Does BladeForums need help? Let's help!

I still think the community chest would be a good idea. As far as the server, if sent the specs I will get a price from CPU.Inc on building one at cost, One of my best friends owns that company and generally I pay nothing but cost and he's just a heck of guy who would do the favor anyway. Make a place I can send in a extra 20 bucks donation without that available it's kinda hard to get the money to BFC.
 
I've skipped all the flame posts, so poeple don't jump on me.
I think that sales on the Exchange forums are pretty good, and we could collect a buck or two from there to cover the fact that these offers are posted on BFC. I think buyers should pay because most "sellers" here have to pay for membership. I don't know whether how we can do this on the trader's forum.
I personally think the guest idea and after 50 posts, you're required to pay will have a negative effect.
I see that the server is running Linux, and clustering wouldn't be bad, in fact, it would be pretty nice because it divides the loads across the machine. Because it's a unix clone, set up should be fairly easy - like ghosting a hard drive and changing a few stuff to make it right - and it would be fine. The problem is how to distribute the load. Basically, in a cluster, you have the master (controller) and the slaves the server, the master sends the tasks to the appropriate slaves. The problem is, spark and/or his computer geek pals have to figure the software that would work in Linux. I know it exists but I'm not even familiar with them. If that solution doesn't work, there are hardware solutions, like stuff from Cisco, but the price tag woud be phenominal (in the thousands). I think that's the hard part of using a cluster. It's pretty obvious that if BFC went cluster, it will be a load sharing cluster, but gotta figure out the software to do this, and last time I heard, they ain't exactly easy to set up.
I know I'm a basic member with lots of posts, but I'm going to get some cash in and hopefully have enough left over (after some errands that I must do with the money) to pay for the membership.
 
First let me say that I appreciate everyones opinion and I hope that no one takes my points personally.
There are people whose hobby is world travel. I can't participate in that hobby because I can't afford to. I want to,,but me wanting to doesn't mean jack sh*t. I want to belong to a local country club that has a super nice golf course. They require multiple fees and dues. I'm a helluva nice guy,,funny,,cute,,witty,,I would contribute a lot to the country club. But, I can't afford the fees and dues. So I don't get to participate. If someone literally can't afford a fee to be a member of this or any other forum, regardless of the amount they can contribute, then they don't get to join. Nothing personal. They might be cute and smart and know everything there is to know about knives but if they can't afford the hobby, then they have to find one they can.

As to the "help if you can", community chest idea. I like the idea except for the fact that there are those who can afford a small annual fee who'll never contribute because they're cheap. Require it, and you seperate the wheat from the chaff.

If you're reading this,,speak up, everyones opinion is welcome :)


Phillip
 
As to the "help if you can", community chest idea. I like the idea except for the fact that there are those who can afford a small annual fee who'll never contribute because they're cheap. Require it, and you seperate the wheat from the chaff.
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The idea of the community chest is it would let you donate if you want not to make you do it.
 
Originally posted by notdos
If someone literally can't afford a fee to be a member of this or any other forum, regardless of the amount they can contribute, then they don't get to join. Nothing personal. They might be cute and smart and know everything there is to know about knives but if they can't afford the hobby, then they have to find one they can.
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The entire forum suffers if people who won't or can't pay for a membership no longer contribute. And it's not like these non-paying members will just give up on talking about knives on the internet. They will just go somewhere else to do it.
 
My biggest problem and I think it is this way with allot of others. I didn't pay for a membership for a few months b/c I always spent my spare money on knives. I didn't want to spend $30 on something that I could basically get the same features for free. Problem is I really love this place and when I realized it was in need and its sucessful exsistance was in jepordy. I skipped a knife and went straight to the membership page. It doesn't make me any better than a basic member though. Those of you that order from 1SKS are helping in the fact that the little profit they make will go to support the forum and you might be able to get the knife somewhere else alittle cheaper. However you are still getting the knife you paid for, and they are never above MSRP. And they ship faster than just about any business on the net. And in my opinion, your still not helping pay for the bandwidth and server problems. But when you spend $20-$30 for a membership, You are sending that money directly to help BFC.
 
