You’re a good man, Tripler.
Amazon referral?
I like the idea. A lot. Whether or not the CR would go for it is another issue though. I keep buying stuff for myself and for my office, and Amazon kicks some over to the Dope.
If Amazon gave the CR a percentage of the five routers, four toner cartridges, 8 place settings of Fiestaware, two ZIP drives, a DVD player and half a bookshelf full of books, DVDs and software I bought from them last year, they’d have a tidy lump of money on my behalf.
Perhaps my wording was a bit too loose. Based on what I’ve encountered, plus the info Una posted earlier, I’d expect the fee to be somewhere between $10 and $30 annually. So, really, less than $1 a week.
Just a question(probably for jdavis), but is the vBulletin software capable of providing differing services to different interfaces on a multi-homed box(with the same content)?
In other words, could I have 2 NIC’s, with different IP’s and ISP’s, and serve them the same content, but under different circumstances? So take the sdmb server, multihome it on 2 ISP’s, have one a high bandwidth paid by the users interface, and one unpaid, bandwidth capped interface? Subscribers are allowed the fast interface, others/non-logged-in users the capped connection, but with everyone getting the same content? You’d have to be able to determine who had paid, and what interface they were on, and not serve to non-subscribed people on the subscribed interface, so that might get interesting, but it’s a thought.
That way you do bandwidth shaping on the free interface when you need, but subscribers would still get good performance. That would let anyone post, but be an incentive to pay a small bit to improve performance
afterthought: Heck actually you should be able to do it on one interface, with multiple IP’s or even alternate ports(in theory, I have no experience with vBulletin).
I appreciate the update Ed.
I like the Amazon idea Bosda. Seems like there is the potential for a lot of money to be made with only a little effort needed on the part of the Chicago Reader.
As an aside, I don’t think there ever was a serious discussion about a pay-per-post. Only a pay for the priviledge to post as many times as you want. Even then, I worry a little about the natural inhibition of new blood with a pay to post scheme. IIRC, there was some discussion about letting people get to say 50 posts before asking them to pay. This might ensure that they get hooked.
More likely it would ensure that they create a sock once their current user name hit 50 (or whatever) posts.
Haj
So how about free to view, $5 to post for the first year, and $whatever after that?
This would not only get people hooked, but also give them time to become known, and to become attached to their username. Coupled with the admins’ existing methods of sock detection, I doubt socking would be a serious problem.
What about turning off certain features?
I’ll probably be stoned for this, but you could discontinue e-mail notifications. It wouldn’t restrict anyone’s ability to post. It might result in the occasional debate dying (because a participant didn’t get the email about a reply) but I’d suspect most truly involved people would check back anyway.
I can suggest this selfishly because I’ve never used this feature.
I’m with you on that one, CrankyAsAnOldMan. Never used that feature, wouldn’t miss it, and I’ll paint a target on my T-shirt now for the stoning.
Has anyone read or considered the suggestion I posted above? It seems to have gotten lost in the crowd. No one’s discussed it but I thinks it’s worth considering. Maybe I didn’t explain it well: If you don’t want to pay for a subscription then, each day that you want to access the boards, you click on a link and watch a short ad. This gives you full access for one day and the Chicago Reader receives a small payment for showing you the ad. Salon.com does this and it seems workable to me. Maybe it could be done so that you can read threads but can’t post or search unless you either pay or view an ad.
Hmm…I meant “pay per post” as a generic descriptor for a fee-based-board. I’m really more amenable to the “subscription-per-year” concept. Of course, other fundraising methods are acceptable, too…the Amazon link idea has merit…
I’ve just gone and done a bit of market research. I posted a thread in IMHO entitled, “Helping to pay for the SDMB: How much do you spend on books, CDs and DVDs each month?” I bumped the thread once, after it fell off the first page, to be sure it was seen during prime time. It has now fallen off the first page for the second time. N.B. I actually wanted to post in Cafe Society but realized it was sort of a poll.
The results were utterly dismal. There were a total of six responses, two from UK Dopers and one from someone who posted to this thread. Worse, there were a total of only 115 views. For purposes of comparison, a thread about someone’s smelly roomate had well in excess of 3,000 views.
The only conclusion I can reach based on this is that the SDMB would not likely raise substantial revenue from an affiliation with an on-line bookstore. Worse, it would not likely raise substantial revenue from a pay-to-post scheme either.
