B.O.I. participants play favorites?

So, biased people are the only ones who would be willing to pay a fee to be here? People who are only crowd followers and and cliquish by nature would be the only ones to pay a membership fee?

Sorry, I just don't understand that logic. How does $10 make that sort of a dividing line in people here? If anything, I would expect the reverse. Those people taking offense at that $10 fee would likely congregate together somewhere as a clique, being a bit disgruntled that they are on the outside of that door. Probably having rousing conversations among themselves about this state of affairs as well, I bet.

In my estimation, the line it drew was between those people who seriously want to be here to contribute and take advantage of being here, and those people just passing through with no real interest in being participants and contributing to the knowledge that is helpful to be shared with everyone else. The major intent of the paid membership is to try to weed out the FALSE information and crap that could be posted here with impunity and no real restrictions whatsoever.

People only have to pay if they want to contribute input, either for feedback for their own purposes, or to give other people some information that could be of value to them in their decision making. Without paying, they can still TAKE the information that other people have paid to be able to provide. They are just choosing to not give back anything in return, it seems.

I don't have a problem with this, and I am sure other people do not as well. But to say that those people who have decided to pay to be able to contribute and participate in discussions on the Board of Inquiry compose a clique of people who are going to be biased towards all of the other paying members blindly as a group here is just, well, an odd way of looking at things, in my opinion.

"People only have to pay if they want to contribute input, either for feedback for their own purposes"



Exactly.

Rich,

I did not say that those that pay would be biased either unconsciously or consciously against those that won't/don't pay. The BOI is a paid environment now. This limits by definition those that can post there. A smaller sampling of the industry will limit the diversity of opinions shown on the BOI. Those paying the fee will more likely be of similiar mindset. It is completely natural for those of a similiar mindset to form a clique as that is how the human mind works. Cliques are going to happen on any forum. Again, it's completely natural and not a wild conspiracy.

This is more than just theory as I've spoken to people that used to contribute here but just don't want to pay $10 to tell someone to pull there head out of their nether regions. These were the people that offered a diverse opinion. They were tossed away along with all the "bad" posters as well.

The point I was trying to get across on my original post was that what Gregg (and others have seen it as well) observed was a natural phenomenon (sp?) and not a manipulated result by you personally or other members of your site.

Originally Posted by cthulhu77

"People only have to pay if they want to contribute input, either for feedback for their own purposes"

Exactly.

Greg,

Why did you contribute?

Originally Posted by dwedeking

They were tossed away along with all the "bad" posters as well.

No one was "tossed" away at all. They walked away of their own free will. I purposely chose such a small figure ($10) for a reason, you know. And I believe my reasons were hashed and rehashed to death from the time I first approached this topic.

Those people who walked away are using that $10 fee for some kind of trumped up excuse, and not a legitimately overpowering reason, in my opinion. Perhaps quoting "principles" or some other equally novel reason, I guess meaning that they feel it is unethical for someone to make their time and efforts worthwhile financially (if they really think that this is bringing in a boatload of money), or it smacks them of just being unfair in general. I don't know. I did what I felt was reasonable in the evolution of this site. Either the site was going to bust out of the cucoon it was in or it was going to die, and I think I made that point quite clear. I felt very strongly that the Board of Inquiry was a dead end without a change in direction concerning who was going to be posting in it, and I just was not willing to keep the current pace, much less the future headaches on the horizon without some sort of compensation for my efforts. Period. So I put this site into "do or die" mode.

So what manner of people chose to keep it going? Who is it that decided it is worth paying for? How do those people differ from the ones who have decided it is not worth paying for and by implication don't really care one way or the other whether it lives or dies? The only people who are shut out of contributing their opinions do so for a most negligible of reasons, it appears. Does this distinction create a clique? Well yeah, it probably does. And quite likely a clique that I am rather proud of being known as a member of, quite frankly.

So yeah, all of the clique members here are now the only ones providing the information that everyone, non-clique members included, are able to use to find out information about those people and businesses in this industry everyone is thinking of doing business with. So EXACTLY whose fault is that?

