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Nowadays, we're used to getting online services for free.
Free email from Google. Free cloud storage from Dropbox. Free streaming music from Spotify.
The problem with that? You have to deal with ads.
That's why Dalton Caldwell – you may remember him from this epic open letter to Mark Zuckerberg from a few days ago – started App.net, an alternative social network that you pay to use.
Agree on a fee for forums...a few I peruse regularly have an optional nominal fee which makes them ad & crap free for the paid member.
If CD charged $20-$25 a year, I suspect most of the Regs on the boards I read, would still be here. The 'drive bys', the first time poster that asks 'where should I move to', a litany of polls on 'the best coffee/your favorite state and why', 'what is Toledo like in the winter', etc., would not bother to post.
Agree on a fee for forums...a few I peruse regularly have an optional nominal fee which makes them ad & crap free for the paid member.
If CD charged $20-$25 a year, I suspect most of the Regs on the boards I read, would still be here. The 'drive bys', the first time poster that asks 'where should I move to', a litany of polls on 'the best coffee/your favorite state and why', 'what is Toledo like in the winter', etc., would not bother to post.
What will that $20-$25 a year will provide me that the current free membership doesn't? Charging a fee for a forum that makes no sense and more than you expect may drop out. What gives a forum like this its power and continuous business is the web traffic and they are obviously doing OK so charging a fee would probably be not a wise move.
So, what we get a lot of flybys? Would you rather be visiting a forum with 80% less traffic/chatter/posts and just stare at the same stale posts or only see the same handful reply to every thread? If this forum lost even 50% of its traffic, it probably would look dead to some enough to effect the frequency of their visit which would eventually mean less and less traffic until the ultimate "wallpaper" look of a forum.
Side note: I have seen it happen on a very active, fun technical forum where the traffic got killed because of Google's effed up search filtering which the site relied on for new visitors. I think that is about the same time my Google "disliking" started too...
08-15-2012, 01:33 PM
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n/a posts
In some cases, charging makes sense. For the subforums about moving, information about places, etc, it probably doesn't make any sense, since that's the "core mission" or whatever of the site and people are highly unlikely to shell out $25 just to ask a question or two.
In other forums that are disconnected from said "core mission" it might make some sense and cut down on the stream of garbage that gets posted.
One other forum I visit charges $50/year. The community is still very active. In fact, at least for political discussions, it's much better than here. People post things that they've actually thought about, are willing to listen, etc. On C-D, people just link and run, name call, throw out unfounded accusation, spam us with their email inbox's contents, etc. Anytime someone dares to drag a fact into discussions, they face a barrage of people who attack them with silly one liners and name calling. This discourages people from even trying to have a civilized discussion.
If it's all about traffic, then so be it. Personally, I'd rather read something that leaves me more informed, not feeling like I need to bleach my eyes.
I'd like to see a subscription similar to cable TV. Where you pay $50/month for a package and you can add on additional packages. The $50/month gets you access to all the main sites: Facebook, Twitter, etc... I'm talking hundreds of sites here. Then if want access to specialized forums, etc... you add on a package...say the "technology" package. The same model can be used to access current pay sites.
Location: Mableton, GA USA (NW Atlanta suburb, 4 miles OTP)
11,334 posts, read 26,092,084 times
Reputation: 3995
Quote:
Originally Posted by motordavid
Agree on a fee for forums...a few I peruse regularly have an optional nominal fee which makes them ad & crap free for the paid member.
If CD charged $20-$25 a year, I suspect most of the Regs on the boards I read, would still be here. The 'drive bys', the first time poster that asks 'where should I move to', a litany of polls on 'the best coffee/your favorite state and why', 'what is Toledo like in the winter', etc., would not bother to post.
I would leave. I already pay enough in internet-related fees, and the time and knowledge I contribute in the forums (not in here so much, admittedly) should be payment enough.
I'd like to see a subscription similar to cable TV. Where you pay $50/month for a package and you can add on additional packages. The $50/month gets you access to all the main sites: Facebook, Twitter, etc... I'm talking hundreds of sites here. Then if want access to specialized forums, etc... you add on a package...say the "technology" package. The same model can be used to access current pay sites.
No way I would ever pay for a subscription to a forum. And even if all the "fly bys" left because of that, eventually the forum would die. Heck, I've been trying to post this post for the last hour (crazy work keeps interrupting me lol) and nobody has replied back to this post. That tells me that even a gigantic site like this doesn't get nearly the amount of activity like it should. Why? Because the internet discussion board as we know it is dying off thanks to social media. So, charging for a dying concept would pretty much finish it off completely.
No way I would ever pay for a subscription to a forum. And even if all the "fly bys" left because of that, eventually the forum would die. Heck, I've been trying to post this post for the last hour (crazy work keeps interrupting me lol) and nobody has replied back to this post. That tells me that even a gigantic site like this doesn't get nearly the amount of activity like it should. Why? Because the internet discussion board as we know it is dying off thanks to social media. So, charging for a dying concept would pretty much finish it off completely.
Discussion boards are social media. Do you mean that new forms of social media are killing off old ones? That's possible. I'd imagine that most folks spend more time on blogs and twitter than they do on CD-style type forums. The discussions here are so slow in comparison... and there's a lot less content in general.
But a pay subscription that consists of a bundled package including old and new forms of social media (similar to how cable TV works) might work better than individual subscriptions.
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