Can't search

If the choice is "lose people who won't help keep the site open" and "lose everyone" I choose the former. If you think this site is making money hand over fist, you'd be wrong.
 
Jaxx said:
STILL haven't found your way to Whine & Cheese yet? ... You mean get YOUR insults straight, right? ...As for his; I believe that he's got your number. :rolleyes::rolleyes:
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quoting jaxx here because i cant quote someone on ignore.

who introduced busse in to a discussion that had nothing to do with ANY knife company?

kuribo.


so is kuribo blaming jerry or the fan club for the bf overload? from the quoted posts i can read it clearly is both.
 
jkarp_53 said:
Still stinks that as a non-paying member I lose access to one of the best search engines covering knives I know, or in this case, knew. And it looks like my loss entirely.
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$10.00 dollars, $10.00 frigging dollars is all it takes to get access.

jkarp_53 said:
I've noticed a lot of things lately have become profitable, even in the areas of public access.
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Show me something in the Constitution that guarantees you the right to publicly access a PRIVATELY OWNED WEB SITE.

jkarp_53 said:
In the end you simply lose loyal people by this process.
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Loyal customer and loyal freeloader are two differnet concepts.
 
Alright, there are economic issues here undeniably. The forum owner is not some bottomless pocket philanthropist. But, I don't see why SOME paying members seem to feel entitled to abuse others in what looks like some currying favour strategy.

The strength of this forum is the wide diversity of view and the ability to learn a lot and pass on experience to others. There is a danger that it could become a very small closed and stagnant pond with few new members or posters if it is made pay only. I accept that paying members should get priviliges, but as a foreign contributor i'm locked out of basic membership and you won't accept paypal.Since some people seem addicted to flamethrowing, why not shut off whine&cheese to registed users? This may help with server time. Why not take some advertising even?

It is a severe drawback not being able to check your recent posts for responses, I've enjoyed my time here and just hope it can continue.

Season's Greetings to all forumites of all points of view.
 
In the end you simply lose loyal people by this process.
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Spark already addressed this, but "loyal" people who are freeloaders AND complain are NOT loyal.

The strength of this forum is the wide diversity of view and the ability to learn a lot and pass on experience to others.
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I would agree with that, but using it as an excuse to not pay is pretty shallow.

There is a danger that it could become a very small closed and stagnant pond with few new members or posters if it is made pay only.
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Yet another excuse not to pay, I can easily name a forum that is not only stagnant, but essentially dead and you know what? That place is free!
 
Sucks for me as well, seeing as the cheapest is gold for us internationalists (word?) , not as expensive a i thought it would be actually. But my main hassle is that you guys dont accept paypal... anyone want to help me buy it...
 
Something had to be done to keep the servers from bogging down. If that involves turning of some of the features for the none-paying members, then that's just the way it has to be. No member here has a right to anything as far as Bladeforums is concerned. Hopefully some of the people that keep posting about their rights will get that through their heads. Be upset if you want, but don't keep thinking that you have a right to anything provided on this forum.

I imagine that the reason that a basic membership isn't offered to foreign members is because $10.00 barely covers the cost in time that it takes to go through the manual credit card verification system.
 
Seriously, in addition to the existing search restrictions, maybe all non-paying members should be called something other than "members", say like..."member wannabees", or whatever......probably something less offensive.

Then, a limit chould be placed on the number of posts member wannabees can have per day or per week, etc..

Also, once member wannabees reach so many total lifetime posts, say 100 posts or 250 posts, then they couldn't post anymore until they became real members. An exception could be made to this if they are posting in any of the for sale forums where they might be trying to buy someting from the real members.

Last but not least, if guests decide to leave BF after they can't post anymore and they decide not to pay a membership fee, we could have the pirate gang from the Cove follow them around to other knife discussion web-sites and insult them every time they post and if we have to, kick them in the nuts and set them on fire. :cool: :D
 
meh...never really searched for anything in particular...never really ask any questions. only really use the little forum jumper thing at the bottom. so I'm quite content to stay a freeloader and shoot in my little rays of sunshine from time to time. I don't see what the big fuss is about. So you can't search? Not really that big a deal, is it? You still get to look at the threads, you still get to post. Be content. If you want to use search that badly pay the dime. If not (or you're just tight like me) suck it up and go on.
 
The elitism is really annoying. On one hand, the price of membership is low, so it's not a big deal to pony up and support the site. OTOH, the price of membership is low, so it's not a big deal that you did pony up and support the site. This holier than thou BS is grating. I pay for membership in spite of the pressure coming from lots of long timers, definitely not because of it. I went from gold to platinum cause the difference is negligible compared to what I'm willing to spend on knives themselves.

