Thumbs up!
What does a Like Button do? I’d be on-board if it somehow got me beer.
(I’ve been perfecting my original ideas:)
Merc:
The highest quality shirt, (available in two colours only, to start) the masthead on front, ‘cite’ on the back. Priced VERY high, to make it extra desirable! (Can always stock mouse pads, coffee mugs, keychains for more reasonable prices, of course! ) I think there’s much more $ value in making them difficult/costly to acquire, than cheap and anyone can easily get.
If you want your brand to have some cache, give it some from the start. Concert Tees are hard to get, you often have to go to the actual concert to get access. That’s what makes them so desirable for fans and let’s them charge really high prices.
( You might even consider upping the price for new memberships considerably so they include a Tshirt. Possibly can ONLY get ‘THE’ Tshirt by being a member!)
Now, work hard to get a Tshirt onto someone high profile, at an event, on tv etc. Let it build it’s own buzz, quietly without hype. After all, we know it’s awesome already! Clever brand placement could attract the right kind of people to this site. Y’know the ones parsing every equation they see on a whiteboard on Big Bang Theory. Those people!
Best newbie question, (GQ or GD?) every month, gets an expensive Tshirt and a one year membership, free! It might encourage more and interesting questions, and garner interesting new members. One a month. And maybe some of their mates too!
Neither of these approaches require much organization or work really, but would hopefully bring in both much needed funding and new people!
I think the category, “Elections”, is too specific. I think the category should be changed to “Politics”, and it should be required that ALL posts on any aspect of politics be in that category. It would make it a lot easier to navigate around what has proven to be an explosive topic on this site (and just about everywhere, for that matter). I simply would never go there. The way it is now, I run into these posts in virtually all the categories, and it makes it very hard to avoid them. Ironically, it has proven to be much easier IRL to disassociate myself from people and opinions that I find offensive than it is here for the simple reason that the stuff is all over the Board.
Just a thought.
It’s true – people like meaningless internet points. The reason so many sites do that is because they know it increases user engagement.
Maybe there’s a way we can do it that isn’t too toxic. What about: Just Upvotes.
No ability to downvote, and no hiding or re-ordering posts based on their score. Just a way that you can look and say “Wow, 30 people really liked what I wrote. Maybe I’ll reply to that other thread I was interested in, and bask in even greater glory.” 
Maybe there could be a badge or something that shows in your profile if you posted something that received a particularly high number of votes. Maybe a different color badge for each of the forums. I think we should be incentivizing quality, not quantity, so rewarding people for really good posts that got lots of votes, but not rewarding people for total points accumulated, which would just encourage people to post huge numbers of semi-pointless posts in hope that they get a couple votes each.
Also, there could be badges for how many consecutive days you visited, or how much time you spent on the board. I think it’s fine and good to incentivize people to spend time here, reading and then participating when they have something to say, just not to incentivize posting as much as possible.
And yes, I realize that people will say Upvotes are just a popularity contest, and it will be easier for liberals to get points in Great Debates than conservatives, and so forth… but keep in mind, it is just meaningless internet points. If there’s some bias in how they’re distributed, it doesn’t really hurt anyone. The point is just to make people want to spend more time here.
I support this. Politics are always divisive. There is not a message board where there is rational debate around politics. Make it so that all political discussions have to be in the Politics forum, and make that forum for members only.
I think it’s okay to keep religious threads in Great Debates. Although they can also be contentious, they are often much more respectful and there is rational discussion. I suppose it’s because it doesn’t really matter what someone else’s beliefs are since you don’t have to live with them. With politics, people are arguing to change policy that will affect their personal lives.
Maybe a regular email newsletter with links to recent threads they might be interested in. If we do institute some way to “like” posts, that could make it easier to surface popular content.
Now that I think about it, there is a Straight Dope newsletter, isn’t there? (At least, I see a sign up link on the home page.) Does that advertise the message board, or was it just for the column?
