New Membership Programs

[shepherds]

Once you sign up for a membership, PAYPAL uses automatic renewal so if you don't cancel before the next month, you will be automatically renewed.

[Doc]

Originally Posted by shepherds

Also, for paid members, you will still be expected to behave in the manner a non-paid member behaves. There are no special treatment or privileges for paid members in terms of behavior. If you choose to upgrade your membership or if you're a new user and you purchased a paid membership, you are expected to follow the rules and behave in the same manner as everyone else. The admins and mods will continue to moderate this site as per the norm.

Awww Shucks. I thought I would be at liberty to cuss at those that disagree with me.

There are few in here that need to enter the "I quit" steel cage match with me. I learned from the "Dirtiest Player in the Game" ...wwwhhhhheeeeewwww! I'm old. old. very old school.

[sagelfn]

I missed a few hours of conversation (yay storms and power outages)

what happened to the previous thread about this topic? usually they are locked not deleted

will the free membership ever be reduced? and if the board gets new upgrades will free members be able to use them?

what is to stop a vendor from spamming up the Health section for example. We already have/had one "lukes" anytime I posted a question in the health section I got a PM directing me to their product to fix my problem. Couldn't they just link to their post in the vendor section?

Vendors (i'm thinking companies that pay to do this not our members who may list items) would not be active members of this board like the rest of us. They would not be learning and sharing so I don't see the point of allowing them to post in the rest of the board.

[shepherds]

The other thread did not get deleted. I moved it because I did not have a chance to post an announcement about this yesterday (I was away) so I thought this would be the most constructive way to go through the process today.

I'm not sure what you mean by "will the free membership ever be reduced?" I can't speak of what will happen when future updates get released because they haven't happened yet and I don't want to put us in a position where I basically put us in a corner. If I'm correct, everything on this site (content wise) is still 100% free.

If you look across out network of sites we manage, this is the model we use. Now, there are some sites where you might see an area of the forums for paid members only but that's up to the paid members to decide (and I'm not saying that's going to happen here or will not happen..just pointing it out).

As for your concerns with the vendors, we are in the process of a writing out "rules" to get them here. The great thing about this is that the mods and admins of this community are helping shape the policy to guide the vendors so to that extent, they will have your concerns in mind.

Originally Posted by sagelfn

I missed a few hours of conversation (yay storms and power outages)

what happened to the previous thread about this topic? usually they are locked not deleted

will the free membership ever be reduced? and if the board gets new upgrades will free members be able to use them?

what is to stop a vendor from spamming up the Health section for example. We already have/had one "lukes" anytime I posted a question in the health section I got a PM directing me to their product to fix my problem. Couldn't they just link to their post in the vendor section?

Vendors (i'm thinking companies that pay to do this not our members who may list items) would not be active members of this board like the rest of us. They would not be learning and sharing so I don't see the point of allowing them to post in the rest of the board.

[sagelfn]

the other thread is no longer listed in my threads or posts and a search of the board also did not find it which is why I think it is deleted. we all had comments and questions that are now gone.

**edit** also, "will the free membership ever be reduced?" in the missing thread a poster mentioned using a smiley and the smiley not showing up but instead a paid member icon came up. So I guess in short i'm wondering if we will lose and of the abilities we currently have (here is that post my dog was in a commercial today! )

Originally Posted by shepherds

The other thread did not get deleted. I moved it because I did not have a chance to post an announcement about this yesterday (I was away) so I thought this would be the most constructive way to go through the process today.

I'm not sure what you mean by "will the free membership ever be reduced?" I can't speak of what will happen when future updates get released because they haven't happened yet and I don't want to put us in a position where I basically put us in a corner. If I'm correct, everything on this site (content wise) is still 100% free.

If you look across out network of sites we manage, this is the model we use. Now, there are some sites where you might see an area of the forums for paid members only but that's up to the paid members to decide (and I'm not saying that's going to happen here or will not happen..just pointing it out).

As for your concerns with the vendors, we are in the process of a writing out "rules" to get them here. The great thing about this is that the mods and admins of this community are helping shape the policy to guide the vendors so to that extent, they will have your concerns in mind.

[AbbyK9]

Is this the other thread?
paid membership?

[shepherds]

I just moved it back.

[sagelfn]

missing thread is now visible
paid membership?

[shepherds]

Originally Posted by sagelfn

the other thread is no longer listed in my threads or posts and a search of the board also did not find it which is why I think it is deleted. we all had comments and questions that are now gone.

**edit** also, "will the free membership ever be reduced?" in the missing thread a poster mentioned using a smiley and the smiley not showing up but instead a paid member icon came up. So I guess in short i'm wondering if we will lose and of the abilities we currently have (here is that post my dog was in a commercial today! )

It could be a glitch... or it could be that particular user pasted the image of the "premium member". In any case, are smilies working now?

In terms of losing ability to do things, that will not happen. Like I said in the first post, most of the things happening for the paid membership are tech related in terms of getting more space for PMs, bigger avatars, things like that.

[AbbyK9]

I was thinking about this thread while I was driving home, and I guess I have a question that I have not seen answered in this explanation of the paid memberships. That question is, why would anyone pay a monthly fee, or even a lifetime fee, to belong to an online forum?

I belong to many different forums, and most of them are run by individuals who want to connect with others and have discussions. Most of those forums have advertising because that is how the forum owners pay for the costs such sites incur - hosting fees, bandwidth, domain name. Most of them also have the option of "paid" membership, where the pay is a donation to help with forum upkeep, and the only bonus people get for paying is the fact that advertising is kept to a minimum, the forum continues to exist, and they are listed as "supporters".

That's quite a bit different from offering paid membership for "perks" that don't really seem to be that great, to be honest. It's not like paid members get to surf the board without any advertising or have access to special sections just for them.

So I guess I am wondering this ... if free members will continue to be able to browse the board, have discussions, display avatars and post pictures, why would anyone want to subscribe? Is having a bigger avatar worth it? Having more message storage? (When you could simply copy/paste messages you want to save and store them on your computer.) More picture uploads? (When you can get a free account at Photobucket, or Smugmug, or Fotki for FREE?)

I guess I just don't see the point. Unless, of course, there are plans in the works to prevent people from doing things ... like saving private messages or linking photos from elsewhere.

I am starting to see why the number of registered members browsing the board seems to be smaller every time I come online and why more and more of them have simply moved on to a different forum with the rest of the "old crowd".