[David, Gaudere: Please feel free to kick this elsewhere if, in your view, it does not constitute a great debate.]
Why not sell subscriptions to SDMB for those who wish to post? Lurkers could still lurk for free, but a subscription price of, say, $9.95 per year might help weed out trolls and pay for upgrades and the like.
In my opinion, this board is worth paying for. There is nowhere else on the net to get this kind of quality. Look at Gaudere, David, Satan, Poly, Tris, Spiritus, Father, Phil, and many many many others too numerous to list here.
Let them try some for free. Get them hooked. Then start charging!
Yer pal,
Satan
I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Three months, two days, 12 hours, 45 minutes and 1 second.
3741 cigarettes not smoked, saving $467.66.
Life saved: 1 week, 5 days, 23 hours, 45 minutes.
So, Libertarian, you’re suggesting a tax on the board to pay for services? I think that maybe instead of giving them money to take care of the board, I keep my money and take care of my board needs. Doesn’t that sound more, I dunno… libertarian to you?
One of the things that make this board what it is , is the new blood coming in. Ok, the posters you mentioned ( and many more ) are in a different league than the rest of us but they ahve to react to something . This board needs to stay fresh not become static with the same people posting the same thoughts about the same things . I feel that you only really come to like ( love ) this place by posting and bouncing your thoughts ( or lack of them ) of other people .
While I now would gladly pay a fee , I know I wouldn’t off when I first joined .
I could see other problems with a fee . What about a contensious banning. Some people act very different when the pay for something . They can now put a value on the service and what that service to come up to their expectations .
So my answer would be , No ! ( I’d pay it , but I don’t think it would be for the good of the board.
No, it would be a tax if Cecil declared eminent domain over everybody in some arbitrary radius, and forced us all to pay whether we participate in the boards or not.
Were you thinking that conscription and volunteerism are the same?
Can’t be sure. God only knows what you mean when you use the term.
Yojimbo
Just because you subscribe to something doesn’t mean that you have acquired ownership of it. The rules that presently apply to posters would still apply.
Trolls don’t obey the rules. They’re trolls.
As far as staying fresh, some lurkers, who might otherwise become great posters, might be hesitating to join because they see all this weird troll activity. Who wants to get involved with crazy people?
That solves the problem of the threshold of pain for newbies.
By the time they feel the need to post in the pit, they’ve been here long enough to feel it’s worth the dough.
Eventually, all the regulars would pay, and the people who had only one or two questions of fact, what the board started for, would be able to ask.
OK, so I lurked for most of the past year. But by the time I decided to de-lurk, I certainly would have been willing to pay a modest subscription fee to join.
I don’t think I’m that much of an exception.
OTOH, I think that charging for services opens up a whole new legal maze that the Reader et al may not be too eager to navigate.
Just for instance, if everyone were paying for this service and we continued to have site performance issues, things could get very ugly very quickly.
SD can cover itself on such issues with waivers in the user agreement. Paying will entitle you to nothing other than the privilege of participating as a poster. It just seems to me that a service like this is too good to waste on adolescent hackers and immature jerks.
Besides, the money can be used to improve performance.
I doubt the board will gain many new posters this way. It’s hardly an enticing offer when everyone and their dog is offering free forums, bulletin boards and the like (I know this is more than just one board, but I doubt many newbies would want to pay to find that out).
I would not be prepared to pay. I’m sure that that in itself doesn’t bother anyone, but I’m also sure that many other regulars or semi-regs would also disappear.
Are there any other advertising possibilities? Maybe more banner ads – I know there are performence ads, but maybe advertisers would be willing to pay heftily for reaching several thousand people – or the possibility of direct advertising mail to users’ registered email addresses.
Certainly not, Libertarian. I really enjoy this place, and I’ve never seen another like it. My point was that it would be, in my opinion, difficult to attract “new blood” by telling them that their fee entitles them to post on a set of message boards, given that on first appearances it’s not that different to services offered elsewhere for free.
As for why I wouldn’t pay…I don’t have a good answer. I enjoy posting and reading here, but if I didn’t I’d probably spend more time in the “real world”, which is no bad thing. Partly I’m just tight, partly I don’t believe that, for all the enjoyment, the SDMB is that important to me. As I said, I don’t expect anyone to be influenced by my decision, but I don’t think I’d be the only one to make it.
Well, they could make that decision after they have lurked for free to their hearts’ content. But if some drop out, thinking the place isn’t worth ten bucks, then that in itself might improve performance considerably. As always, a noncoercive free-market will eliminate whatever disequilibrium there might be.
A mandatory membership fee would kill this board outright. I know that many folks don’t spend much time in the Comments fora, but really, those are the purpose of this board, and what makes us different from every other board on the net. The idea is, that if a person reads something in one of Cecil’s columns, be it on the board or in any of the couple dozen newspapers where it’s published, or in a book, and they want to comment on it in some way, they can do so. Ten dollars may be worthwhile for a whole year of several posts a day, but it’s not worthwhile for an isolated “letter to the editor”. Many posters have one specific thing to say, and register to say that one thing, and having said it, move on. No, these aren’t the folks hosting post count parties, or attending get-togethers, or what not, but they’re still a crucial part of this board.
As for requiring a subscription only for certain fora, what you would end up with is folks posting in the wrong place because they don’t want to pay. Do you really think that charging admission to the Pit would have any effect on the trolls? They’d just start barbequeing in the other fora… It defeats the whole pupose of the Pit. I agree that we need to find a way to get more money into the boards, but subscriptions are not the solution.
How would one pay? Credit cards aren’t universal, you know, and there is no other convenient, secure way of paying for something online. I value my privacy. Sending my credit card number to a place as politically charged as this might be too much of a temptation for some half-wit troll I piss off. And sending cash-or-checks opens up a whole new can of worms. Remember, plenty of regulars here aren’t from the US. Plenty are from far-flung places like the UK and Australia. Exchange rates are one thing, out-of-country checks are another. And trolls would send in bad checks just to screw with things. Just like trolls would try their damndest to crack the credit card system. No, Lib, there are just too many problems.
I love the SDMB. I love the people on it. I am addicted. I’m like a junkie who needs her fix.
But I will NOT pay for it now. And if there was a fee in the beginning to register I would have said “Oh shit! Well screw this.” and I would have moved on. And I know a lot of people who are even cheaper than I am who probably would do the same.
Personally, I’d be willing to pay a one-time fee for the purpose of improving performance. Anything else would end it for me.
Decide for yourself if that’s an argument for or against the idea.
