a measly five fucking dollars! Goddammit! If you are that broke, maybe you really don’t need to be posting to the “Straight Dope”. Maybe your ass needs to get out there and earn some money!

I guaren-goddamn-tee you I can pick up .50 cents worth of aluminum/paper/kidneys/whatever a day if I was in that kind of financial situation. (But I’m registered as a “Republican” :smiley: )

She told me she found me fascinating. I asked what I was labeled on the map.

69

SA is brought up a lot, but someone here claimed that it wasn’t a valid comparison, because it has a LOT of other content other than just the forums. I don’t visit the site; can someone comment on this?

70

You of course, are right. I’m being a dick. I apologize. I have abso-fucking-lutly no right to say how people should spend thier time or money. All my spewing has been an alcohol-fueled rant.

Best of luck and good tidings (even during the non-christmas season!) to all who read this!

I think it best to log off and go outside and work in the shop! I get to be “Undesputed King Asshole” out there! :smiley:

71

As best as I can tell, the only thing you have to pay for is the Forums.

72

Mean Joe–Maybe I’m a self-righteous and judgemental prick, but I find the notion that you have to justify every little expense to your wife pretty pathetic. If you buy yourself a pack of gum, do you have to justify that, too? You say that you can afford it, so why can’t you just say “This is something I wanted for myself.”

73

I’m not an SA forum member, I’m a longtime reader. They usually post a daily update kinda thing which, depending on who’s writing it, varies from funny as hell to suck. Then there’s usually an article or something every day like a game review or Comedy Goldmine or something. So yea, there’s a reason to read the site every day, but I never felt compelled to join the forums because of it. If it’s like most groups/forums I’ve been a part of, the site itself is sort of a reason everyone came, but the community in the forums is the reason everyone stays, if that makes sense.

But I read SA once a day and the Dope 5-9 times a day.

74

The difference between the SDMB and Something Awful? Something Awful has columns, and games, and reviews, and all sorts of content all over the non-pay areas of the site. Tons and tons of content. It serves as an excellent gateway to the forums, draws people to the site daily, and the webmasters have found myriad ways of tying their non-pay content to their forums.

We’ve got Cecil’s column. And the boards don’t even refer to it much. Comments On Cecil’s Colums has 34,742 posts; MPSIMS has 1,146,750. Even Cafe Society has topped half a million posts.

There’s nothing to these boards, except that they’ve become the location of a wonderful community. Charging that community for making the boards too popular seems frankly stupid. If you’ve got a large and willing community that’s been howling for years for an opportunity to contribute monetarily, it takes a special brand of idiocy to put up fences and barbed wire and charge admission. Especially if the people you depend on the people you’re charging to make the place interesting enough to be worth charging for.

75

Oh sweet Mother Fucking Christ, has reading comprehension been left at the door of The Pit?!?

Alright, I will do this nice and slow so you can keep up.

The following quotes were posted by me, today at 12:52 AM (That is before you posted your critique of my relationship with my wife. See, time is a linear concept and… nevermind, you can’t be that stupid to need it explained to you)

The first part is the only thing you got right, I can afford it. Now, do you see the interesting sequence of letters into groups? Those are words. Those groups of (remember what we’ve taught you now) words are separated by blank spaces to form large units called… sentences did you say? I’m so proud of you! It is called a sentence, and it conveys thoughts, opinions, facts, etc. and you READ IT. Now, for the really hard part… Reading Comprehension!

To help you follow the concept of letters grouping together to form words which group together to form sentences which convey facts and ideas, I have highlighted (made darker) the part that you need to focus your newly acquired Reading Comprehension skills on.

I. Do. Not. Have. To. Answer. For. Every. Dollar. To. Mrs. Mean. Joe.

Clear now?

Now, I would not expect an impotent fuck such as yourself to show the class and decency that gatopesco has shown in this thread and apologize. Go about your way little one and try not to hurt yourself, mmmm’kay?

**Obligatory Use of SIZE Tag: Oh, and there is no maybe about it, you are a self-righteous judgemental prick.

MeanJoe - who is having one hell of a day!

76

Gatopescado, thanks and apology accepted. Don’t forget Your Royal Cloak and Scepter, you might catch a cold. :wink:

MeanJoe - Who wonders who he has to fuck around here to be elected Undisputed King Asshole in his own shop! I’m jealous.

77

Ooh, ooh, my turn!

