Well folks, we are less than 2 months from our 1 year anniversary, and I will be renewing the forum domain registration and hosting service. It has been a great year so far! We've made lots of new friends, and shared knowledge and experiences with each other.
Going forward for the new year, we will have supporter subscriptions available. These come in three varieties, 3 months at $12, 6 months at $20, or one year at $36.
Supporter subscriptions will allow you to access some added forum functionality. You will have access to a separate section of the forum reserved for supporters where you can use another added feature, file attachments. You will be able to upload files to the forum to share with other members. The attachment system is newly configured so we might have to work out a bug or two but it will be a fun additional feature that will let you share files with everyone without having to host them yourself, or send out a pile of emails. And finally, your supporter subscription will come with a 25% increase in PM storage capacity from 200 to 250 messages. This will give you significantly more breathing room before having to empty your inbox. And finally, supporters of the forum can sell up to 18 new or handmade items per year through the forum before needing a vendor subscription.
Once your account is upgraded to a Supporting Member, your user title below your forum username on your posts will change to reflect your new primary member group, and your username color in the "who's online" list at the bottom of the index page will change as well. Members who belong to groups like the Friction Fire Fellowship can change their primary member group back to FFF in their profile settings if that is the member group they wish to display. Changing back will not affect your supporter subscription, you will still be a Supporting Member, only it will be an "additional member group" instead of your primary group.
The subscriptions are only set up to accept paypal donations right now. You do not need to have a paypal account to use paypal for the donation, you only need a major credit or debit card.
The subscriptions can be accessed through your member profile under [actions]>paid subscriptions, or by clicking the link below.
As always, the forum functionality will remain the same for members who choose not to donate. Those of you who cannot become supporting members need not do so to continue to enjoy participating here. Your participation alone is contribution enough.
I am excited to see where the new year will take us, and I am thankful to be a part of such a great group of people to share this journey.
Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? One should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved.
working out some credit card fraud issues right now. bare with me and be patient, i'll be a supporter soon. i love this place.
Will the subscriptions be prorated in case I get banned before my subscription runs out . I'm not real sure I want to pay hard-earned money to be a subscriber to an outfit that would have me as a member anyway.
While I understand the costs involved in running this kind of forum, and I don't have a problem with supporting this one with a fee ( I like to think of it more as dues like any other club), I do have an issue as to where it might take us.
As most here know, I continue to hold a membership in the "other" forum as well, one of my greatest pet peeves about the "other" place has been the class distinction that a supporting membership has created there.
For example, though I don't usually enter into give aways or knife swaps, I always hated to see offers made for these types of things and see a "Supporter Only" restriction placed on them, the same applies to when and how non-supporters have been excluded from certain classified functions, and also excluded from certian sections of the forum or to member information and the like, i've seen times when reading a thread a link is given and when a non-supporter tries to access the link a pop up appears that tells the member that he is not privileged enough to enter that domain.
This has a way of telling a non-supporting member that he or she is a second class citizen in that forums society and is more a tolerated guest than a real member, it has also lead to treating non-supporters poorly in other areas as well.
I was never a supporting member there beause I didn't want to conribute to a furthering of class creation and the lack of respect that it breeds, nor do I want to be part of a group who sets themselves above others for any reason associated with being a have or have not. While some folks may say that "well, if you want to be treated like a full member, pony up the money or put up with being a displaced person, no one gets a free ride", that may have some truth in it, but there are always going to be people who just can't afford to pay for the privilege of having there user name in colors, or the title of supporter place under their user name or avitar, all some can give is their posts and friendship, and those folks deserve our respect every bit as much as those who can pay the extra to help support the forum with their dollars.
I certainly hope that the owners and Mods will take this into consideration when they are sectioning pieces of this forum off limits to non-supporting members.
Moe, I realize your concern, and I want to address that. First, the forum as it stands right now will be no different for members who do not become supporters. by creating a separate section and some enhanced features, nothing is being taken away. And I also understand that there are some members whose financial situation may prevent them from supporting the forum in this manner. I figured we could do the occasional contest to give away a supporter subscription and allow those members a shot at accessing the enhanced features.
