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Paid Memberships

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
I'm not ignoring this. Really, though, please consider:

- There are some things that are not customizable to the extent that you'd like them. The posting frequency, rep frequency, are both set globally. Rep "size" is not possible.

- There's no easy way to give people control over ads. It's just not possible.

- Purchasable custom titles would be easy to implement, but extremely difficult to actually deal with. Obviously, we'd need rules around content. But like modding, the rules would be hazy and subject to judgement calls all the time, which would mean bitching from the people paying. Then there'd be bitching from the people getting the titles. Then, as there always is, there would be third parties taking sides.

That's not even getting into the consideration of paid bans, which would be impossibly problematic.

- PM box size is easy. But are you really going to pay money to store more PMs, in light of the above?

The whole issue is that we need real, tangible benefits that do not affect other members to have a workable premium membership model.

There are some easy things:

- More PM space
- Avatar size increases
- Custom title could be user-modifiable
- Bigger attachments
- Longer signatures

Maybe we could knock an ad block off the page or something. But there are some things we can't change due to software limitations, and some things I won't change because it'd be a nightmare to manage.
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
P.S. take into account that we only had something like 30 premium memberships ever, and that was a paltry $20/year to remove ALL ads, PLUS increase PM space, PLUS increase avatar size.

If all of that wasn't worth $20/year to, well, basically anyone... I don't know what we can do to entice people to pay. I think it's a culture thing: people are used to getting something for nothing, and thus have no incentive to pony up.