(1) Can we stop with the “Why didn’t the Reader try [this] or [that] to make money?” bullshit already? My girlfriend is currently working on turning a formerly free product into a pay service. Making a change of this magnitude is not something you can do in an afternoon. It takes a HELL of a lot of work. Credit card processing, graphic design, extra secure bandwidth, the code behind it all, the new webpages… even if the Reader wanted to set up a simple “Click here to donate” button, that takes many manhours. And, frankly, I’m a bit skeptical about how much of a return there’d be on a “donate with no benefits” page beyond an initial surge.

Paying for service is the only way to pay for the everyday costs mentioned by Unclebeer earlier, shit like tech support and bandwidth. You think donations are consistent enough to pay for these consistent charges?

(2) Speaking of donation, if you want to donate money so someone can post on a fucking message board, YOU ARE AN IDIOT. Period. Seriously, go walk downtown for five goddamned minutes and you’ll see people who count on, literally, nickels and dimes to EAT. Not to post some asinine response to a motherfucking game thread.

I’m as charitable as the next guy – more so, in all likelihood, the vituperativeness in this post notwithstanding. But it’s called perspective, people. Enable someone to eat and survive, or enable someone to make a post about a death ray? Sweet fucking Christ.

(3) Another great transition – speaking of perspective, YOU ARE NOT SO POOR THAT YOU CANNOT AFFORD FIVE DOLLARS. Not a single one of you. I say again, this time in bold – no one reading this is possibly in so dire a financial situation that they can’t afford five dollars. You’ve probably got a computer, right? Don’t use it for two weeks, and you’ve saved enough money in electricity to pay for the fee. You need to sacrifice even less if you pay for an ISP! If you’re one of the 0.0000000001% of users who only use the message board from a library, guess what? Sell some fucking blood. Panhandle. Flip burgers for a while. I don’t give a fuck. I can make $5 if I were propped up unconscious on a street corner for an hour. I’ve shat out $5 after an especially wild night. If you’ve got time to post on here, then $5 couldn’t possibly be breaking the bank for you. I know it couldn’t be, because otherwise you’d be out rectifying your situation.

I can’t believe that there are actually people bitching about this change.

78

With all due respect: FUCK YOU. Who the the hell do you think you are to tell me what I can and cannot spend my money on, you little cocksucker? What fucking right do you have to assume that I or anyone else DON’T donate money to other causes? Hell, what goddamn right do you have to assume I’m not dirt-poor myself? You aren’t fucking Mother Teresa, so have the decency to keep your shit-covered feet off her moral high ground. Oh, and blow me.

79

Well, this was nice while it lasted. I don’t post here that often, and I don’t really think I’ll miss being able to. Even if I did, though, I’d refuse to pay because I really don’t like having to pay for something I once got for free. Yeah, I know it’s only five bucks, but faced with good alternatives like Fathom and AFCA…well, I’ll take the free option every time. I think a lot of people are going to be faced with the same choice, which is why I’m not convinced this is going to work.

Actually, I’m reminded of the split that occurred when the AOL board went down in flames. Some people migrated to MFSD, and most ended up here. Eventually, MFSD was pretty much abandoned because, well, this board was better in almost every way. Better posters, moderation to keep out the trolls, that kind of thing. But charging money after years of getting something for free tends to change the equation a bit. I have no doubt that plenty of established posters are going to gladly fork over the $4.95 a year, but do you honestly think someone who’s discovered Cecil’s books or columns for the first time is going to pick this place over a free board? Especially after the rate increase goes through?

I’m sorry, but I just don’t get this. The administration has been going on for years now about bandwidth costs and not once have they even tried an alternative option. I frequent an anime-oriented image board that was having similar problems, and the webmaster recently said he’d have to close the site down at the end of the month due to server costs. Within a week, enough funds were raised to keep the site going for the rest of the year and beyond. And that place has maybe one hundredth of the regular posters this one has. You’re telling me that if you tried something like that here, you couldn’t get enough to keep the site going for a long time to come? And even if you don’t think you could, why not at least try? Couldn’t hurt.

Yeah, I know, don’t let the door hit me in the ass on the way out. Got it.

80

Ask not for whom the bell tolls…
I think I see buzzards circling overhead. There is certainly no reason why the SDMB should continue to provide a free service to users who obviously enjoy the board, but I do wish another solution was available. I just can’t see myself forking over the dineros to pay for an occasional post. I know many, many, will do so; but I think that the board will suffer from the lost of those who mostly lurk, but post when they feel they may offer something to the discussion or even the occasional drive-by poster who stirs up shit. To me at least, the SDMB has always struggled between being a frank exchange of information and opinion and an inbred love fest, and this development just strikes me a giant leap towards the day when unicorn and Zeena the Warrior princess avatars start showing up on the pages of the board.

Pit me if your will, but would just hate to see the board go out like that.
Jeff