This is in the pit not because it’s a rant, but because it’s a complaint about the board.
What was the first thing you thought when Napster said it would charge for music?
You said, OK, that’s fair enough. A song is worth something, and the artist deserves some residuals.
But when they said everyone pays the same amount, no matter how much they download, did you think that was fair?
I didn’t. I probably have downloaded 20 songs tops. My friends have filled whole servers.
Now we come to this board. I’m happy to be billed on my charge card for posting, but not if I’m subsidizing the people who live here, for God’s sake!
Let them pay their fair share, and the cost to the rest of us would be small enough no one would complain.
The accounting alone would take a roomful of servers.
And the fee would be for the privelege of posting, not for posting itself. Nothing (except having a life!!) prevents you from posting 20,000 posts once you pay. Because you choose to post twenty times vs. someone else’s 3000, just means they are better at getting their money’s worth. I pay the same insurance as someone who only drives ten miles a day, yet I drive 110+. I get a lot for my insurance dollar. OTOH,if I get 3 speeding tickets, I lose my license, same as someone who only drives 100 miles a year. Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you. You either believe there is a fundamental balance, or you don’t.
I think there are disadvantages to the pay-to post. I think there are people out there who are great contributors to the board, and if they were lost they’d be missed. I’m hoping that if they get to that point, someone will sponsor them and we’ll keep them.
In the meantime let’s think seriously about it: Do you like the boards? do you want them to stay? maybe you should pony up. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is stopping the Reader from just shutting the whole thing down, which they could do. (None of this is directed at you personally, pit and pendulum, I’m just venting)
So the people who put a lot of time into the boards, who help create the sense of community that is (IMO) the board’s strongest draw, should be charged more than lurkers, hit-and-run posters, and trolls? No offence, dude, but if the choice is between a pay policy that will keep you on the boards, or one that will keep, say, Scylla on the boards, I’m going to go with option number two.
Of course, a quick check of my post count in relation to my registration date will give you another reason why I prefer pay-to-post over pay-per-post.
Just an anecdotal way of saying “sometimes you win, sometimes you lose”
Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.
Sometimes you’re the hammer, sometimes you’re the nail.
Sometimes you’re the bat, sometimes you’re the ball.
Sometimes you’re the sparrow, sometimes you’re the snail.
Sometimes you’re the schlemiel, sometimes you’re the schlimazzel(sp?)
Sometimes you’re the felcher, sometimes you’re the juicebox.
I think that point is that there is a higher cost in resources for someone who posts 2000 times in a month compared to someone who posts twice a month. If someone posts a thread called “Raise your post count here!”, I might make a post there, but I’m not going to make 20 posts there that few people are likely to read anyway. I’m not complaining about active posters (heck, I’ve been moderately active since registering) as I like the free wheeling nature of the SDMB. OTOH, should the posters that post 10 new threads a day pay a bit more than someone less “trigger happy”? I’m not sure, but I think a graduated scale based on usage is at least worth discussing.
And I hope that you weren’t implying that a low post count somehow equals “lurkers, hit-and-run posters, and trolls”.
The point I was trying to make is: it will be a difficult enough job to deal with paying as it is. The accounting required to deal with taking subscription money from all the board members will absorb a lot of the money in and of itself.
Let’s just say it was a dime a post. How do you bill someone for one post? the charge on a Visa, Mastercard, or Amex, will NOT allow someone to charge a dime. hell, some places won’t let you use your card for anything less than 20 bucks. So the accounting nightmare of dealing with the forty two people who post 80 cents worth of posts in a month are horrific. Then there’s the cost of the charge itself. When you accept someone’s Mastercard or Visa, you’re agreeing that some of that cost goes to the card company. Charging someone a dime a post, then billing them once a month, even if it’s automatically done in their bank account or credit card, means giving an even greater percentage of that money to the card companies, who have too much of my cash to begin with. The USPS determined this in the last millenia: Dealing with differing costs of postage for a letter going, say, across town versus across the country, is an accounting nightmare. One cost pays for it all, from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine, or anywhere in between.
This way really does make the most sense. Once a year, we get out our wallets, type in the credit card number, pay 20 or 25 bucks, then everything is just like it was before. As I said, it beats them just shutting it down, which they can do.
My question was for Miller actually, but I don’t really think that was what he meant. I was just pointing out that some people contribute a lot to the boards without posting on a daily basis.
You’re right that the accounting issues may be a problem. I was thinking about something more manageable. Maybe 0 - 10 posts per month costs $2, 11 - 50 costs $3, and anything greater costs $5 per month. They wouldn’t have to charge for each post, just once at month end.
I don’t disagree with anything that you’ve said. I’m not even sure that I think that they should charge in the way I described, but I do think it is worthy of discussion.
Most of the thread is a (very interesting) semi-hijack about voice characterisation in Warner Bros films.
Now, I know that threads evolve naturally and that this is part of the appeal of SDMB - but if you read the thread in the link you’ll perhaps see that there are as many “regulars” (i.e. 2,500+ posters) as “lurkers” who pop in with humerous observations, or anecdotal tales of how “this happened to my sister” etc.
Like I said, this is cool and is part of what the SDMB is all about (heck, my own contribution to the thread had nothing to do with actually providing a direct answer to the OP’s question)…
BUT - imagine if only the “regulars” had responded: the OP’s question would still be unanswered fully. The regular dopers’ “community” might have been added to, but the whole “fighting ignorance” thing would have faded into the background.
I am most emphatically NOT having a pop at anyone who posted in the Elmer Fudd thread - my point was simply to show that
sometimes the ‘lurkers’ only post when they really know an answer to a question
that the “regulars” are just as likely to be “hit and run” posters (if not more so, in my experience) as newbies
“putting a lot of time into the boards” can also mean reading pretty much each and every thread (as I tend to do in GQ) yet only replying when one has something factual and relevant to contribute.
The well-established members do often have fascinating and erudite opinions which are worth keeping hold of, but the “silent majority” play just as much a part in fighting ignorance and making the SDMB such a groovy place.
Let’s have a pay policy which allows all types of posters to stay on the Boards.
– Quirm
(who’s particular expertise in Schiller’s early dramas and underground warehouse techno tends to not be called upon all that often)
This is beginning to sound like the Federal Income Tax.
If you work this system on averages could you throw out all those who registered and posted nothing (0) before crunching the numbers?
