Maybe an Administrator can answer this for me noone else seems to wish to do so.
How will GQ be affected by these charges, in as much as you spout all the “The Straight Dope”, “Fighting Ignorance” and, “GQ factual answers to factual question” nonsense. How will GQ continue to be a source of factual information if you cannot guarantee the information that I am paying you for? Or will “The Straight Dope” and “Fighting Ignorance” be a thing of the past?
If a newbie sings in as a guest who has fact on his side and runs out of time(guest time) defending himself. He then comes back and sees all the regulars bashing his accurate answer, I don’t think this person would want to come back and now have to pay $15 to defend. If this was me I would say to myself "What a bunch of Idiots and be done with you all.
I am only trying to play the Devil’s advocate here, that and you ain’t getting my five buck without some guarantee on accuracy.
Why are you even considering subscribing to the board if you feel that the regulars here will spend a month bashing a correct guest who has properly backed up his factual answer in GQ with valid cites? I know that in GD, where many of the questions/answers/debates can be highly dependent on opinion, it can get pretty hot, but I’ve never seen a correct–or even an innocently incorrect–response get a month worth of replies (good or bad).
And I’ll assume from this answer that a question has never been asked on the last day of the month? Is this correct? Does this board not have a history of sarcasm and debates that have gone on for more than 24 hours?
Fine. For most people “a month” does not mean “from today until the end of the month”. It means “a time period equivalent to the length of a month” which in this particular instance would probably be “30 days” considering that’s the currently proposed free-trial period.
So, “I’ve never seen a correct–or even an innocently incorrect–response in GQ get a replies for 30 days afterwards (discussing the reply itself).”
In either case, it still doesn’t answer the question of why you want to subscribe to a board that you seem to feel is peopled mainly by thugs and bullies.
What guarantee of information exists right now? NONE. I see incorrect answers posted every HOUR by people who drive-by or else just want to boost their post count. There is NO guarantee of correct answers, and often the correct answers are lost in the noise of frivilous and off-topic and political trolling posts.
What “guarantee” could they possibly provide to you? They may as well guarantee that the sun will shine. With no poking or picking-on intended, if you want “guaranteed” accuracy for answers to questions then look elsewhere, because it’s not here, or anywhere else that I know of.
RTFirefly, Aeschines, and Shayna have made some great points that express my own dismay far better than I could or have. I will pay your $5. I’m not confident that this scheme will work. I am much more confident that untried, less aggressive, and no-expectation-of-permanence schemes would have worked, and in fact worked better seeing as existing internet entities have used such models successfully.
All the brainpower on the SDMB, and this is what we’ve come up with?
Well, I’m in for five bucks. Trial period is right. I hope it works out, but I am not holding my breath, that’s for sure. I’m already a little disenhanted from seeing some posters I know I will miss proclaiming that they’ll leave.
And if I join today and 30 days after I join as a guest and just prior to my guest membership expiring. Someone posts then same question and my 30 days trial expires after I have post but befor I defend, then what happens considering that if my factual answer pisses off a “Charter member” and they bag me I won’t want to come back and give you my $15.00. Judging from all the dancing around you people are doing now I already know the answer to this.
No and as of this minute I’m not paying for the answers so I don’t expect any guarantees. But if you wish to charge me to ask GQ questions then I want guarantees of accuracy. Or is this concept of people coming here because we keep telling everyone we have “The Straight Dope” just a myth and these people once we get them here and they pay $15 then we expect them to know that even though we got them here on a promise of “Fighting Ignorance” and “The Straight Dope” (These two conecpt I of course relate with getting a correct answer) and then we don’t provide correct answer.
Your connecting this with AOL and software is a little curious though. The product here seems to be “Fighting Ignorance” and getting “The Straight Dope” and not the software that the board runs on.
I jumped on back of this thread to ask…what about paying for multiple years in advance at the low, low price of $4.95 ? Maybe another possible status Doper for Life? Within the next year (after we see how this is going to work)
members can register again for say…$25 or whatever and not be worried about the slippery slope.
I tried to get donations and/or funding last X-mas but was told off. No they/we said, the SDMB isn’t going to start charging for memberships. I even asked the bosses about it…“fine they said, good luck…” They even said that if WE could come up with some “good faith” purchases via the Straightdope Store they might be able to work it out where the SDMB could be financed through purchases.
Oh well, maybe this is for the best. Less than $5 bucks for the first year. I don’t really have it at this very moment but I’ll get it. Heck, that’s less than it costs for a shot of tequila and one cigar.
Sorry if I duplicated somebody’s comment but the thread was growing faster than I was reading…gotta go work now. Start pinching my pennies.
OK, fair enough, I can see your point. Your contention is that “correct answers to questions” is the product of this Board, yes? My point is that that is not the product nor is it what they are marketing, “Straight Dope” slogan notwithstanding. They are marketing a Community of people who are trying to find or working towards finding the “Straight Dope” on questions about almost anything. If you want to really get into marketing claims, then you can say that Cecil is actually the only entity that the Reader claims “knows all”, not the Members of the Message Board, nor the Staff Reporters. In fact, I don’t know where the Reader ever made any guarantee of performance, even a frivilous one, from the Members of the SDMB.
Once again I will reiterate that I am trying here to play the role of Devils advocate this is why I’m being a little over the top about this. Most newbies come here based on “The Straight Dope” ask Cecil and the teeming millions. I can just see quite a few people who will be turned away because it’s not an open and free discussion when people are limited time wise to completely defending an arguement which could turn out to the facts. This is the real concern the five bucks I could care less about myself, however it’s the quality of debate in GQ that I really believe will suffer greatly and have the most crippling affect on the board as a whole. I am not trying to be a butt hole about this I’m trying to get concerns dealt with. How will this affect GQ, which is the only forum I do really care about.
