Should you start charging for archive posts?

Zaph0d · 09-09-2005 4:04pm #1

What if you left boards.ie with the same free access but only allow subscribers to access posts older than a month or two?

In this way you would get people searching for something narrow on Google and finding the results in an uncached page in the boards archive that they'd have to pay a month's membership fee (€5) to access.

Also you could get better performance by reducing the size of your live database for unsubscribed posters.

ecksor · 09-09-2005 4:34pm

I hate that idea.

Giblet · 09-09-2005 4:37pm

Somethingawful do this, but they have over 5 million posts in the live forum, and around 25 million in the archives. There's not enough content here to justify paying for it. I think payment for smaller things like custom titles would reap more benefits.

regi · 09-09-2005 4:50pm

I think we should charge people to post on feedback.

Gordon · 10-09-2005 3:19pm

And charge users a fee for banning anyone they want from Feedback.

regi · 10-09-2005 3:44pm

Perhaps a small fee for submitting a helpdesk ticket

CuLT · 10-09-2005 3:45pm

And charge for changing someone elses custom title!

Lafortezza · 10-09-2005 3:54pm

CuLT wrote:

And charge for changing someone elses custom title!

Charge for changing someone elses title, sig, avatar, username for a week. €5, €10, €5 and €20 respectively.

Giblet · 10-09-2005 3:55pm

Actually, being able to change someone elses avatar and title to an abusive one anonymously would be great! And make it cost money to change back. 5 euro to change your own avatar, 10 for someone elses. Come on $:\$ /

Lafortezza · 10-09-2005 3:57pm

And then maybe charge for changing someone's avatar, sig, and title.
Make it for a week at a time or something and charge maybe a fiver a go.

Giblet · 10-09-2005 4:17pm

Well for a week it'd be pretty useless. I'm thinking, permanent.

CuLT · 10-09-2005 7:20pm

Another thing SA do is charge for searching; this is purely a measure to reduce the server load. Perhaps some sort of restriction on searching for normal users(charge or no charge) would be a good permanent solution?

The problem with this is that it opens up a few subproblems; one, the FS forums might effectively be crippled in the long term with users unable to easily check a users credibility. Measures to combat such a problem have already been suggested, ie, an FS only rep system. There are a few other ideas knocking around in my head for making FS more user (and mod) friendly to use.

Another more subtle issue would be people requesting a hosted forum simply to become a HMod so as not to be charged. That's a little more difficult; HMods need to be able to search. Perhaps it could be restricted to their own forum?

The "Boards Merchandise" seems to rear its head and die off again every now and then; perhaps branch out from the "t-shirts and mugs" thing into accessories.
How much would a boards.ie branded USB key cost? PC Sticker? Boards.ie Webhosting? (in association with hosting365).
The current lineup could do with a good work over too; you have a host of talented graphic designers at your disposal. Use that resource.

You've probably all thought of half these things already; just time to take a plunge, bite the bullet, and get a bankloan

Matthewthebig · 10-09-2005 7:31pm

If you charged for searching then you would have even more doubles of threads as no one would know if the said thread had existed without going through pages and pages

Sparky · 10-09-2005 7:31pm

by this idea why not start charging for every time someone logs in

regi · 10-09-2005 7:43pm

We're working on some ideas at the moment.

However, we're all pretty busy so it might be some time before they can take fruition. We're trying to fit things in around the way boards works already, so we don't disrupt the way it currently operates. We're talking about add-ons, optional items, some merchandise, perhaps a reworking of some areas. Its all pretty small and innocuous - I think we called it cash by a thousand papercuts some time ago.

I can't see us charging for access, unless we needed to really limit the number of new people coming to the site for some reason.

CuLT · 10-09-2005 7:44pm

Matthewthebig wrote:

If you charged for searching then you would have even more doubles of threads as no one would know if the said thread had existed without going through pages and pages

Mmm, I figure that any threads worthy of staying at the forefront of a forum will either be stickied or stay within the first few pages anyway due to popularity.

Help forums are a different matter, though if multiple threads on a subject are created it will facilitate the creation of a decent FAQ for that forum.

I can't actually remember the last time I searched for a threads existance before posting a query. That said, I very rarely ask questions on boards.ie; Google is too useful a resource for me to waste peoples time with questions that google could answer in a flicker.

Talliesin · 10-09-2005 8:08pm

There are a few items of boards' history that get mentioned from time to time. To my mind that's part of the sense of what boards is and how it came to be that informs nature of the community. Not a big one, but not one I'd like to see limited.

danniemcq · 10-09-2005 11:11pm

the ability to buy avatars and title for a reduced fee seems to be the best idea yet alothough then you also lose that added insentive (spelling) to have a full membership. maybe if it was a monthly rate was imposed for them it might work better

Raphael · 11-09-2005 2:07am

HAng on, if you were charged for search couldn't you just use the google link on the front page to get around it?

Giblet · 11-09-2005 4:07pm

You could stop google indexing the pages.

ecksor · 12-09-2005 4:21pm

It would be better for our load if people used google as much as possible anyway.

Should you start charging for archive posts?

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