WebSlave

LOL!! Have you been talking to my graphics designer?

Further, I do wish everyone would read these two side-by-side threads more carefully to determine what I am proposing. I am NOT talking about shutting the site down completely and put a toll booth up on everything. The fee(s) I am talking about would be restricting only some access on this site, not everything.

Also, sorry, but I am just not of the mind to implement anything at all that would take more money out of my pocket in order to hire my programmer to do it. So any complicated scheme that cannot be done with the site "as is", or with very minimal expenditure, is out of the question. Actually I could not even do what I am now proposing up until very recently. Charging any sort of subscription plan would have required that I do it fully manually. So I was caught between a rock and a hard place even when I first thought that charging a fee for access to the BOI was the ONLY realistic way to ratchet the credibility up a few notches. I could not charge a low enough "credibility fee" to where most people wouldn't feel the pinch, and yet I wouldn't get killed trying to handle every single transaction and modifying the status manually in a user's record. Could you imagine what this would be like if even just 500 people went along with the program? I would have to drop everything else I am doing for DAYS to try to handle it.

So no, several things had to fall together all at the approximate same time for me to even start thinking seriously about this. Some of the factors are not obvious, but they are there, nonetheless.

Oh, and PLEASE just forget about the increased fines. The ONLY way that system would work effectively is if I ALSO implemented the $10 posting fee on the BOI along with the ability to READ the BOI. Losing the ability to READ threads in the BOI would be a huge incentive for those people suspended and fined to pay their fine. But the drawbacks of doing it that way should be obvious to everyone. Otherwise those people fined just come in as guests or re-register as someone else and they are right back on the BOI in less time then it takes to read this paragraph.

Oh someone asked about banning IP addresses. Nope. It only works on those people relatively new to the internet and don't know how to circumvent it. And there are some ISPs that it will NEVER work on right off of the bat. I WISH it were that easy.....

As another aside, I have had a flurry of people signing up for the Contributors subscription membership, and I do thank you for this. But honestly, it seems to take some sort of crisis for people to get the message that maybe sometimes I need a little help forthcoming. I don't know, I guess it makes me feel like some homeless guy staring at you all through your windshield trying to guilt-trip you into giving me a handout. Don't get me wrong, I REALLY appreciate you pitching in when it looks like the chips are down. But I shouldn't really have to be put in that position to keep this site alive, should I? I have tried everything I could think of to give you all extra value for the donated money. Banner ads, highlighted classified ads, fancy contributors' icon, text line ads, sponsor links in forums, sponsor ads, etc., etc. Can anyone truly say that I haven't tried hard enough to keep this from becoming a limited access site without paying a toll? ALL of those extra options COST me money to implement to try to find alternatives, you know, and some of them have not even paid for themselves yet, much less put anything into the black.

Maybe it is just time for me to call for a major vote of confidence about whether this site is worth it to YOU for me to keep at it. I think I have put in my fair share already, and from what I can foresee, it isn't going to get any easier, or cheaper, in the future.

Dang! I can't believe I just spent an HOUR writing this post....