Sort out the ads to eliminate malware and then guilt the shit out of people to turn off add-blockers. I think most guests would be willing to whitelist the board if it was reliable. I only visited the board once on my phone and it was a nightmare of browser hijacks.
Also, like many have said, improve the mobile experience.
If not a repeat from upthread:
Please permit editing of OP titles during currently allowable time period for editing.
I never understood why this was blocked, either as a software thing or PTB decision.
You might consider people might buy for a high price, but of course it must be vetted, t-shirts with customized logos, eg:
I Corrected Chronos in SD on a Physics Topic
I’d buy that.
I strongly endorse this suggestion and summary of the current situation. Being uninterested in delving into political arguments here, but also unable to avoid them popping up in the most unrelated discussions, is a huge deterrent to me committing to the board with membership fees, etc.
You can report political hijacks in unrelated discussions. They are not allowed currently. We’ve had plenty of “Elections vs Politics” threads in ATMB and what exactly should go where and while it’s a reasonable discussion, istm kind of a nitpickery down the wrong rabbit hole topic for this thread.
Question: would it help to break this thread into topics and have separate threads? For example, a thread on content, a thread on membership/fee/titles, a thread on forums, Misc (I’ve made those up - other schemes welcome).
I suggest this because 7 pages is becoming too long to have a useful conversation, and because we are evolving into a few into a few well tread lines of thought. If we move into sub-threads, perhaps we could take each higher level idea to the next stage.
Thoughts?
Some previous discussion on a couple of the suggestions:
Should the “Elections” forum be renamed “Politics”?
Can We Keep Politics Out of IMHO and MPSIMS?
One person’s nitpickery is another person’s primary reason for not doing what many are suggesting would be the way to save this board. To each his own, I suppose.
Just throwing my two cents in to say that trivial things like avatars and coffee mugs would have zero impact on my joining, paying more vs. less, or contributing more. But being able to read a totally non-political thread without someone sniping at Trump or conservatives would make a big difference. (Yeah, I’m conservative, and yes, the sniping is sometimes from conservatives saying shit about Clinton or liberals. But I don’t like either one, and let’s be honest, on this board it’s more anti-Trump and anti-Republican.)
Reporting political hijacks is not the solution, because it’s usually not enough to amount to a full-fledged hijack where the original discussion is pushed aside in favor of a political argument. It’s more just a quick attempt to be witty and play to the masses with a “yeah, like that doofus Trump, amirite?” It makes me groan, sigh, and think goddamit why I can’t read a discussion of why lizards raise their left leg to pee without somebody chiming in with that? I could report it, I suppose, but you’re not going to mod every instance of a quip like that.
It’s the culture here. And you’re free to allow and foment whatever culture you like, but this thread is asking what might keep people like me around and have me contribute more, so there you go.
::raises hand::
Has anyone else noticed that the time between searches has been brought back down to 30 seconds? I accidentally had a typo in my search, and went to re-search, and just noticed the now-lowered time limit.
I think subtle things like that are steps in the right direction. Thank you, Tuba and mods!
Tripler
I’ve kept the avatars off, for me, though.
So your idea for improving the boards is to introduce mind control so no one will ever make snide little political comments?
Yes, yes, that is exactly what I was saying.
The Elections/Great Debates things is nothing compared to the puzzling supposed distinction between IMHO and MPSIMS. I’ve been here since 2001 and I have no idea what the specific difference between these two forums are supposed to be.
I think forum spinoffs/splitting are a bad idea. The games forum is the worst example. Sports go in CS. General questions about puzzles go in GQ. Other puzzles stuff goes in IMHO, or is that MPSIMS?
Sports and board games/puzzles are completely unrelated topics.
It basically is. You don’t like those snide political comments, know they are against the rules but don’t want to bother reporting them. You would just like them to stop magically. Or I guess, through someone’s eftorts other than your own.