I actually would prefer to pay for the no-ad service, but I am concerned, I think legitimately based on the board’s history, that the promised upgrades will not happen anytime soon.
Can the board’s administration please provide an update, as detailed as they can manage, as to how this project is going? I really don’t want to quit the board on May 10.
Thanks for the link. That was over a week ago, though, and I would assume the project is further along now.
Ha ha. You are hilarious.
I want to keep my Charter Membership. Or “Senior Member.” Or something that acknowledges my loyalty to the board.
That is all. 
Yeah, I’m a real cutup, but I believe in giving people every possible chance. Maybe in the nine days I’ll get a reply. It would be really nice. I’ve been a paying customer from the start.
Please understand that the people who do the day-to-day board reading/review are the moderators, and we have no information other than what y’all have.
I do understand that, CKDH, and I appreciate you checking in and don’t blame you and the other mods one whit. But perhaps you could pass this along.
But is it too much to ask that one of you take it upon him- or herself to check in with the people who DO have the information, and report back to the membership at some sort of reasonable interval? Or that Ed Zotti take a few minutes each week to give a progress report on the development of the new model?
The fact that threads like this, with similar questions, seem to be popping up quite frequently, and getting quite a few views and responses, suggests that people are interested in being kept up to date. This place sometimes reminds me of Amtrak or the airlines; the most frustrating thing is not that things get delayed or canceled, but that no-one seems very interested in keeping the passengers informed about what’s going on.
With respect.
We are a very minor part of the day-to-day business that is the Chicago Reader. We are an even more minor aspect of the day-to-day business of the company that is now the owner of the Reader. To expect them to worry about and keep apprised the people who are the users of that very minor aspect on anything more than a bi-weekly or even monthly basis is relatively silly.
Yes, to us its very important. But we should be used to the drill by now, and I doubt seriously that whining about it in multiple threads here in ATMB is going to change anything. We will know what is going on when we find out. Until then, either pony up the relatively minor fee or don’t. It’s a pretty simple choice, really, not worth much hand-wringing, in my opinion.
I’m not intending to be insulting, or disparaging, just matter-of-fact about it.
We DO check in. And they tell us what they have told is what we have right now and when there is more information they’ll tell us.
If we had more information to give you we’d be giving it to you. We have zero control over any of this situation; we don’t make things happen or not happen, we don’t call any of the shots, we’re right in the boat with you here.
It’s not that we don’t care, it’s just that we have nothing more to give you.
Then don’t use the word “whine” because it is both disparaging and insulting. Seriously, am I the only one who knows this?
Weren’t you instructed just a short time ago here to refrain from these kinds of posts in ATMB:
For someone who is on final warning, you seem to be awful slow to heed moderator instructions.
The two aren’t related. I was given a “note” because I called a joke stupid. I am not insulting anyone when I re-iterate that “whine” is an insulting description. It gets tossed around a lot and DSYoungEsq specifically said “with respect” and “not intending to be insulting, or disparaging, just matter-of-fact about it” - I thought I should point out that it is NOT a matter-of-fact type description. Do you disagree?
[Moderator instruction]
If you have any further comments on this matter, take it to the Pit.
DSYoungEsq:
I understand what you’re saying, but i’m really not sure why our relatively minor status in the Chicago Reader universe is especially relevant here. Do we expect individuals at Best Buy or Starbucks or Bank of America to be satisfied with poor service and misleading information, just because they are an insignificant portion of those companies’ business?
If Ed Zotti’s announcement about the changing model is true, these boards are important enough to the owners of the Reader that they’re willing to take them to an advertising-dominated revenue stream. As people have pointed out many times, the Reader isn’t a charity, particularly now that it has been bought by a larger corporate entity, and if this place was going to be a drain on its profitability, we’d be shut down in short order.
As for the issue of it being “relatively minor fee,” i’m again at something of a loss as to why the size of the fee should be the determining factor. If i pay $8 for upper deck seats at Camden Yards, i know i’m not going to get the best seats in the house, and i live with that, but i’d still prefer not be to punched in the face by the usher, or asked to leave in the fifth inning because they already have my money and don’t want me there any more.
I will, in fact, pony up the fee before my membership expiration, because i was going to pay when the board’s revenue model changed anyway. And the fee is, in fact, small enough that it doesn’t worry me to lose it if something goes wrong, or if i decide to quit the board during the year. But the fact that so many long-term and loyal members of the board are asking questions about this changeover, and expressing concern about whether it will even happen, speaks to a level of distrust that is worrying, and that is a direct product of the way the Board’s members have been misled in the past.
For me, the biggest concern is not what will happen to my $15 (or whatever i will have to pay this year, as a Charter Member), but what happens when people i like talking to start leaving the board due to management’s lack of transparency. Take the OP, as just one example; if he leaves because of all this, my enjoyment of the board will be reduced, because he’s an important part of some of the conversations i enjoy having here. Now, RickJay’s presence or absence is, by itself, nowhere near sufficient to determine my own decision about staying or leaving (no offense, RickJay :)), but i know there are quite a few other people who feel the same way. If those people decided to leave then, no matter how small my fee, i might simply decide this place is not worth the effort, leaving aside altogether the issue of money.
In today’s internet world, it strikes me that if you’ve got a bunch of people who have been willing to take out their credit card and pay money for your website, and are now questioning whether they want to stick around even if they can do so for free, you must have done a pretty good job of alienating them.
Sure, the Boards will go on, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out, and all that. It just seems to me that this would be such a simple situation to address in some meaningful way, with very little effort on the part of the people in the know.
mhendo, none of the analogies you offer up are close to accurate.
You aren’t buying the upper deck seat at Camden Yards. You are at best shopping some linked site for a piece of Orioles merchandise, say a ball cap. If you think that the Orioles would be regularly updating you on the fact that the cap has been out of supply on a regular basis and is expected in sometime in the near future, you are an optimistic person. 
It would be nice if they paid more attention to us. But they aren’t. Clearly, the new owners aren’t putting us first and foremost in their minds. I’m not surprised, and I stated why. Hell, it’s clear from the fact that they intend to end paid subscriptions that we as individuals aren’t even important to them; they have decided to look at participants on this website as totally fungible. I have a bad feeling about this, and the issues that have been discussed, like avatars, smileys, etc. We may very well see this place change radically in an attempt to up traffic, when the time comes. The opinions and needs of the current “members” here won’t be of much importance in such a model, sadly.
And as for “very little effort,” have you ever run a business? Your whole damn day is spent dealing with a lot of things that take “very little effort.” We just seem to be low on the priority list, not surprisingly. :shrug:
No, mhendo’s analogy is more apt. You are paying for an experience here, not a solid object.
I disagree with you about the analogy, DSYoungEsq, because it’s not just about keeping us up to date about future changes, but the fact that they’ve consistently made promises about services, to paying members, that have not been kept.
Anyway, it’s not clear to me exactly what your position is here.
Parts of your argument seems to be “Give the Chicago Reader a break, they’re doing their best, and we’re asking too much of them.”
Other parts of your argument seem to be “Yes, they’re treating us like crap, and it sucks, but there’s not really much we can do about it.”
If the latter is anywhere near accurate, then i agree with you. But it doesn’t make the complaints themselves invalid.