This is what boggles the mind. Tuba is basically saying, “We’re in desperate need of cash. The business model we thought would make us all rich is (a) a failure or (b) yet to succeed (after what, 1-2 yrs of trying?). We need everything you can offer”.
And still you don’t get it. So let me spell it out in the simplest terms:
Clear enough?
It makes sense, but it would be inconsistent with previous years and would require special work, and that is enough (probably enhanced by some of the same attitude DSYoungEsq has been exhibiting about rewarding irresponsibility or some such) to keep it from happening.
Fen wise, yuan foolish. Failure to appreciate copse due to many obscuring tall, hardy plants. Removal of one’s own proboscis to torment one’s own countenance. And so on.
The assertion that has been made, and obviously I don’t know how accurate it is, is that the database of what your membership status is for purposes of determining what you are charged is not a database that the Admins/Mods can get to. It is apparantly kept separate from the database that regulates the title that shows up next to your name, and determines what bulletin board privileges you have.
I’m not sure how that interfaces with your statement, but I believe the answer will be: that cannot be done.
Yes, I know. Collecting money from people who would happily part with it for the simple task of changing their username seems like an indelible chore.
It must be hard running an online business these days…
My understanding could easily be incorrect, but I believe only the payment information (credit card numbers, names, addresses, etc.) was what was on a separate server, i.e. Jerry would be needed to intervene if you wanted to change what someone had been charged, but that everything else was handled within the usual vB system, which admins have access to.
Again, I don’t actually know how they have things set up, so this was simply meant as a suggestion in case they hadn’t thought of the halfway solution of letting someone get charged full price when they miss the deadline, but then restoring them back to Charter status for upcoming years (which I think would generate quite a bit of valuable goodwill among the long-time supporters of the site).
The titles should be easy, accepting payments for them would probably be tougher, you would think this would be worth a little bit of Jerry’s time.
Dopers want to give the Dope money, let them, it only makes sense. Be less rigid and hidebound.
No, I understand the problem of Jerry’s time, if the company simply can’t afford to allocate of those resources toward the boards right now. But since vB has a paid subscription system built into the software which is likely what is being used, I’m guessing at a solution which would allow Lynn, Tuba, Dex, or Skip to pretty easily implement a partial fix that would make people happy without asking for intervention from TPTB.
I don’t think the issue is with any of the admins (or mods) not wanting to take people’s money or help people out, it’s that they can’t under the current system.
It should not be that hard to make it possible to take the money though, it is worthwhile to get it done. Some of the admins do seem to be resistant to change.
They have payment capability in place already for both subscriptions (two tiered) and Straight Dope goods. Extending this to titles payments placing the member into some small number of new groups should be easy.
There would be to groups with the title Charter Member, one at the reduced price and one at whatever price is set.
There can be a few groups for those willing to give more. Setting up 3-4 new groups would be no harder than setting up 1 new group. So they might as well build some sort of tier system and collect the extra money to help keep the Dope afloat.
More generally it is my perception that TPTB come up with and implement business strategies that don’t work. At the same time, TPTB more or less ignore the strategies suggested by their users. They seem to not realize that it’s quite possible that their users have at least a decent sense and potentially a really good sense of how to make this place profitable and improve it more generally.
I often wonder when it will occur to TPTB that almost nothing they have tried has worked. I further wonder if they have deluded themselves to the point of being unable to recognize when they have made a bad decision.
All that said, the recent change to open up the board to search engines was a good one. It’s just that it will take a year or two to really start seeing a difference around here. That’s why they should have done it 4-5 years ago when the idea was first seriously suggested. Nothing changed in the meantime that made it a better idea now than it was then. TPTB (lets be frank, I mostly mean Ed) were simply unwilling to give the idea proper credit. I had the feeling that actually tearing down the pay wall was done under pressure from Creative Loafing, but of course I can’t really know that.
My last NSHO is that there is a pretty big generation gap and TPTB still “just don’t get” the Intertubes.
Actually, that’s not correct. It was taken seriously from the very start. However, in the past there were a sizable number of SDMB Members who objected very strenuously to having their posts open to Google, since they didn’t think that when they posted about their pedophilia or homo/transphobia or racism or marital infidelities or mockery of their boss and/or co-workers that it would ever get out on the Net in general. Several times in the past it was communicated to me by the Administration that this was still a concern for many, and that they regularly received e-mails and other communication from people worried about Google Indexing.
