Don’t worry about it. You are getting board history here. It can be bad. Its been worse. I kind of like it that way - you need to recognize that what is here is worth the time and effort it takes to be here. Keeps the riff-raff down.
IIRC, memberships have been debated, but have many issues. Some of our posters couldn’t afford a membership and would need to drop. With memberships or sponsorships, there has been concerns that moderators hands would be tied (can you imagine the “december isn’t banned cause he’s a big sponsor” debate? Or the “What do you mean Coll got banned, he paid you guys to be here” debate?) For now, at least, we get our cycles, space and bandwidth gratis from the Reader - and for what we pay, we are getting a darn lot.
I’d pony up $20 to help them out, but it seems that they don’t want my money. That makes them unique among most businesses. Seems like a no win situation though.
One thing I’d like to gripe about is the oft repeated “Every time they speed up the board, thousands of new users come along and it slows down again.” As if a server upgrade attracts new users like flies. My opinion is that the “thousands of new users” are coming on board, upgrade or no upgrade, thus, further slowing down the board. It has been slower than usual lately. I usually post between 12am and around 3am when the database updates, and lately even at that late hour it is barely functioning. Could be a problem with the servers, an influx of new users, could be a whole lot of mitigating factors in combination.
I started a thread just the other day asking why members couldn’t start a fund to buy some equipment for the SDMB and then donate it to them. I imagine plenty of people here would, but I don’t percieve the board administration as being interested in pursuing it. In the end, they will do whatever suits them and as users of a freely provided board, we will simply have to accept that.
As for myself, I have been frustrated to no end with the slow down of late. Lately, if the board is slow, I log out and find something more productive to do with my time and check back later. Seems to be a better solution than trying to use an unresponsive board and getting all worked up about it. Hell, I spend to much time here anyway.
I guess I’ll either learn to live with it, or gravitate to some other way of entertaining myself when I’m bored. At any rate, I’m past getting upset about it, it’s just not that big of a deal.
When I am doping, I am almost always doing something else. Hanging at another board that moves faster. Playing a game. Working (like I am right now - batch file going in the background). Even reading a book.
What do you mean you “haven’t heard” that a corporation can accept donations?
It looks like you think that corporations just simply cannot accept a donation, that anyone who gives money to a corporation must receive value in return for it, but that is simply not the case under any body of law I can think of right now.
The tax issue associated with a donation to a corporation is whether the money should be excluded from the gross income of the corporation as a gift or whether it wasn’t really a gift and should thus be gross income. A court would scrutinize the facts very closely to look for a benefit the putative donor expected to receive (e.g., publicity, a faster messageboard), which would make the donation fail to qualify as a gift, and make the donation taxable income to the donee.
But even if the donation is taxable income to the corporation, that’s no reason for the corporation to not accept the donation (unless it’s one of several kinds of special entities that must receive a certain amount of its income from specific sources).
Personally, I have nothing against banner ads, as long as they aren’t flashy and intrusive (or a variation on “Punch the Monkey”) Now if they started using pop-ups or those ads that apear to become a part of the webpage blocking your view and making loud noises, I’d stop reading altogether.
There was a poll a year or two ago asking if dopers would be willing to pay. I was honest, voted no, but offered to water Cecils’ plants if he went to Louisville on vacation. I guess he knew I was Talking Through My Hat.