This result seems counter-intuitive to me. There is one possible explanation. The SDMB is really two different boards. There is the MPSIMS/IMHO crowd and the GQ/GD crowd. While MPSIMS and GD types may both spend some time in, say, the BBQ Pit or Cafe Society, it seems likely that few GD posters spend much time in MPSIMS and vice versa.
The MPSIMS/IMHO group may be less invested in the SDMB and, therefore, less likely to be willing to support it. This sort of makes sense given the average effort required for a GQ post vs. the average effort required for an MPSIMS post.
If the Mods permit, I’d like a special dispensation to post a similar thread in, say GD and Cafe Society to test this theory and find out whether these groups are more likely to support the SDMB than IMHO people are.
I was the one who suggested the Amazon link, & I didn’t click on that thread.
A better thread title would have helped.
Besides, it was a poor tecnique fpr a survey—people click on the threads they’re interested in, & this has no connection as to who reads books, how often, or why.
Feel free to prove me wrong. I hope you do!
I’m sure I could have gotten more people to click with a sexier thread title but that wasn’t the point. If people can’t be bothered to click on a thread clearly referencing helping pay for the board just to see what it’s about, you have to wonder what else they wouldn’t be bothered to do.
I’m sure if you hype it up enough, you can get people to click on a thread – and even respond – out of guilt. But that’s a one-off behaviour and not indicative of what the long-term response would be. The bottom line is that if 40,000 registered members would be willing to alter their behaviour and make all their on-line purchases through the SDMB, the Reader would have more money than it would know what to do with. If only 40 registered members are willing to do so, it’s not worth the effort.
Your inability to pay for your online entertainment isn’t the financial responsibility of those providing the entertainment.
If you can’t afford the $10-$50 per year, I am truly sorry. I am so sorry, I may help sponsor if it comes to that. What I don’t understand are the people who seem to be getting out of joint over the possibility of having to fork over some cash.
How many months or YEARS have you used the SDMB free of charge? How many have NOT purchased books, mugs, or t-shirts? How freakin hard is it to save a few dollars to pay for a place YOU use for YOUR entertainment?
I did when I registered at SomethingAwful. Ponied up another $15 for a platinum account (ability to use the search function, PMs, and such) and a custom title.
Technically correct but simplistic. If the number of people who can pay for their entertainment isn’t large enough that it becomes viable (financially or dynamically) for the entertainment provider, then those able subscribers won’t get the entertainment either. So, while it’s not the responsibility of the provider to take care of the less affluent, they need to keep it in mind.
Some time ago, Ed conducted a survey, and managed to get quite satisfactory results. So we don’t need another survey thread like that.
As for people worrying that the nature of the SDMB will change, yes, it will. It has always changed over time. The nature of the board changed when we were on AOL, and some old timers bemoaned the fact that the “good old days” were gone forever, especially after AOL went fixed-rate instead of hourly rate access fees. When we moved the SDMB onto the Web, there were more people pissing and moaning that the nature of the board would change. Yes, it changed. Some people didn’t like the change, and left. Some stayed and complained. A lot of people adjusted to the change, and some even like it. The board by its very nature will always be in a state of change.
I urge all of you to reflect upon the tragedy of the commons.
I don’t know a whole lot (read: anything) about the ways and means of implementing this kind of stuff, but what about a setup that charges users for their rate of posting? You could post, say, once a day gratis, but if you wanted to increase your posting rate above the magic threshold, the subscription fee would kick in. That way, the hardcore of the heavy posters (who I would think would be most willing to pay, generally) could pay their dues and carry on as usual, while the heavy posters who couldn’t/didn’t want to pay to post could stay active around here. Just not as active. Plus, the idiots would have to make a decision- be idiots less frequently, pay up, or leave. Even socks wouldn’t be all that effective.
I think that would help make the tragedy of these commons a little less tragic- the people using up the most resources would be paying for the privilege. Like I said, I don’t know if that could be implemented, or even if it would alleviate the problems were it implemented, but there’s my contribution.
(Great) Debates or GQ (or lmost anything else) wouldn’t be very viable then. It would be an unnatural and awkward constraint on flow of conversation. And if someone posts a question to GQ, the person answering, shouldn’t be the person paying for the “privilege” of answering.