Topic for Discussion / Micro-Poll...

[discothefunkyhippo]

PAY UP CHEAPOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-Marc

Right to the point and well said.

[dsli_jon]

OK, I'm back from Frys' for a few, before I go get a beating for all this..

Hey Mr CT..
Good hearty points, all... However...

...at least $100/month

I think that may be a bit 'discouraging' for some of the 'fledgeling' Co's, here - like was pointed out, some are making maybe less than that proposed -amount all year, since maybe they only do an occasional school party or wedding or Bar Mitzomething something... My sole 'concepts' are:

1. We 'segregate' the Valuable Info within PL, according to the 'Paid Members Only / All-Access/Free' suggestions made in Post #23 - please feel-free to make alternate suggestions for which Forums / Subs to make 'Members-Only', vs my-suggestions / rationales...

2. EVERYONE wishing to be an continuing and/or future Member of PL has to pay for 'full access'. Suggested Membership 'levels' can be: (..again, open to suggestion for tweekage..)

- Basic / Student: $1. / Mo. or, a one-time payment of $12. / yr. - you get 'full access' to all sections.

- Standard: $5. / Mo., ($60./yr) You now get your name in '445 Blue' acknowledged as a 'higher-contributor', but have no more 'rights' / power, than the 'Basic Member'. Standard Members are not allowed to 'advertise' a *commercial* entity, product, or site - in your Sig. or otherwise - ...'Used / surplus / one-off sales', of course, don't count - such would go into the 'B/S/T' Forum, which is free-access for all.. You're 'giving more', just because you want to...

- Commercial: $10. / Mo ($120./yr) You're Blue, *and* you are now-allowed to have a 'commercial link' in your Sig. line - can be to your webstore / ShoCo site / product-page, etc - 'Non-commercial links' (ie: photo-blogs, info-only sites, etc..) are allowed for all-members. This 'lower-level Commercial' Membership allows for those that only make a 'small-amount' of $$, directly-off of PL-biz / sales - it is NOT tied to how much they 'make' outside PL.. And, like Marc said - even a 'Small Co' should-be able to at *least* do $120. for 1 whole year.

- Corporate / Advertiser: $50. / mo ($600./yr) You're Blue, *and* you are allowed to have (depending on 'vBulletin doability'..) a 'Photo Banner Ad' in your Sig, w/ Links, etc, hawking your wares / services - OR - if it is deemed 'appropriate', allowed to post 'Ad Threads', in a *corralled* area (..new Forum??) where you can hawk your heart-out, show off your pix / wares / Answer questions / Tech support your peeps, etc - And that's where it all stays -

..If Advertisers are 'caught spamming' - and *pure spam*, not 'participation / discussions - in other Forums / other's *threads* , w/in the 'corral', you get a 'Warning' from Admin... Strike 2, you get 'quarantined' (..can't post for a month or something..) Strike 3, You're outta here, and no, you don't 'get a refund'... If you wish to 'inform' someone of your wares, when you see them posting in some other area (..ie: someone is asking about drivers, in the Lounge, etc..) Fine - send them a PM... ..And Advertisers 'get their value' out of their donation because, the 'new Forum' / corral is visible / accessible to *everyone*, so you get the added-benefit of PL's unbelievably-amazing search-engine rankings...

3. External / Non-Member Advertiser - Here's where a 'select-few' Co's are *invited* to be PL 'Banner Advertisers' - they get NO MEMBERSHIP / No 'rights' - If people wanna ask questions / get tech-support - that's why they prolly have their website / phone # in the banner. These 'Advertisers' will be by invitation-only, and, perhaps we can all 'vote' on who we wanna see - Again, you already know my 'submissions' / rationales (Edmunds, etc..) and they will be at a *minimum* contribution of $100. / Mo. ($1200./yr) - and again, they have the benefit of PL's searchability / rankings...

...the 'rationale' for not allowing them to be members, is then, we avoid any 'hierarchy-issues', where, say, an Advertiser 'fails' the community, or starts delivering poor-service... Who makes the 'judgement' on whether they 'stay or go', and, if a 'refund' might be appropriate, if they do, etc.. You see how it gets 'ickky', fast - This last suggestion is still a little 'unbaked', so, feel free to discuss / suggest improvements for how it could / should-work..

Of course, in all this, as-with now (..in-terms of 'being motivated', I know the 'donate button' needs fixing, etc..) people can always just 'send in a Donation' of $whatever, or 10% of sales, etc, etc... *but* the baseline concept, here is 'many hands make the load light'... If 100% of PL members even-only paid the $12. a year, again, I don't think we'd be having this discussion, yah?