Nothing is clear-cut in message board Rules and communities. So-called “common sense” message board policy is like saying “common-sense gun control” - it’s a myth.
I opened my email today after a few days from my computer and see the expiry notice dated May 31, 2009. I promptly paid my $14. Can I get my “Charter Member” title back? Who do I contact? I don’t care about the higher fee. Please give me my title back.
The statement that has been made, more than once, is this: while Admins and Mods can change the database that stores what title shows up here on the board, the subscription information, including the price you are charged, is kept in a separate database. This has been offered as the reason they cannot easily accept payment of $15 from people wanting to be called Charter Member; sure, they can take the $15, they can then manually change the title, but they’d have to do it all over again next year, and the year after, etc.
Why not sell T-shirts which say “Charter Member”? Two birds, one stone.
It should not take much to fix this though and why do you think the Title would need to be changed each year? What are you basing that one? Once they got back the charter member title, they would be stuck paying the $15 a year like a regular member but at least have the title back. As long as they don’t lapse again, the title would stay the same.
Besides that gives an entire year for a fix to be made to take money in more ways.
We are probably talking about 40-50 posters that could be made happy at first and then maybe another 40-50 once people see the option. A quick infusion of cash of $1200-$1500 probably would not look bad to Ed’s new bosses. Not huge, but a step in the right direction.
They can temporarily give several mods access to the admin panel to change the titles or group depending on how they decide to do it.
For a company that is desperate for cash TODAY they should take every damn penny they can get.
Frankly there is no reason why this property shouldn’t be making $10k per month in subs. There are so many potential revenue streams from this group of diehard dopers that it boggles the mind that TPBT can’t figure this out.
If I were Ed’s bosses I would insist he come up with a plan to bring on $10k of revenue next month, and then $20k the following month and then $30k…etc. etc.
If he didn’t I would find someone who could, and trust me there are plenty of people out there who would make this place a success if they had the chance. I still don’t understand how a website with so many hits and so many subs doesn’t have a real web 2.0 expert in charge making this place profitable.
I hear what you’re saying, but I think it’s very likely factually incorrect. When I look at the vB Paid Subscription options in the vB Admin panel, it appears to me that how much one is charged is set on a user group by user group basis. While I agree that the SDMB admins likely don’t have access to the payment database to amend current payments, they should be able to change someone’s user group (not just their title) back to Charter Member. (Banning, for example, is simply a user group change.)
They may have other reasons for not wanting to, of course, but since many of these past discussions have revolved around whether the staff should take action to amend charges for the current year (which would of course require Jerry’s help), I just wanted to throw the suggestion out there for a halfway solution which I think would be well worth implementing.
You did not resubscribe until after your Charter Member expiration date and thus the registration passed out of the Charter Member database. You are no longer a Charter Member.
You paid via e-check. This is not credited instantly but takes 3-5 business days for PayPal to process. This is not a delay on the part of the Straight Dope; it is on the PayPal side and the Straight Dope has no control over the transaction whatsoever. When PayPal decides to process your transaction and release your payment to the Dope you’ll be a Member.
I’m so sorry this didn’t work out better for you.
Sure, we can manually put people back into the Charter Member list all day long. The system accepts the transactions.
Every night after midnight Chicago time a script kicks in that processes expired subscriptions. All expired Charter Member subscriptions are swept out of that database and are placed in the Member section. Anyone who was artificially moved back into the Charter Member group gets removed.
Once a Charter Membership expires admins cannot put someone back in the Charter Member group – not for very long, anyway. And that subscriber is forevermore charged the going rate and not the half-price deal. We can’t give them that back either.
So no, there’s not a lot we can do. There’s fuckall we can do. It’s very frustrating to us; we’d help you if we could.
Why not create a new group that is also called Charter Member or something close then. (I saw this as just a member, I got here after Pay-to-post.) That might be enough to get guest that were charters to pay.
Edited cause Tuba explained it more better… 
Again, that’s what has been said. Perhaps you would be better off actually sending Ed an email on the issue, if you think this is not actually the case.