Originally posted by notdos
As to the "help if you can", community chest idea. I like the idea except for the fact that there are those who can afford a small annual fee who'll never contribute because they're cheap. Require it, and you seperate the wheat from the chaff.
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That was just stupid. In my opinion, the "wheat" are the people who provide informative posts; and if you look around a bit, you'll find that those people aren't always paying members. If I imagine this forum minus the insight and experience of the non-paying members, I don't see it as a site with much to offer anymore.
 
Originally posted by tribalbeeyatch
That was just stupid. In my opinion, the "wheat" are the people who provide informative posts; and if you look around a bit, you'll find that those people aren't always paying members. If I imagine this forum minus the insight and experience of the non-paying members, I don't see it as a site with much to offer anymore.
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Then that is where we'll have to agree to disagree. Informative posts won't pay the bills. Money pays the bills. There would be plenty of "informative" posts here if the fee was $30 a year. Although I do believe that there would be far less "uninformative posts".


Phillip:)
 
Originally posted by notdos
Then that is where we'll have to agree to disagree. Informative posts won't pay the bills. Money pays the bills.
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Rii-iight. And what, pray tell, is the point of paying the bills if the quality of the site suffers in the process? THE REASON that this is a good site is that there are a lot of people here willing to contribute their experiences of and opinions about knives. By decreasing the number of participants, the quality of the site is going to suffer. There's just no getting around it.
There would be plenty of "informative" posts here if the fee was $30 a year. Although I do believe that there would be far less "uninformative posts".
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There would certainly be far fewer posts, period. I'll not waste my time disabusing you of your fantasies regarding the 'superiority' of the posts of paying members. Let's just call that another benefit of your paid membership -- from me to you.
 
Originally posted by tribalbeeyatch
Rii-iight. And what, pray tell, is the point of paying the bills if the quality of the site suffers in the process? THE REASON that this is a good site is that there are a lot of people here willing to contribute their experiences of and opinions about knives. By decreasing the number of participants, the quality of the site is going to suffer. There's just no getting around it.There would certainly be far fewer posts, period. I'll not waste my time disabusing you of your fantasies regarding the 'superiority' of the posts of paying members. Let's just call that another benefit of your paid membership -- from me to you. [/B]
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First of all, you seem to be angry at my pointing out the facts. Again, nothing personal. Let me try and answer your first question. More members doesn't equate to more quality. It just means more.

No one that I know of has suggested that "basic members" haven't contributed information. We've got information out the ass. What is needed is not more information, but more dollars.
Oh,,and thank you for not abusing me:p


Phillip
 
I'll not waste my time disabusing you of your fantasies regarding the 'superiority' of the posts of paying members.
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I believe you have failed to appreciate the subtext of Phillip's statement. It is not that paying members have some marvelous information hord that is foreign to non-paying members; but, that by setting up the site as a fee access site we would make it much harder for people to troll the site.

If you joined recently you may have missed some of it, but we suffered some real problems with trolls last summer. Usually someone just pops up with five or six registered names, picks a fight, gets banned, and comes back a few days latter with another batch of personas. At least that waste of energy and bandwidth would be deminished.

n2s
 
Don't get me wrong, I'm not angry nor am I taking this personally. I've been involved with another bulletin board that cooked up a "pay to play" membership scheme that led to the demise of the board. I would hate to see the same thing happen here. There just has to be a better way to drum up cash than torpedoing a significant chunk of the board's biggest asset -- cutting off one's nose to spite one's face and all that.
 
not2sharp,

I'd have to take your word for it that that was Phillip's intended meaning, but it's certainly not what he seemed to be saying. Regarding trolls, I think that this is likely the least trolled board that I've ever seen. In fact, in my few months here I can only recall one, and that was just yesterday (the "my dick is bigger than yours" guy). And besides, a few posts of trolling isn't really that significant a waste of bandwidth or storage compared to storing images long-term or archiving all of the old threads, for example. I think that the streamlining suggestions earlier in this thread are a much more immediate and feasible fix for the server problems.
 
