membership/posting fees

I just had an idea. Can we please introduce membership/posting fees? So everyone would have to pay a bit to be a member and for each post?

Mainly of course to reduce the amount of messages, particularly the overwhelming amount of useless selfish stupid ones, but the money could also be used to get rid of the advertisements or to have events like the recent 7x7 contest thing.

Not sure about the membership fees, but I'd really like to see posting fees. And I suggest each post costs $1.60 in the first membership week, then half as much in the second week, and so on until it reaches $0.10.

EDIT: This thread by now has taken a different direction, instead of fees we're talking about possible restrictions/education for new members.

I've been thinking about offering 'Premium Membership' where users can pay something like $10 and get ads removed, get a custom user title, and a Speedsolving.com t-shirt or something.

However, charging just to register will not happen.

I don't really care much about those things. What I'd really like to see is a higher quality forum, where people think before posting, and small posting fees might achieve that. Have you seen my above third paragraph that I added?

Stefan, I understand where you are coming from. However, wouldn't it be a little unfair to start charging people to post since already 2,000+ members have got in free?

The best way to keep a forum's quality is to organize it. When stupid posts are made, they can either be removed or moved to a more proper location. As of now, it seems we have a forum for almost every subject, so it is just a matter of organizing it.

The sad part about an online community is that when it grows, the probability of a people making stupid, worthless posts also grows. The only way to deal with it is by moderating it.

I can also bet that if there was a charge for new members to post, new members wouldn't post. I'll be honest, I sure wouldn't pay to post.

Can we donate some money to get more PM storage?

pjk said:

I can also bet that if there was a charge for new members to post, new members wouldn't post.

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That's kind of the point. I could be wrong, but it's my impression that new members post too much and should look around and get to know us first. Btw, I would post and pay that "much" if what I wanted to say/ask was important enough. But I'd restrict myself to few posts. Which, again, is the point.

Ok, maybe an increasing "number of posts per day" limit would do that job as well.

I think if you charge for a membership and posting, almost no one would come and post because there are other cubing forums where you can register and post for free.

You should notice that mainly only new members spam a lot. Within a month they usually understand the basic rules and will post normally. They're eager to learn about cubing and they're having so much fun. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Just make sure that they see the rules. Maybe you could give a pop up before each post for new members for like for their first three days of posting? Just a suggestion.

And I don't think advertisements are a problem. There aren't that many here and they're mainly text advertisements. What I really hate are those flash (video) advertisements. They're really annoying, but there are none here!

Sorry if I've been postin wrong :S

The interesting thing about Stefan's proposition is that if you simply lurked and read for long enough, you wouldn't have to pay to post. Hopefully, by then they would have searched properly for answers to FAQs and read enough posts to understand the etiquette expect.

The biggest problem with the proposal is that most of the people on the forum probably don't have credit cards or any way to pay.

And, even besides that, I don't like it.

Rubik's Cube Fan said:

You should notice that mainly only new members spam a lot. Within a month they usually understand the basic rules and will post normally. They're eager to learn about cubing and they're having so much fun. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

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Did you read and understand the proposal? Only new members would be charged for posting. Get it?

brunson said:

Rubik's Cube Fan said:

You should notice that mainly only new members spam a lot. Within a month they usually understand the basic rules and will post normally. They're eager to learn about cubing and they're having so much fun. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

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Did you read and understand the proposal? Only new members would be charged for posting. Get it?

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Yes, that's what I figured, but he said...

StefanPochmann said:

So everyone would have to pay a bit to be a member and for each post?

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I like the "post-per-day" limit. I don't know if that's possible to implement but that way there's no deterrent to posting, and after say, a month or two, there could be no limit. I personally like the idea of not being able to post at all for 3 days or something like that.

hawkmp4 said:

I like the "post-per-day" limit. I don't know if that's possible to implement but that way there's no deterrent to posting, and after say, a month or two, there could be no limit. I personally like the idea of not being able to post at all for 3 days or something like that.

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I think the "post-per-day" for new comers is a good idea.

For the restriction for not posting for 3 days, people would just do something else for those three days, not even bothering to look at the forums once.

Man, this forum is excellent compared to most others that I belong to; garbage to informative post ratio is very low here imho. It is very easy for me to just ignore the bad posts and move on to the next. Spend a day on Harmony Central musicians forum and you will see just how good you got it here.

A lot of the newbies are just kids and behave as such at times. I don't mind the odd childish issue if it means we are getting kids involved in cubing. I believe that making it prohibitive for them to post here (money is an issue when your a kid) is counterproductive to the cause of increasing the interest in cubing.

Rubik's Cube Fan said:

hawkmp4 said:

I like the "post-per-day" limit. I don't know if that's possible to implement but that way there's no deterrent to posting, and after say, a month or two, there could be no limit. I personally like the idea of not being able to post at all for 3 days or something like that.

Click to expand...

I think the "post-per-day" for new comers is a good idea.

For the restriction for not posting for 3 days, people would just do something else for those three days, not even bothering to look at the forums once.

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Well, just don't count calendar days, count only the days when a user actually logs in. Hopefully if someone really is interested in joining the forum they'll stick around for longer than the few seconds it takes for them to log in.

I could definitely set it up so users who have been newly registered can't post more than once a day for say the first 2 weeks of becoming a member. Or can't post more than 5 times within a week of being registered. But would that really help? It would force newly registered members to read a lot more than post for awhile. But after that period, nothing is stopping them from going on a posting spree.

Bryan, that is somewhat the idea of a 'Premium Membership'. Users can donate to the site for extra resources, custom titles, etc. Since I don't have this setup yet, I'd be willing to give you extra PM storage, and you can donate if you want to. Send me a PM please.

pjk said:

I could definitely set it up so users who have been newly registered can't post more than once a day for say the first 2 weeks of becoming a member. Or can't post more than 5 times within a week of being registered. But would that really help? It would force newly registered members to read a lot more than post for awhile. But after that period, nothing is stopping them from going on a posting spree.

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Two weeks is a really long time... and in any case, you could stick message when they try to go past their limit, telling them to use the search to see if they can find an answer to their question(s).

I just had a great idea!!!

Start up rep. vBullitin.

base the number of posts someone is allowed(weekly or monthly) based on their rep.

every day, though, their rep. would automatically go up, just a little

starting off, set a 5 posts a day maximum, and after a month, 10, etc.

The idea of bringing rep to this forum has been discussed on a couple of occasions, and I believe that most people do not want to see a rep system.

pjk said:

I could definitely set it up so users who have been newly registered can't post more than once a day for say the first 2 weeks of becoming a member. Or can't post more than 5 times within a week of being registered. But would that really help?

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I think it would. And I'd prefer the once-a-day version, that'd probably hold them closer because then they have to come here every day if they don't want to waste an opportunity to post.

pjk said:

It would force newly registered members to read a lot more than post for awhile.

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Yeah... perfect!

pjk said:

But after that period, nothing is stopping them from going on a posting spree.

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If they're told the reason why they're only allowed few posts in the beginning, I think this will make them aware and sensitive of the general issue, and I hope this will lead to them not spamming (as much) as without that training.

Btw, general remark from me: I'm very willing to be downgraded to newbie status once so I'd have to face the same restrictions/whatever as them.