Thoughts on the 'Basic' for everybody / the other 'Levels', and the 'segregation' of the Forums, per Post 23-suggestion? I gotta go shutup...

Thx..
j

[flecom]

But I will STAND UP and fight Bill Brenner if he attempts to take over here like he has done at ILDA.

if you are serious keep that shite on the laserist list

You clearly don't know the person who runs the site, very-well.

well I don't either but I donated a rather large sum of money when the shit hit the fan for him a while back (and when I was still employed too, sigh) and besides the paypal receipt I never heard anything from him at all which I thought was kind of lame

anyway, I realize he provides us the platform but what does it cost to host a vB forum? $195 for vB, maybe $100~200/yr for hosting?

whats invaluable here is all the information contained within, so unless we are going to start paying you and steve roberts too I don't see how the idea really works

[norty303]

Thanks fle. That's sort of my opinion too. Forums require words and some facility for pictures. Anything beyond that is the whim of the admin, but not essential. And the more complex they are, the worse they are to pick up when they go wrong. People tend to set up forums as a way of keeping thei hand in with the software/dev but as with most personal projects, not everything is essential. Jon I just read through that multi tiered thing and it made my head hurt. Prob reads better on a proper monitor. I think this is being over complicated. Bring back one off donations. Add some adverts. Make corporate spammers pay. Keep everything freely available. if I know one thing about forums and software in general, it's that if you want to introduce change, it creates work for the admin, both now and in the future when it goes wrong.
Agreed, damn iPhones!

[LaNeK779]

i am with norty and flecom here

just like to add, a nice "discount" for a yearly subscription would be nice.
i prefer 1000 people paying 30 usd per year than 100 people paying 120 usd per year
and i am certain that more would subscribe if it was a low, one-off, yearly payment

all the rest seems uneccesary at the moment.



ps. or we could make pangolin pay per head for every employee they have in here and cover the costs for the next decade.
there i said it! hahahahahahahahaha!!!

/me runs for the hills

[White-Light]

The problem with that line of thinking is that neither is it Admin giving the tech support, its other members, giving it freely. Admin just provides the platform.
Starting to insist on money may well drive the users elsewhere. A forum is only as good as it's content, and its content is the users.

I will say one thing though (although it's been raised before). Add an option for people to make a single donation, and you may find people more willing to do so when they do have the money. As it stands, there is no way I'm signing up for a recurring $10 monthly payment. The last thing many people need is another steady drip from their accounts (imho). I actually feel like I'm prevented from making a donation, because I'm not given the option I would prefer. Perhaps something to address.

I'm with Norty on this one.

I'm not in a position to make regular donations. Rob does a great job and has a great forum but I agree an occasional donation button with a regular one for those who want to makes good sense.

Servers have to be paid for but equally the attraction of many of these forums is the fact that they are free and easily accessible.

[allthatwhichis]

ps. or we could make pangolin pay per head for every employee they have in here and cover the costs for the next decade.
there i said it! hahahahahahahahaha!!!

/me runs for the hills

Hey... There are only 3 Pangolin Employees that post here and technically I don't count as I have been posting here far longer than I have been an employee.

You comment would be much more accurate if you said Pangolin Users...

[laserist]

Hey Jon,

just ask Robert to identify "supporting member" on each post etc. - if the most credible members are so identified the others aspiring to be credible will at least consider becoming "supporting". If people need anymore encouragement just take an interesting conversation into the supporting members only area occasionally. And repost something from the supporting members only area to the public areas occationally too. Oh and the supporting members only area should be visible on the menu, but disabled for non supporting members. Just make it a little more obvious, after all you don't want the bozos anyway...

Brian

[Doc]

If somebody with 'da powa' would like to sticky the thread I just posted 'Help Photonlexicon' I've posted a donate button in there.

[colouredmirrorball]

Hi Jon, you made a nice overview of how you would do it, but wouldn't that involve a hell of a lot of extra work for our dear Admin?
And are we really discussing a sort of rep system? On PL? Seriously?

IMO, the most essential thing is that PL is free, and it should stay that way. All content. There are plenty of other ways to generate money on the internet, and if advertisements seem inevitable, I can live with that as long as the information on here remains free (and again I have Firefox so I don't care about ads). It's not more than normal that members who sell things on PL return something to the community.

But what is the opinion of our dear Admin on all this?

(Also how the hell can you still put such an enormous bunch of lay-out in a post from an iPhone?)