Paid Subscriptions

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I've thought up of a way Blike could take advantage of vB's paid subscription system.

 

By enabling the system, he could eliminate the Google ads (given enough revenue from subscriptions) or upgrade to more expensive hosting, software, whatever he wants.

 

A few ideas on what the paid subscribers would get:

1. Ability to lock own threads.

2. Ability to "soft delete" own posts--make them only visible to moderators, so that we can get them back if they abuse it (I think this is a vB feature)

3. Greater PM limit.

4. Images in signatures.

5. A nifty little rank image or title or something.

6. Larger avatars (?)

7. No ads.

8. Whatever else I think of.

 

Of course, you could remove these priveleges if they're abused, etc.

 

 

Do you think this would be a good way to help support SFN while eliminating advertisements?

[CPL.Luke]

no,

 

SFN's beuty is in the fact that there are no subscriptions, anybody can come here and post as a full and equal member of the community.

 

the ads aren't that bad.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I'm thinking that this would be a way to improve SFN.

 

You could still be a regular user if you didn't pay, its just that blike can't pay for it all by himself without any financial support. And I've just had a really nice idea for another thing we can do to make SFN better and bigger, so more money for hosting would be a good thing.

[Dave]

We've certainly discussed this idea before, but as of yet not implemented it. We get a little bit of money from the Google ads and the advertisements at the bottom of the page - certainly enough to cover hosting for the time being.

 

The idea was to have this extra subscription to show people who actively support SFN with a 1-time payment, but I think for the time being it's been shelved. A major reason, for me at least, is that people who sign up for this may feel that they are superior to others, and this will only lead to divide the community. Also, people who have paid for subscription and then have their membership suspended may cause us quite a significant pain in the ass. It's something we'd have to consider, because it's quite likely to happen at some point.

 

I'll comment on the suggestions though, just for clarity's sake.

 

A few ideas on what the paid subscribers would get:

1. Ability to lock own threads.

2. Ability to "soft delete" own posts--make them only visible to moderators' date=' so that we can get them back if they abuse it (I [i']think[/i] this is a vB feature)

3. Greater PM limit.

4. Images in signatures.

5. A nifty little rank image or title or something.

6. Larger avatars (?)

7. No ads.

8. Whatever else I think of.

 

1. I'm not sure the mods would approve of this one. People who pay could theoretically close their threads if they were losing an argument. I, for one, don't like this. It's the equivalent of saying: "You're wrong, I'm right, end of discussion." Obviously they could be re-opened, but that's not the point.

2. That's fine. I think we would probably re-enable editing of posts also.

3. Fine again.

4. Don't think we'd allow this. Makes the threads look disjointed, also there is a distinct possibility for abuse. Mainly aesthetical though.

5. We were considering a different coloured username or something to that extent. Something that looks cool anyway

6. Perhaps. Depends on how it affects the way the posts look.

7. Obviously we'd allow this.

8. Not pre-cognitive, I'm afraid

 

Hope you find this useful. I'm not trying to shoot your ideas out of the water, but I think at least for the next couple of months we won't have this. Have to speak to blike to confirm this though.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Okay, I'll concede the first point on feeling superior. I think we'd have to look on other paid-subscription forums such as webhostintalk to see how they deal with it.

 

As for your other points, I suppose I agree with your points 1 and 4, as they are easily abused features.

 

Nice to know you actually considered it though.

[Dak]

how about we provide a service for a small fee?

 

We already have a news section; how about aggregating the news into a newsletter and distributing it every week/month via email for pittance?

 

or something similar.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

We'd have to get more news to email.

 

Also people would say "well, I can get the news without email, so I don't need it."

 

Perhaps we could use RSS to get a whole bunch more news to aggregate together. That would make it more worthwhile.

[insane_alien]

Theres ads at the bottom of the page! i've never scrolled down that far before!

[CPL.Luke]

anouther thing is that personally whenever I see a website asking for money that I haven't been a part of for a while, I don't go there anymore.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I think we'd have to design it so it wouldn't be "asking for money." I agree that begging makes a site look bad, so we'd have to carefully engineer it.

 

I'll see what regulations other sites have on paid subscribers and how they handle the system.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Well, I've had a few more ideas.

 

Looking at Neowin's subscription system, I see that they actually offer an email address as the main attraction to the service. While I don't think bob@scienceforums.net would be as nice as bob@neowin.net (unless blike registered sfn.net or something else), I think there are other ways we can pull off a service-based system that doesn't rely on forum perks. Not that I can think of them at the moment, though.

 

However, I also have an idea related to the original post. Perhaps paid subscribers could perhaps have a set of other fancy templates to pick from.

 

 

I know that it may appear that the paid subscriptions may "divide" the community, but again, looking at Neowin, I have not seen that at all. Perhaps that's because people with enough money and time to bother paying for a subscription would also be more mature.

 

 

edit: and put back the donations button!!!

[ecoli]

 

edit: and put back the donations button!!!

 

yes... please do!!!

[ecoli]

maybe have the ability to see old post, past the usual 500 posts...

 

how would that work?

[cosine]

You could have the paid feature enable the arcade again. That way the forum stays the same. And thats a nice incentive for people who appreciate SFN.