Different skins for the forum would be cool. It might be good for people with different eye conditions?
Avatars are past due – and those who don’t want to see them can just turn them off. Most websites don’t allow animated ones, and I don’t think I’ve ever really seen the problems people predict.
As for a photo forum, that would be cool, although could the servers handle it?
In the old days, Ed made extensive use of usenet newsgroups to research his columns. I don’t think it was a luddite thing, he just didn’t like the spotlight. Not everyone who gets into research columns does it for the fame and glory.
What is the scale of the problem? How much money does the Dope need? I’m going to take a wild guess and say that administration time is the biggest cost and we need to fund 1 person-day per week - about $10,000 per year - to keep Jenny, Jerry, and the other gremlins well fed.
Merchandising is an obvious start. The likes of Cafe Press and Teespring have standard sets of products - mugs, shirts, coasters, etc - on which the Straight Dope brandings and artworks can be placed.
The brand - ‘Fighting ignorance’. This is the big earner. What is being done to syndicate Cecil’s work? Specifically syndication outside the USA. Online news sites like The Guardian and the Telegraph and the Times are interesting possibles.
Membership fees: the current membership fees are very low. Perhaps they could be raised?
New content. How can we Dopers help the SD to create new content? The messageboard style is not conducive to this, but over at Enworld.org they have Wiki threads where anyone can edit posts and on Quora they have a Create Wiki option to allow people to summarise answers.
Administration time. Could this be reduced by upgrades?
Going along with what RTFirefly and Quartz posted, what’s the scale of the issue, exactly? And what are the parameters of the problem? That will seriously impact options for remediation or mitigation.
As far as some generic ones I haven’t seen posted, maybe try a Patreon page? That’s what a lot of YouTube people I subscribe to do. That brings up another…maybe see if any YouTube vloggers or groups are interested in sponsoring the site, perhaps in association with their own channels. A lot of them use other message boards (Reddit get’s tagged a lot), and some of them even use content from those threads on their site, so maybe someone would be willing to have a closer tie to this site and board. Or, perhaps, launch a channel (or sponsor one) that is linked with the Straight Dope. There are some good science oriented channels, but I don’t think this has been over saturated so much as to preclude something like that.
A lot of YouTube channels also use merchandise…cups and tee shirts and the like, as several posters have mentioned. I’d certainly be interested in that sort of thing. This would only be useful if the gap we are talking about is fairly small, however. Really, I think today to reach a wider audience you need a lot more involvement in the big social media platforms out there.
ISTR a boilerplate statement that Cecil doesn’t even go near computers if he can help it. 
Chocolate microscopes?
I was a charter member for a while, and then let it lapse. Why? I don’t even remember. But I can say that I didn’t miss anything by not being a member. The only thing I “got” was the ‘Charter Member’ title under my name, and once I let that lapse, I lost that title for good, so what was the point. So, my suggestions would be:
[ul]
[li]Something for membership. Maybe a mug, bumper sticker, etc etc? Maybe a ‘members only’ forum (though I’m not sure what benefit that would provide). I don’t know. Some kind of concrete incentive.[/li][li]A way to subscribe in perpetuity without intervention on my part, so I don’t have to remember to re-up each year. I have plenty of other subscriptions/donations that work this way, and I’m sure the SDMB could do it too. And, I’d bet that the SDMB has missed out on thousands of dollars by not offering this option. Set it and forget it, and people will do just that.[/li][/ul]
[quote=“Eonwe, post:27, topic:819049”]
I was a charter member for a while, and then let it lapse. Why? I don’t even remember. But I can say that I didn’t miss anything by not being a member. The only thing I “got” was the ‘Charter Member’ title under my name, and once I let that lapse, I lost that title for good, so what was the point. So, my suggestions would be:
[list]
[li]Something for membership. Maybe a mug, bumper sticker, etc etc? Maybe a ‘members only’ forum (though I’m not sure what benefit that would provide). I don’t know. Some kind of concrete incentive.[/li][/QUOTE]
What if we gave away members only Members Only jackets? I’m sure there are boxes of those things somewhere we could get for a song.
Another vote for the Patreon suggestion. It’s better than an annual pledge drive because it provides an ongoing source of predictable monthly income.
A presence on YouTube would steer people to this message board. Plus with enough views, it would provide a source of income through ads. No suggestions at the moment for what the content might be.
