Folks, I’ve told you more about our finances than most privately-held businesses would do. If that’s not enough, sorry, but we’re not going to release a P&L statement. Give it a rest, OK?
Sam’s dedicated rack is out of this world. If you were running a MMO server? Sure. For a single messageboard? GTFO. Someone in the other ad bitching thread mentioned an actual hosting package that’d meet the Dope’s quoted needs for $7G IIRC.
That may be true. On the other hand, the Reader probably operated this board at a loss for how long? I don’t know if we’ve ever discussed that in the past.
Frankly, the quotes for servers coming from Sam are far more credible to me than the quotes coming from catsix. I may not always agree with the former, but at least he’s not clinging to the ceiling while his head spins around.
The truth may be somewhere in between. Since we can’t know, I don’t see that we can worry about it.
And if you’re convinced that the admins are lying to you, seems like the best move is to, literally, GTFO.
Daniel
Would it surprise you if you learned the Reader wanted to recoup some of that $100,000, and maybe even turn a profit at your expense?
I’ve thought about this a bit since I first posted last night, and sat down today and sent a letter addressed to both the President and the Publisher of the Reader. Not a nasty-gram, no profanity, no threats, just letting them know that I was disappointed with
- the progression of the board from free, to pay to post, to now having advertisements for paying members, while the cries of ‘we don’t make enough money!’ haven’t decreased, and my benefits as a customer haven’t increased. How I believe that ‘pay to post’ has actually decreased the quality of the board because there is a greatly reduced influx of new members (and hence new content)
but more specifically to let them know that
- I don’t recall a situation (be it online retail, or face-to-face interaction) where customers are treated with a more flippant, disrespectful, condescending, arrogant, ‘well, if you don’t like it, then shove off!’ attitude by the staff. I would expect, if I were treated like that at any of the other places I pay money for goods and/or services at, that my concerns would be addressed by management, with the potential for serious consequences for the staff involved. As I would do with any other business that treated me this way, I will not be renewing my subscription, I will be actively recommending that others not sign up to be treated in such a manner when the topic of message boards comes up, and I will not patronize any other Chicago Reader affiliated services, unless and/or until I feel my concerns have been addressed.
I do not understand the attitude of the moderation staff, particulary Ed Zotti, especially since they are managing a service that’s apparently not breaking even. Asking your readership to contribute more money while treating them the way you do is not a very sound business plan (and I might add that it’s even more particularly a slap in the face when you tell us that subscriptions are now paying for server costs, but we should give you more money to pay your salary). ‘If you don’t like it, shove off’ will land you with fewer and fewer people to pay your bills. If you’re going to present this messageboard as a business in need of the support and loyalty of your customers, then conduct yourself in a businesslike manner.
Anyway, I don’t expect that my concerns will be addressed. I don’t expect that anything much will change around here. I don’t think that I am the first to write to the Reader, and I don’t expect that my letter will get much attention there, but I felt I needed to let the leadership of the Reader know where I stand.
For anyone else interested in writing to the Reader, here is the information I gathered from their website:
<contact info removed --Giraffe>
Well firstly, they weren’t from catsix. Second, I don’t know how you’d even use a full server rack for a message board. That’d be like building a multi-storey carpark to house the cars on your street.
That’s all very possible but it’s not the admin’s argument today. They claim the current revenue doesn’t support current costs, i.e. they’re losing cash on the deal right now.
But…but…if you let them see the Big Board, they’ll see everything!
It seems to me that most of you have gotten your $15 dollars worth of entertainment, indignation, and outrage out of this single thread. And all this over two inches of text at the bottom of the screen. Now what I want to know is…what is Ed Zotti going to do about children starving in Africa, guns being trafficked in the Balkans, and stem cell research being restricted in the US? Damnit, man, get on the stick!
Stranger
The irony is, of course, that the ads for that show up on this page are for mailing lists.
Maendosa, we don’t allow posting of contact info for the purpose of encouraging a campaign for/against a given issue.
Doesn’t really matter; the same information is available by clicking the “Chicago Reader Online Rate Sheet” link in the copyright block at the bottom of every page.
Speaking only for myself, I’d answer that it is a question of bad marketing.
You are only selling “quality content” here. And it should go without saying that this “quality content” is dependent on an intelligent community of regulars.
Under that circumstance, trying to sell “we’re going under with the cost, so we’ve got to…” simply doesn’t make sense.
It doesn’t make sense to me, some random “jerk” who just happened upon the place, and is not necessarily your primary target market. So how the heck would you expect it to be accepted by your base clientele???
None of my business, but I’d fire the person who thought this would pass muster under the circumstances. There are better ways to justify a “for-profit” concept to an intelligent market target. Especially if that “intelligence” was the “justification” for the messageboard to begin with.
Or is “fighting ignorance” just an insider’s joke now?
Which is, of course, the appropriate place for it.
I’m making my questions simpler and simpler, and still not getting answers. Let’s try multiple choice, for any mod to answer:
Is the purpose of boards.straightdope.com…
(a) to generate income for the Chicago Reader
(b) no purpose - it’s a self-sufficient independent entity
© PR for the Chicago Reader
(d) None of the above (please elaborate)
I’m not too concerned about the google ads. It is strange that they’re still messed up though. I have them on my messageboard for non-paying members and they were relevant immediately (free xbox 360 omg click here). However, I’m not going to leave in a huff over them, and frankly some of the “the sky is falling” mentality in this thread is pretty entertaining to me.
I wanted to address this, however:
It’s a rather bizarre defense that because it’s possible to spend that much money, it’s OK for them to do it. Of course it’s possible for IT people to blow through $40,000 dollars. Heck, my team probably blew a good $1000 last week preparing for a hurricane that didn’t come within 200 miles of my office. But does that mean we should just not worry about it?
The point is that they could do it for far less. I can’t imagine the ginormous server you could get at any hosting company for a grand per month, much less two, three, or four.
And your “OMG business class service” argument is a bit of a stretch too. It’s been a hell of a lot better lately, but this board has had some pretty poor service, and I’m not just talking about the slowness. I recall times when maintenance had to be done… in the middle of the work day. And we were on the beta version of the messageboard software for months and months after the official version went live. We’re currently 2 releases behind the official software, releases which contained various bug and security fixes.
Again, I’m not upset by the ads, nor am I going to storm out of here. But I do think a rational person could be.
I imagine that he was hoping the intelligent community would accept his statement at face value and not let their outrage at the ads turn them into amateur accountants and paranoid tin foil hatters.
Both of these pit threads have devolved into people crunching the few numbers that they have and deciding on that highly speculative mathematics that the SDMB must be rolling in money. As further proof, they use Ed Zottis inability to give them the real numbers even though he isn’t authorized to do so by the higher ups of the Chicago Reader.
Now zeeny I’m sure that you think you’re fighting the good fight here, but there are those of us on the board that are fighting ignorance. You’re just not one of them.
Do you have answers for what I’m asking? Do you know that there’s some embargo on this information? Or are you guessing, like the rest of us?
Well, I subscribed last April, so it costed me $9.95, not $14.95. Maybe there are many more of us. So your mathematics are not accurate, and until you know how many “non-charter members” are paying the reduced rate, they can’t be.