People need a reason to pay for something, and being bullied and called a freeloader ain't a good one. Who wants to pay to hang around a place where they just got insulted? And it isn't like Spark comes out begging for money; racking up hundreds of posts while remaining oblivious to the expenses involved with running the board happens everywhere. For every pay to play message board, you'll find dozens of free ones, people aren't automatically gonna think 'gee, who keeps this place running.' Effective advertising isn't so in your face that it overrides everything else. So, if advertisers elsewhere have been effective, people barely notice that BF doesn't have much, wait, any, ad revenue coming in.

What about raffles? Say the cost of a ticket is $5, payable in membership. Basic gets you 2 ticket numbers, gold gets you 5, platinum gets you 10. I'm sure some people could donate a knife or the purchase price of one, they were spending $20 a pop to play with custom titles.

I dunno, this whole, 'buy a membership so we'll quit pissing in your face' doesn't seem very effective. Spark shut down search, that got some people paying, they became aware of the actual situation, not just the peer pressure to 'fit in.'
 
If people feel so inclined to be upset about restrictions placed on accessibility to this site, then support BF. Its only a few bucks, and for this small change you get accessibility to other parts of the forum.

Thats only one part of it. The other part about paying a membership is that you now help keep BF up and running. In addition to that, it helps with maintenance and upgrades that are needed to provide a level of service that keeps in line of what a person would expect in the land of internet.

It is apparent that BF is struggling at this point to provide service to what is an exploding population of members/users. A membership is a win win situation for both the members and BF as well.

Without financial support one day when you log on, the message on your screen may read, WEB SITE NOT FOUND. That will not be a good day.
 
Here's the bottom line: I choose what level of access people have on this site, not anyone else. You'll notice I don't call Registered Users "freeloaders" "leeches" or anything else. They are simply "Registered Users" and that's it.

So I'd really appreciate it if you guys stop calling them derogatory names.

I'm also not going to twist anyone's arm to be here or to pay for a membership. If you want access to specific features of the site, you can help support it. If they aren't needed for you to enjoy it here, don't pay for them.

I'm very grateful to the people who get paying memberships, whatever the reason. That said, remember, there isn't a single person here other than myself that hasn't used this site for free in some way, shape or form. So please, pretty please, stop with the name calling.
 
Personally, I believe this is one of the smartest moves Spark ever made. I am not sure most folks realize the effort in time and money that goes into this little playground that we all love so much. This site has value in so many ways. The searching mode is an absolute must speaking for myself, as the level of information about knives in here is absolutely unsurpassed!. Anywhere! But there is a lot more to it than just that.

I was always a paying member here, first Gold, Platinum, back to Gold again.. Until just recently in either August or September of this year. Hey sh!t happens. Finances hit the skids for a spell. But I value this site and I am going to the, 'Upgrade your forums experience' at the top of the page right now after this post to pony up membership fees again and get my search mode back as well as support this site once again, cause its the right thing to do. So I'll skip my bottle of Speyburn single malt scotch this evening,, so what.. A small sacrifice for something great in return. I hope the rest of you all do the same, cause its the right thing to do.

Cheers,
Anthony
 
I just read this thread and don't really feel like going back to find the post about paying with PayPal, so I'll skip the quote and throw this out as general information.

PayPal has a browser plugin called "Virtual Debit Card" (I think they may have changed the name), that creates a temporary MasterCard number for use on sites that don't take PayPal. The money is taken from your PP account, but the site only sees it as a debit card transaction.
 
RWS said:
Seriously, in addition to the existing search restrictions, maybe all non-paying members should be called something other than "members", say like..."member wannabees", or whatever......probably something less offensive.
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Dis-membered Members?
 
I see no problem paying for the services bladeforums.com provides. To be honest, im too lazy to reach around, get out my wallet and go through the process. Lame, I know. But it will happen someday.

You have the right to charge whatever you deem fit to operate this forum.

Thanks Spark, on behalf of all the registered users that appreciate it.
-Otto
 
sunnyd said:
Personally, I believe this is one of the smartest moves Spark ever made.
Anthony
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I think this is a very stupid move IMHO, whith all respect to Spark
The search mode is the backbone of a large forum like this.
When the big majority aren't able to search the whole forum will downgrade.
How many times do you think the same questions will be asked?
How many times newbies will ask about basic info a quick search could easily resolve.

This is what's going to happen. :(

In future a lot of posts may be skipped to find something interesting.
 
There really isn't any choice at this point. The solution will be to upgrade the hardware but that has to wait until we can raise the money. For the short term, there is nothing else that takes up a similar share of resources that could be restricted instead of search. We couldn't just leave the configuration alone either; the forum was rapidly getting unusable.
 
Well, there's always some sort of optimization that could be done. Let's face it, we've got 9 years (!) of postings on here, I could always trim that down by quite a bit. It's not like we need more than 2 years of For Sale postings, or 5 years worth of W&C / PC / Community Center / etc. So that's an option. But that only goes so far since a bunch of the other forums are pretty huge in size.
 
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