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sissymaidlola -> RE: Annual Membership (3/27/2005 4:33:45 PM)
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quote:
I suggest that CM charge a small annual for full membership on CM (posting in the message boards for one). Hmmm, sissy thinks that you are completely missing the true symbiotic nature of posting on message boards, Atavist. Yes, posts eat up bandwidth which needs to be paid for ... but they also create the free content for the message boards site that it also depends on. The reason that you like accessing the CollarMe message boards, and are willing to pay a nominal fee to continue to access them, is that you read and are engaged by the posts made by others at CollarMe. People aren't paid to write all those posts that stimulate your interest and keep bringing you back to the boards to read more, and possibly even engage you enough in the debate that you also desire to post against them ... those posts are simply made by other users that are similarly engaged in the debate like yourself.
Personally, sissy wouldn't use this site if it wasn't free, and he feels that the free access he gains is MORE than offset by his own volunteered time and effort in making posts here. sissy Makes a point of posting as he reads the boards because it is his way of giving back for what he is taking in reading the posts of others. In effect, it works a little like those MP3 music file sharing sites do (did?) where you were allowed to download a music file for free as long as you also uploaded something new into the music pool to keep it fresh and continually expanding. By making a reciprocal contribution (i.e., by posting) each person is creating the next level of free content for the site that will draw in and engage the next set of eyes. Each post begets a new post, each user begets a new user. If CollarMe loses sight of that basic dynamic, and messes with that fundamental chain by instigating arbitrary fees, it can very quickly unravel in the same manner that a chain letter never succeeds (outside of them being illegal) because someone always breaks the chain.
The hard core of regular posters on the CollarMe (CM) message boards are actually creating FOR FREE the site's basic intellectual content that draws in all the other board readers and casual contributors. This is not a base of users that should be charged ANYTHING as they are already giving more to the site in original content than they are taking in bandwidth! The body of users that are actually taking from the site without giving are the lurkers. But now you have the problem that most new users lurk before deciding to participate, so if CM charged people to lurk they will simply go elsewhere and ignore this site, with the result that CM's new membership will fall off dramatically, and it might even be possible (taken together with the attrition of established members) to see this site's overall membership base to start to shrink. That would be the beginning of the end for this site ...
If you have a guaranteed growing base of registered members (i.e., potential eyeballs) using the site you can always garner interest amongst the marketing companies and thereby raise advertising revenues that can be used to pay the basic site costs of doing business such as bandwidth. That is nowhere near as easy, if not impossible, if you only have a static, or even worse, a shrinking base of members. If in charging its existing user base even a nominal fee causes, for instance, good CM message board contributors to leave such that even more of the passive audience also leaves (because the overall content that used to engage them is no longer sufficient to maintain their interest), the net effect may be that the growth of the CM site audience is seriously curtailed - or becomes static, or even shrinks - and that the damage done to CM's potential ability to raise external sponsorship and advertising revenues may exceed the actual revenues received from instigating the charging of member fees. It's all a fine balance and a calculated risk, and nowhere near the no-brainer you make it out to be.
quote:
A small fee will likely eliminate a large majority of the sociopathics, the trolls and people who simply aren't serious about using this site.
With all due respect, that is ABSOLUTE BUNKUM. The stated net worth of the husband of one troll recently banned from CollarMe is $20 million. They were able to elude the moderators' repeated attempts to block physical access to the site because said husband owns an ISP and accessing from new PCs and IP addresses was no obstacle. The troll only finally left the site because the mods made it sufficiently unrewarding for them once they gained access and hence they got bored - it was not because they were finally physically prevented from accessing. Whether their actual net worth was $20 million or only $200,000, exactly how would a $20 membership fee have deterred this person, Atavist ? Being a persistent troll requires a lot of time, energy, creativity, tenacity and technical resources ... as much as you may want to believe it, trolls are not unemployed welfare cases!
Respectfrilly Yours,
sissy maid lola
[image]local://upfiles/21203/7550AAD373274EA8911F0BC3852D002C.jpg[/image]
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