Perhaps we should investigate finding a new home for the SDMB, perhaps with a different name. Being an engineer, I consider the worse case scenario.
I suppose that if the board is closed down this weekend, we can contact each other and receive announcements on the Facebook page.
Pay-to-Post.
Although initially you’d lose a few good posters, many more bad posters would find trolling, etc. no fun if they can’t do it for free. In the short term you’d gain revenue and in the long term an increased level of discourse and a sustainable economic model.
In my time here lurking then joining, I’ve read many charter-level members lamenting they don’t feel comfortable posting here as much anymore due to the current climate of this board. Pay-to-Post would be a way to solve many issues discussed here. Obviously IMHO of course.
Pretty much sums up my thoughts as an infrequent contributor. I appreciate that posts that are unsubstantiated babble are taken to task but there exists in certain forums a meanness that silences the less thick-skinned among us.
I’ll offer the pit as an example. There was a recent thread discussing if the pit should be continued and the consensus seemed to be that it acts as a relief valve for other forums. Really? Is the hatred spewed in the pit what keeps other boards civil? What percentage of possible new readers will see this as a positive expression of opinion?
There is content on this board that is pure gold and keeps me coming back. The reason I came here is the first place is that I was a SD column reader for years and see the outstanding conversations among the attacks. Where is the new participant base going to come from?
Edit: And yes, I know I don’t have to enter the pit. But is is a place where new readers will end up sometime.
Some kind of Reddit-like “karma” system using upvotes/downvotes/whatever.
Yes, I know this has been discussed many times and the overall attitude of the longtime users has been that they are not into it at all.
That said, I do think something like this would make the board more “sticky” and encourage more engagement because much like on Reddit, people love accumulating imaginary internet points. Could draw people in, and would keep content churning and keep people using the site more.
I expect a flood of old timers (i’m one too) on how this is a terrible idea and not what the SDMB is about. But we need a drastic change or it’s gone forever right?
Pay to Post resulted in the largest mass exodus of members here in its entire lifespan. It never really recovered and I don’t know that doing it again is the way to go at this point.
Too much change, and it’s gone any way.
How about if mods no longer get coffee mugs? Just think of the cost savings!
I’m sure many people don’t want their real financial information tied to their SDMB username. Have one way that someone can donate from their username and it shows them as a “Forum Supporter”, and have another way that people can just send a donation without it being tied to their username.
If you offer swag for donations, just make it for the larger donations. The donation would need to be large enough to justify the expense and postage to send the item.
It’s easy enough to setup a CafePress site for people to order swag if they want it and wouldn’t cost the board anything. You could have standard logos as well as member-created art.
I don’t think you should do any sort of change where people have to pay to participate. It’s hard enough to attract members as it is. If new people had to pay first, I doubt many new people would join.
I’m not on Reddit, but from Wikipedia, I see that it was started in 2005, years after the SDMB, that it has over 200 (presumably paid) employees and at the last funding round, a valuation of $1.8 billion. So what did they do right that the operators of this board did not? (Or is it not helpful to make comparisons?)
I’m not sure why the staff reports stopped. I loved many of those. (Was there some issue that caused the old reports to stop?) It would be nice if they could be brought back to put fresh content on the, er, “a” front page.
Should there be a “proper” front page for the board itself, not just the forum listings. Something that gives an intro, explains a bit what it is, and most importantly why this board is so very different. (I.e., the mod/sanity situation.)
Fix the stupid malware ad system!!! This just drives away too many potential new folk. This is one of the worst sites on the Internet for ads.
People shouldn’t have to have ad blockers to visit this site.
They gave the people on the internet in 2005 what they were looking for, apparently. And they weren’t looking for a message board. (he types while looking at his 2006 SDMB join date…)
The thing about Reddit is it’s not just one site. It’s a giant umbrella for any and every niche group you can come up with. Users can create their own forums which can be huge like r/music, r/movies, r/politics with millions of users. Or tiny little forum about a specific type of photography that has five members, who all really enjoy talking about whatever they’re talking about.
So it’s not really apples to apples. But Reddit does reflect they type of engagement people are after in this social media age where the number of faves or upvotes you get really means something to some people.
Didn’t we have this exact same discussion a couple years ago?