Posted 29 January 2004 - 12:21 AM
Charging $30.00 a year is a bit much, especially considering that the principal value of the board is all of the *free* information posted here by knowledgeable people. It seems strange to charge the many people here who freely give of their knowledge, time, and energy to others.
I suspect charging that much, or perhaps anything at all, would kill this forum, as it would no longer be open to the world, and would likely subesequently wither away from its insularity. I suppose Arthur and John Jr. could pay to come here and snipe at each other ad nauseum, but I wonder who would pay to listen.
Most likely, a yahoo community forum would be set up as a free alternative, and people would find their way there and resume the free exchange of information. I've seen that happen before with very small Internet communities who exit some site in mass because of some unsuitability or the other, and rejoin somewhere else.
Yahoo is certainly not as elegant or useful as this site, but it is open to the whole world and thereby does promote the free exchange of information, which is probably *the* great thing about the Internet, that is, unfettered information exchange by alll.
Personally, I don't mind advert sponsership, since I have every ad blocker known to mankind on my system. If advertisers are stupid enough to spend money on Internet ads, who am I to stop them. I don't read ads in the newspaper either, and I have a PVR to skip ads on TV as well. Though, I must admit that Google has developed a model for displaying ads that probably actually works, and that would be nice if that was possible here, i.e., sponsered ad links to relevant companies and services.
Bottom line, I suspect that mandatory charging to participate in this forum could kill it.