I will go in manually and remove ads from subscribers who request it. Greyhound, you're first. If any other subscriber wants ads removed, send me a PM and I'll take care of it.
Even better, I am going to make 3 more "no ads" groups so members can choose to join either the no ads or regular supporter subscriptions. Anyone who has already joined a regular subscription just ask and I will manually remove the ads.
Thanks for replying to my concern, perhaps i'm just being a little gunshy because of past experience with forums of these types, but sometimes it doesn't take much taking your eye off the ball for things to go south, when I took a look at B&B I saw a fresh start with a lot of potentlal, yet with a history conducive to knowing what not to fashion ourselves after.
I't didn't have any clicks, no supporters restrictions, no fleet of moderators waiting to slap you on the wrist, no ego issues, it did have a couple of owners who were willing to listen to it's members and invite imput, and it had a small gathering of great people, most of who were my friends from the other side.
Well so far B&B is almost the same place it was almost a year ago when I joined, but today we have a venders subforum, moderators, and and now a paid supporters group has been added, I understand growing pains and the need to cover overhead, but when the infrastructure of the forum starts to become more akin to what we left behind than what we joined in the begining, it gets that red flag waving, and when that happens sometimes the best thing to do is talk about it straight up.
Damned finger has a mind of it's own sometimes, I hate it when that happens, sometimes i'll be proof reading my post, make a correction and hit the send button instead of preview and have an OH $hit moment.
One thing that hasnt changed is our mission statement. B&B staff are still committed to the same principles as when we started. You guys do a good job of self moderating. We do have a team of moderators, but they are not "elites". Simply eyes and ears helping protect us from disruptions.
As always, open discussion is welcome here. One similarity to another forum that you will never see here, and which contributes more to the clicque mentality than any other feature, is the "thanks" button.
Forums by their very nature are going to have some commonality. If you look at the wikipedia page you can compare and contrast how we do things here to most forums. There a lot of similarities, and a lot of differences as well.
The supporter subsctiptions are a necessary part of the forum. They provide a way to fund the continuing operation costs, and hopefully will enable us to upgrade when our growth requires it. By offering some additional functionality to supporters, it's a way of saying "thank you" for the help.
But like I said in the first post of this thread, all of our members are helping support the forum by virtue of their participation here. And I will do everything I can to keep this place running so we can all continue to enjoy it, even if that means continuing to operate at a loss in the new year. I get a lot of enjoyment from interacting with you guys and this is something worth preserving, for all of us.
Rest assured the supporter section of the forum is not there for the purpose of creating an elite group. One reason it exists is to have a way to enable file attachments for supporters. I can enable attachments on a board by board basis. Every time I download the forum database to back it up, it is a little bigger. I wanted to allow our members the ability to use attachments, but attachments will eat up server space more than any other forum feature, and increase the size of the backups many times over. Right now our entire database is only less than 15 mb. But all it would take is a handful of .pdf files to triple the size of the backups, triple the time they take, triple the bandwidth and data storage, etc.
This is an inevitable consequence of enabling attachments, but since it is such a resource consumer I figured it would be appropriate to enable it for folks who help fund those resources.
That said, I want to be completely open about the costs of operation of this forum. When we started up, Steve and I each split the cost. It ended up costing less than $300 for the domain and hostiing. I bought $200 worth of patches, and sold enough in the first few weeks to cover the $200. To date, we have taken in about $50 -$60 more in revenue from the patches. I enabled ads for one placement on the forum. For the monh of November, the ads on the forum earned $60.43. The combined revenue from the ads, sales of patches, and the new supporter subscriptions will be sufficient to cover last year's startup costs, and the renewal costs for 2013, but upgrading to bigger and better hosting, more feature rich and capable software, etc. will cost several thousands of dollars. Not to mention the impending need to purchase an additional external hard drive to store the increasingly larger backups. And finally, I do hope to one day make a profit from operating the forum, though not at the cost of the atmoshpehre we have here. I promise that I will always put the best interests of the forum ahead of revenue generation. But It is a necessary part of the big picture. My challenge is striking a balance between that and the way we all experience the forum.
