Something that's been bugging me...

[gareth brown]

Is it really necessary to keep the most BASIC of Forum 'luxuries' such as SEARCHING the forum or READING PROFILES a privelage to those who pay for it?!

I'm quite frankly sick and tired of posting/seeing people post things only to have someone post a link to an identical thread and expect them to have read through pages of old hat to see if they're posting something new...I can't be bothered to look through the first four/five pages of each forum to see if there's something similar and why do we have to pay to read profiles?

How do I contact people otherwise??

Just post in a thread "What's your address?!" that's what Private Messaging's for...but I'd have to pay...!

Surely Premium membership can offer better, and let non-paying members have the ability to search, profile read and PM all they want...!

 

[beli]

You can search this forum for free by using Google.

Even premium membership doesn't offer the complete ability to pm all members as premium members can only pm other premium members. I regularly end up posting "please email at blah blah" trying to contact people.

 

[Sicy]

It's only $2.00 a month or $12 a year. That's nothing when you take a look at other sites and the insane amounts they charge (cough u2.com cough) which get you pretty much nothing. This discussion has been brought up countless times. This site was totally free for many years but the fact is it costs money to run a site this big and if searching, pm's and profiles were also free there would be no incentive to subscribe to premium membership.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

plus searching is an incredible drain on the servers. it takes up a lot of power/bandwidth/whatever (my brain is fried so i'm not doing too well on the terms tonight) to search through the forum servers. i do know that much. the other forum i go to not only charges $10 just to register, you have to pay another $10 to be able to send pm, search, attach images, etc. most big forums charge at least for extra features, if not just the accessing of the forums.

as for profiles, i don't know how much of a drain they are. i guess it's like paying for getting food delivered, it's just a matter of whether or not you're willing to shell out the money for the convience. (when you think about it, it's not absolutely necessary to view profiles, search, etc.)

and yeah like sicy said it's not too expensive in the grand scheme of things. but if it's too expensive for you - for whatever reason - then you don't have to pay. we don't pressure or guilt people into become premium members.

 

[indra]

I'm quite frankly sick and tired of posting/seeing people post things only to have someone post a link to an identical thread and expect them to have read through pages of old hat to see if they're posting something new...I can't be bothered to look through the first four/five pages of each forum to see if there's something similar and why do we have to pay to read profiles?

I'm sorry, but that just struck me as incredibly lazy. Honestly, how much work is it to scroll through a couple of pages scanning the titles? That won't eliminate all duplicate threads, but it would sure help. I try to always take a quick look through the most recent few pages before I post a new thread. I rarely use the search function, but have also very rarely begun a duplicate thread. It just takes a bit of common sense.

 

[Elvis]

Premium Membership also now includes the Gallery... for use for storing photos/pictures.

 

[gareth brown]

yaaay

j/k

anyway, in light of recent events, I was going to sign up, but have decided I don't want to fund this website. Sorry.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

yaaay

j/k

anyway, in light of recent events, I was going to sign up, but have decided I don't want to fund this website. Sorry.

no one's forcing you to give money or even post here. are we supposed to grovel now or something?

 

[pax]

Thanks for sharing.