Originally posted by tribalbeeyatch
Don't get me wrong, I'm not angry nor am I taking this personally. I've been involved with another bulletin board that cooked up a "pay to play" membership scheme that led to the demise of the board. I would hate to see the same thing happen here. There just has to be a better way to drum up cash than torpedoing a significant chunk of the board's biggest asset -- cutting off one's nose to spite one's face and all that.
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I can certainly undestand your concern. No one would won't BF to disappear. That's exactly what we're talking about.
The idea of charging a fee (as I understand it) is not designed to make a profit but to cover cost. As Kevin has said, 1SKS provides a chunk of money each month to BF so the purchases from them are important. If everyone who buys from 1SKS stopped buying BF would most likely cease to exist. I'm not suggesting that those who buy from 1SKS should stop nor should those who purchase memberships stop. However there are most likely thousands who do neither. This group could and should contribute more than just their posts. I'm afraid that if we don't do something that eventually we'll have lots of people with great information and no place to put it.


Phillip :)
 
Anybody remember M-Player? I do. It was a free based forum where you could hang out and play card games with others around the world. They also had live web cam chat that was also free. Well M-Player got huge...too huge, and they decided to go the route of requiring a monthly fee to use the web cam chat feature. All the games remained free to play. Well, virtually everybody quit using the web cam chat feature because they refused a monthly fee. Well, before you know it, M-Player is going to start charging to play the games. Well guess what? M-Player is no more. People, even though they like to use something, aren't going to stand for a mandatory membership. This was all predicted by many, including myself, when M-Player started charging for webcam chat feature. We knew that they would fold eventually. Unfortunately, if BF makes even such a small fee of $7 per year, people will stop coming here. And guess what? If all these basic members stop coming, you will have a forum that gets about as much traffic as United States Knife Nuts forum... only 2 posts there in the past 45 days (and for those that don't know, this is on BF, not some other forum). If that happens, then others quit showing up because of a lack of useful info. When I found out about Usual Suspect.net, I started going there daily because there was more EKI posts than here in the EKI forum. Well, now I might check them out once every few days because there will only be a handful of new threads. Here, if you go a few days without checking, there will be over 100 new threads. That is what makes this site the best on the net. I wish the mandatory fee would work, but it won't. The only thing this will do, is make this site the size of knifeforums.com.

Now, before all the gold members jump my case, I have just upgraded to a gold membership myself, which should go into effect sometime next week. I just wanted to show my support, and since I can't afford to buy several knives a month from 1sks to support the forums, I felt the membership was my best opportunity. I know that if I had to pay a mandatory fee after my first 50 posts here, I wouldn't be here now, and that itself would hurt the forums because they wouldn't have gotten a dime of my money. There are plenty of good suggestions here, and a charity pot for contributing as much or as little will do some good. People are more likely willing to donate a couple dollars to help than they are willing to fork over mandatory fees.

JMHO

Mike
 
I currently participate (to one degree or another) on several different forums on knives, watches, flight sims, etc. This is the only one I've used that asks for membership fees. The others are apparently supported by advertizing or given as a service by a retail or manufacturing entity. This one seems to be a combination of both, Plus charging membership fees. I think I'll pass on the opportunity to make charitable donations.
 
I am curious just how many different paying members there are. I mean are there a thousand gold members and such?
 
Ok then, let's say we don't institute a mandatory fee to use BF, what then should we do to solve the immediate problem? That of course being that we have to come up with a way to get a a new server in the not too distant future. I do not for one minute believe that continuously removing more content from this forum is a good way to solve this conundrum.

The Community Chest, auctions and NGK's kind offer seem to be the best ideas so far. Anybody else have any proposals they would like to add?

Monday I am going to go and get a money order and send it in, even if there is not going to be a Community Chest. I hope that a large number of other members feel that what we have here is worth doing the same.
 
Charge a commission on all items sold in the exchange forum. E-bay does it, and they are the largest auction block on the net. JMO.

Maybe non-knife related sponsors would pay to have add banners or something (non-knife so they won't be competing with 1sks). Companies that sell or make things like Militec or Tuff Glide, or even Smith's or Lansky sharpening stones, etc. Just a thought.

Mike
 
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