My sentiments exactly.
It is the recuction of the teeming millions to the kinda-stagnant hundreds.
I meant “reduction”.
And why the hell can’t I rant in anger for the SDMB to remain free, whilst many yell back ‘Oh, just pay the 5 bucks and quit whining’?
NO.
I don’t wanna pay. I don’t think anyone should pay. I think it’s wrong, for the very things that Stink Fish Pot said.
I love a free, open forum.
What’s so wrong with wanting that?
(futile words, I know, but that’s how I feel. Ok, I’ll stop ‘whining’.)
And Stink Fish Pot…is that from MAS*H? (what do I win?)
So do I.
Someone has to pay for it.
Well, then. Let’s see how this looks.
Achilles, I’d be happy to sponsor someone to keep them around. Just email me your password and I’ll email back when it’s done. No payback necessary, just do the same thing for someone else whenever it becomes convenient.
The SDMB was at 2,205 subscribers yesterday afternoon. The “Teeming Hundreds” was surpassed on the first day of subscriptions.
Only a few hundred subscribers are really required to keep any message board fresh and humming along. Well, this place is going to end up with over 3,000, I’ll bet. Therefore, the discussions will be as rich as always. I’m willing to say nothing will really be lost.
People on this board have been stalked because they paid with their CC?
The only people that could even feasably do that would be that admins, which I doubt they’ll do. No member can get that info, so I’m at a loss here.
That doesn’t even make any sense.
That’s a non-sequitir, though – stalkers were getting posters’ real names by some other method, and definitely not from CC info.
I second World Eater.
You’re probably right. sigh
Even if you don’t care to pay the $4.95, surely you weren’t hoping that the SDMB would rapidly go down the tubes due to the subscription requirement?
No matter what, this board couldn’t continue as a free board. So it was either pay-to-play, or bye-bye SDMB. IMHO, there is room on the Internet for a select few successful pay-to-play message boards. Now then, not just any old message board can get away with it – but the SDMB clearly can. And since going to subscriptions was the best way for the board to survive, who can begrudge the administrators?
By the way Leaper, I’m not trying to call you an idiot or anything, I’m just trying to assure you, and anyone else, that paying the SDMB directly by CC is pretty safe.
Actually, there were (and are) several more options. I suspect you’ll see a few of them in action if the board’s activity begins to drop.
Slacker did you get my apology? I was about to email you if you didn’t see it. 
Yep I saw it. Thanks. 
Many options for raising revenue, such as advertising banners, pop-ups, and donations were considered and discussed ad nauseum. They have good reasons for rejecting each alternate plan – not that they are necessarily correct, but other revenue-raising ideas were thought through.
Here are some of the counterarguments as I understand them – much has been written about them on the ATMB forum, and the SDMB admins can explain it all much better than I can:
– Advertising banners: these bring in little revenue these days. Durin the late-90s dot-com boom, banner ad rates were artificially inflated and did indeed bring in plenty of revenue for various sites. However, banner ads now bring in very little money per click, and are not helpful to a site which uses as many resources as this one does.
– Pop-ups: these were pretty much rejected on aesthetic grounds, IIRC. Also, I believe some of the low-rate problems with banner ads also apply to pop-ups.
– Donations: works well in the short-term, but income from donations is sporadic after an initial flurry. The SDMB needs a more constant, “budgetable” stream of revenue.
…
So we’ll see what the future holds. If more revenue is needed down the road, that bridge will be crossed at that time.
As for board activity slowing down … with 3,000+ subscribers a virtual certainty, this board will stay about as active as it always has been. Looking way down the road, it’s hard for me to imagine that 80+% of the Charter Members not re-subscribing in 2005, so ISTM that a membership of 2,000-2,500 (a worst-case number, IMHO) is assured in to the medium-term. That’s really much more than the board needs to remain active and promote fresh questions and discussions, anyway.
Having said all that – and also IMHO – there’s nothing to stop this board from growing steadily in the interim, anyway. I do think the 30-day free posting period will have to be lengthened to insure hooking new folks, but that’s an easily enabled option, should the need ever arise.
That’s how the regular subscriptions may work out too.
IMHO, they should have considered what a lot of messageboards are doing these days - offering expanded capability in exchange for a subscription price. Things like custom titles, avatars* and private messaging add a lot of community feel to the boards without much additional strain on the server. As tight as the community is here, I guarantee that a lot of people would pay to be able to communicate with each other right here at the dope. (*Yes, I know avatars are obnoxious on some boards, but you can set them not to display for yourself.)
Assume that they did this, and charged $10 (or more) per year for the service. I’m willing to bet a lot of the Charter Members would be into the idea, and if at least half of them signed up the SD would have made the same amount of money initially.
Then, new users would still be able to come by and slowly become a part of the community. I really can’t imagine a single person will pay the $15 for a messageboard they’ve only been on a month. If anyone pays at that level, it’ll be previous users who finally decided they wanted to show up to the party late. And new people could get plugged in adequately, at which point they’d want to pay to support the board they’ve come to enjoy.
The numbers just don’t work out either. At five dollars a year, with 2,500 subscribers the boards are making $12,500. Even assuming that they hit 3,000 users signing up, that’s $15,000. According to the numbers that have been floating around, the board costs upwards of $20,000 per year to maintain. They’re still losing money. Add to the situation the promise that the recurring users will always pay half of what the newbies pay. They’ll have to charge the regulars more just to break even, which of course will drive the newb price even higher. This is a terrible idea.
I would have been willing to pay for added features. Anywhere up to $20 per year. I’m not willing to pay only to post - even a measly five dollars. I just don’t think it’s a good situation. I honestly do hope that the board manages to survive though.
Getting back to what I originally snapped at you about, I find it amazing/depressing that a person who has been here 4 years wouldn’t want to sign up, even out of loyalty. I guess I understand the principle of not wanting to pay to post, but I don’t think it’s worth leaving this place for. Wouldn’t you feel compelled after all these years of fantastic content, idea exchange, and telling people to fuck themselves, to at least throw the place a few bucks?
Seeing all these old timers go is the worst.
Slacker – point taken about the appeal of private messaging. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least for the SMDB to eventually offer extra features a some fee. Many admins and mods, IIRC, are opposed to avatars for aesthetic reasons (and I think also because of bandwidth).
I tend to agree that newbies will be overcharged at $14.95. Also, it seems to me that Charter Memberships could have gone for more than $4.95. But Ed Zotti admits that this whole subscription drive is an experiment in progress. The admins also believe that $4.95 was “too low”, but they wanted to establish that people would pay some amount for the SDMB. More tinkering with the pricing and trial periods is undoubtedly forthcoming.
IMHO, the way to get newbies on board is to offer 90 or 120 days free. New subscriptions should be around $9.95 for the balance of the 1st year (1 year minus free trial period), then $9.95 annually to renew.
Slacker, just to be clear: where I disagreed with you specifically was on the future activity of the SDMB. I don’t think it will reduce much in the medium-term (18-24 months). Having said that, I do agree with a lot of your ideas for future board revenue generation.
I’ve been lurking for most of the 5 years this board has been around…however, now that I’m paying 5 whole dollars, I feel the strange urge to post.
You know, pahanka, you kinda went nuts back there on November 11th, 2002 when you posted twice in one day. Was it the coffee? Chocolate?
Nice to see ya here.