I believe a parallel legal precedent may exist for airline companies.
Before a plane taxis away from the gate, the airlines can kick anyone off than plane for being an “unruly passenger” or for maing a remark that an overly-paranoid flight attendant interprets as a bomb or hijacking threat. Some of these “ejected” passengers may feel that they were kicked off the plane without good cause. Are these ejected passengers given a full refund of their ticket price? If not, I’m betting at least some of them have sued to get that refund, and a few of these suits may have gone to trial.
If a paying Doper gets banned and doesn’t feel the banning was justified, he will probably feel entitled to a refund of the “unused portion” of his/her subscription fee. Even if he doesn’t have enough evidence to win the case, even if the case can be dismissed before it goes to trial, it’s gonna cost several subscription fees’ worth of legal costs just to file the motion for dismissal with the court.
A policy of refunding the pro-rated remaining portion of a banned paying Doper’s subscription fee would go a long way toward avoiding these potential legal headaches.
I would be surprised if its codifed as such, but I’ll bet effectively you are correct. However, even some airlines are considering or have changed their ticket policies to be “no refunds, period” if you miss your flight for any reason other than delay from them (or another airline). If they can do that, surely they can write their ticket contract such that you buy the ticket at-risk.
There’s all sorts of costs on both ends, though. I know from suing people online that it does cost quite a bit, and you have to be pretty angry and have a bit of disposable income to honestly get things rolling against an entity many States away (or in another Country). It’s going to cost anyone far more than the filing fees to get back $15. Respectfully, this is a bit different than a $1000 airline ticket.
Thank you to you also it has been an interesting debate I wanted to get that out there even if just to be read because while the whole issue of $5 and paying for a message board is really trivial the decision to go this route could have serious consequences for the entire SDMB and it’s continuation. What will happen if things do go south and the CR does decide to fold the boards, what will the dscussion be about then? Getting reimbursed for subscription?
If anyone is wondering no I’ll not be paying and not because I don’t want to rather I can’t afford it myself presently business concerns are growing and eating is also presently an issue, some might be delighted to hear this news so be it. And I’ll refuse charity on the grounds that although I not fully solvent at present I am not exactly what you’d call poor neither and my thinking is charity should go to those who need it.
12parsecs, you don’t get a certified guarantee of accuracy even if you spent your money on the World Book Encyclopedia or the Oxford English Dictionary. Cecil has printed columns before that caused at least one of these entities to re-think their own facts on “drawn and quartered,” I believe; goodness knows that Cecil’s wisdom extends to whatever information happens to be available at the time and he’s willing to admit that science doesn’t know the answer—or when his factual correspondent is full of it (see “Mole People of New York”).
If you’re trying to argue that the message board should abandon the idea of paid subscriptions because it cannot guarantee 100% rock-solid accurate information, don’t bother. And if you’re looking for a rock-solid 100% guarantee on any fact in the universe, lemme know when you find it, okay?
Why are you so confused about this? Surely there are other paying websites, like Ars Technica, which guarantee accurate information on their forums, right? Wrong.
Well, maybe a news organization like CNN guarantees its information in its service agreement:
Nope. Well, then surely a publisher such as Microsoft guarantees the information in an online encyclopaedia such as Encarta, right?
Okay, okay, the CIA Factbookmust have some kind of guarantee of accuracy. It’s our government, after all, right? Here is part of their information on contributors:
Nope, they don’t guarantee that information for all users either. They specifically say their information is intended for the use of US Government officials; they make no mention of a guarantee for random mopes on the Internet.
So what are you suggesting with this factual guarantee thing, 12parsecs? In a few minutes I googled up a whole passel of links to Terms Of Use that disclaim any guarantee of accuracy. Hell, even Google itself has a disclaimer. And here you are looking for a guarantee? Pardon me while I laugh.
As for how I interpret the “don’t be a jerk” rule (a complete tangent to my original point, thank you so much) I interpret that to mean “don’t be a jerk.” I interpret it to mean that I should strive to be civil with people I disagree with, not to call people names (except in the Pit), to abide by the terms of service, not to taunt or wag fingers… jeez, you learn this stuff in kindergarten. Play nice with others. It’s not my job to interpret the gray area between “jerk” and “insensitive lout” and “utter bastard.” (That’s what the mods and admins do.) It’s my job to stay well clear of the gray area, isn’t it?—'cos that’s the rule. T’ain’t hard.
Simply put as the rest of your post has been directed at me I’ll assume this is also in which case tell me in what post # in this thread did I discuss your interpretation of what a jerk is? In which of my posts did I talk about this???
Service agreement lawsuits never happen I guess? Probably why they write them Microsoft service agreements have never been challenged in court? Don’t think that because I sign a agreement I have no right to my day in court? I think your wrong?
Ed,
It would seem that with nary a visit in the past 6 months, I’m equipped to kick my SDMB habit.
It’s purely serendipity that I not only stopped by, but happened to see this message. I thought I’d thank you for what has truly been the most thought provoking and entertaining message board, bar none. I wish you continued success on the paid board.
Unfortunately, I will not subscribe to a paid service. I fully understand your reasons for moving to fee based content, but I believe strongly that the power of the internet is in its staggering depth of free content. It’s a shame this isn’t a viable option for the SDMB.
Take good care, and drop me an email if Cecil ever needs a new know-it-all on staff.
W.
