Anniversary of paid membership requirement for posting classifieds....

Originally Posted by Stardust

In thinking on whether this site has dropped because of the price tacked on for ads, I just do not think so.
I tend to agree with Dan. The question I have is when the stricter rules were inforced were there more people for it and just a quieter, gentler crowd then those fewer that were against it but much more vocal?
I know that at one time I was not for the nicey nicey all the time, and some of it still stands on the BOI but I do believe that when that was in affect there was a lot more traffic. Perhaps people felt "safer" to post without being made to feel stupid or whatever reasons they personally had. There are a lot of guests that travel thru here, an awesome amount, how do we go about trying to entice them to communcate on these forums? I doubt the answer would be the gruffier way of doing things.

Actually, the stricter rules were in tandem with the paid requirement to post on the BOI, so that would be difficult to determine. At the time, I felt that participation WAS dwindling on the BOI, PLUS there was that issue with Chris Johnson that kind of slapped me alongside the face. In that, I mean, I saw an example of a person who I SHOULD have allowed to show his true face via his vicious attitude in the BOI, as it just MIGHT have warned away some potential customers. Maybe, maybe not, but that was the main reason behind my relaxing the rules there. It got TOO nice, and therefore kept people from showing their true face when things got tense. Which personally, I think is a mistake. People SHOULD see someone when they lose their cool and go ballistic. See them grab the gun and start shooting all of their own toes off. That is truly a learning experience offered by the BOI that I really did not want to kill off with strict rules.

The BOI has to be rough and tumble for that reason. Bad guys SHOULDN'T be forced into appearing to be reasonable and calm GOOD guys by my rules.