Creation of a fee based forum.

The Corinthian

Personally I would see two issues with this. First is what type of forum would people actually pay for that they can’t get as either a private or public forum already for free. Many of the issues that surround libel or pornography would not change, regardless of whether the forum is subscription based or not so, as people have pointed out, you would be hard pressed to convince them to buy the cow when you get the milk for free...

I think the only subscription-based forum that has been suggested of boards over the years has been a dating board. Of course, other than the legal implications, I’m not certain it would work in a bulletin board format.

Secondly, as an entity, Boards lacks the manpower and administration to do so. A free community site is one thing (you get what you pay for), but once you start charging people money, you’ve service level obligations and a handful of part time Admins can’t afford the time to develop or support subscription based services. This is probably the reason that the present subscribers system has never really been promoted strongly beyond a core group of usual suspects who are likely to be more understanding if they don’t receive a response to their support PM within five minutes.

Of course you could call on the community to help out in a commercial endeavour, but communities tend to lose interest quickly when they’re asked to help other people make money for free. My own opinion is that the Admins are probably better off franchising things such as the site’s advertising or subscription based boards to third parties.

Boards is probably approaching the point when it must commercialize or stagnate. Continued growth and demand increases the pressure on both the Admins and servers, so if the matter is not addressed, we will probably see a situation where server outages increase and Admin support per member decreases until membership begins to shrink again.

RuggieBear

That makes alot of sense....

I'm still waiting for the 2xl Boards.ie: Now ye're talkin' t-shirts to be pimped

Xcom2

Would boards not get in a bit of bother if it became general knowledge that there was a subscription service where you could get porn and warez links?

X

Giblet

No because there is no porn and warez forum. Geddit!?

Sangre

Vexorg wrote:

A good idea guys, what sort of support would there be in principle for a separate, lets say Adults/Mature, section of boards?


V.

Does no one else think one of the appeals of boards.ie is that you could be having a debate on say...abortion and being shredded by the other side, never knowing their only 15 or something?

Its really great when people can't dismiss an arguement by going, ah sure you're only 16, you wouldn't understand.

DeVore

Good post Corinthian, I mostly agree!

I dont like Pay Per Post and I dont like Warez or Porn. I do like the idea of mature topics (such as the Legal Highs forum, or BDSM or whatever) and then charging makes sense as you confirm the person is over 18 (to have a credit card).

We are revamping the subscribers system a bit better (now that VB has incorporated it into its system).

DeV.

CuLT

I recokmd bot being 4tirely driuubk befroe replying.


it isa A GOOD STANCE TO have and asolo eintellifewet.

sorry about yhis DeV, i menat to be a better edxxample/

Sangre

You're cool.

Mercury_Tilt

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