PW, first understand that it was never a question of trust, I've already addressed that in a couple of PM's from other members that shared the same concerns that I have posted, I trust that you and Red are trying to cope with growing pains and have the best interest of the community at the forefront of your decision making process.
The last thing I would think about is questioning your motives, when I was running my business I made it clear to my employees, and when I was next in rank to the chief on the police dept. I made it clear to my officers, when something looks like it might be a problem now or in the future I want to be told, and I want to have a discussion about it, taking on potential problems before they actually become problems is much easier and doesn't require damage control after the fact.
Now that we've had a conversation about it, I know that you've done some thinking on it, you've reasured the membership that we aren't going in a direction that's ill advised, and even given us some background in what it took to get this ball dancing.
I know from experience what a popular website can cost in terms of hosting and possible bandwidth charges.
Thanks Moe! I am happy to address any concerns you guys have. And I appreciate input from members because it helps guide administrative decisions in a way that allows for growth and expansion wihout losing sight of our founding principles.
I don't think cliques will be formed like other places because the people that run this site are far different than the people that run other sites. Like all places in the world, when you get a group of people together there are bound to be quarrels (even on the internet). When this has happened here, the mods and/or the admin have dealt with the situation fairly and have gone so far as to even explain their actions. Other places, as I have seen, don't give that consideration.
"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving pretty with a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways in a cloud of smoke, thouroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, Wow! What a ride!"
It is still there, you just need to change your profile settings to make FFF your primary member group.
I completely understand the need to have the forum supported, when I'm able to I'll gladly toss some money your way...
Just want to say tho that I understand the sentiments Moe has expressed and totally agree. The exclusion of non-supporters from give-aways was the biggest bunch of bull going over "there" and was even proven to be nothing more than a way to exclude those who had not paid up to join the club. I remember several big names that almost bragged how they would never trade or do a give-away with anyone who wasn't a supporter....and then DWAT exploded the fallacy of that myth...lol
I hope the membership here never looks at another's worth by whether they have a Supporter status or not.....
I agree about Giveaways not only being for supporters, but I'm HATE seeing people sign up/0 post, just to get in for a giveaway. I've done a few myself, rules are usually an amount of post for smaller gifts just to show your a participate, and not a gear whore. I use the supporter threads or secret threads for bigger ones.. after all those folks are funding site expansion. Neither group is neglected.. I love giving stuff away. Anyways whoever is doing a give-away has say in what the rules are, so its up to that individual.
I can see both sides of the issues/concerns, but I also realize that if it weren't for their generosity, I couldn't be here and that didn't come free. I don't agree with cover charges, but folks will pay to get into a club/bar only to drop even MORE money on booze...I find B&B to be a better addiction.
I am intrigued by the prospect. Because I work for the government I have been an outcast and a third class citizen for so long, I'm not sure how I'd react to suddenly being a first class citizen anywhere, let alone here. I might have trouble adapting to my new environment.
Also, I'd feel cheated if I ponyed up for a subscription and, say, the world ended in a couple of weeks.
So, I'll have to think about it for awhile, say, until February or maybe March. PW, I'll send you a PM when I'm ready to 'take the plunge'.
If you ban wolfy, though, I'll have a money order for a year subscription in the mail to you tomorrow.
Beast made this thread sticky, but I might suggest making a thread directly on the index. I had a hard time finding it....Boss
I can do that. Will take a bit of moving stuff around, but it is possible. Let's get the theme situation figured out then we will get this done.
OK, UTC, I have per your suggestion added a redirect to the administration category on the forum index page. If you click it, it will open this thread.
Works much better! Nice to see some supporters signing up. We certainly appreciate everyone's efforts to build this site.
alright, support has been given. now, how does a dummy like me get his FFF tag back? i checked in the profile stuff, and can view my membership's, but can't seem to change it...