Gregg's original question was if what he was observing was being seen by others. No blame or fault was being laid.

Well yeah, it probably does.

So, we find that what Gregg observed is also being observed by others.

Again no blame is being laid at anyone's feet. I was relating my experience in my study of internet users and how they think. I gave reasoning as to why the phenomenon that Gregg observed (and others have seen) is happening and a theory as to why it seems more prevelant now. No blame. You made your choices and others made theirs.

it smacks them of just being unfair in general.

Actually, this was my reason for not subscribing and turning down offers of free subscriptions. My personal opinion is that it defeats the purpose of what I thought the BOI was (which is different than what you precieve it to be). The error was not in your choice of how you run your site but in my perception of what I thought the BOI was. I can accept that.

Originally Posted by dwedeking

Actually, this was my reason for not subscribing and turning down offers of free subscriptions. My personal opinion is that it defeats the purpose of what I thought the BOI was (which is different than what you precieve it to be). The error was not in your choice of how you run your site but in my perception of what I thought the BOI was. I can accept that.

OK, so what exactly did you feel that the BOI was? And I am also curious to know how you figured this could remain a workload essentially done for free as well as allow it to remain in such a state that any Joe Blow could come in here, register as 20 different people and cause havoc that way in any number of ways. Heck, without this payment requirment in place, that Joe Blow could come in here post as ALL 20 people talking about negative experiences they have had with YOUR company. Before, it wouldn't cost them a dime to do it, and I'm actually surprised that it has not happened in mass scale. I lived in dread that one of several people certainly with the mental bent we have seen would kick off a pain in the butt campaign like that at any time. Now, yes someone could STILL do it, but that $200 price tag sure does act as a disincentive, plus it would be darned difficult covering their tracks with 20 unique payments.

So no, what surprises me the most, is that anyone that has a business sense could see this going any other way but the way it did. What was supposed to be paying the bills? What was supposed to be compensating me for the amount of time and effort I put into this? The occasional pat on the back and the comments "You done good, Bud, your site just saved me several thousand bucks from a mistake I was getting ready to make."? Banner ad revenue alone? Yeah, right. I could make more money hanging out in parking lots of bars collecting beer cans for the scrap aluminum value.......

But I guess what I loved most was those people who gnashed their teeth proclaiming that my decision was going to be the downfall of this site and bemoaned that fact. Then tried to make their prophesies self fulfilling by trying their damnedest to bad mouth me and this site. Worked just as well as that boycott against me, I guess.

Well, guess what? I pulled a rabbit out of the hat after all. This site is doing just fine, thank you very much, and by all appearances will continue to grow and prosper. We'll have 20,000 registered members here pretty shortly, and I have no idea what the limit is going to be before we just run out of interested people on the net. We are STILL averaging around 25 new registrations PER DAY here!

Heck, without this payment requirment in place, that Joe Blow could come in here post as ALL 20 people talking about negative experiences they have had with YOUR company. Before

I have no doubt in our ability to defend our company's practices in a public forum. Matter of fact, the way a person handles a thread will have as large an impact (if not larger) on how others view them as the original situation that brought rise to the situation. Frankly the freedom you allowed people previously gave them enough to do their own hangings, so I don't feel protection was needed.

I felt that the BOI was a service to the community in general. It allowed the small time buyer (one or two reptiles a year) a place to find out about others or get assistance in resolving a situation. It allowed those smaller businesses (the hobbyist who works out of the garage) to get the recognition for good deals. To allow those that don't have a huge list of contacts of who to deal with to avoid the mistakes those of us that have the list of contacts and have done the poor deals have experienced, because a bad deal hurts all of us in the industry. A disatisfied first time customer is one that has a good chance of leaving the hobby. This was the reason for our previous support.

As for how to turn the above mission statement into a financially rewarding project for you, there were many suggestions provided from a large group of people and no need to rehash that here once again.

Again, the point of Gregg's original inquiry was if there was a slanting of the level playing field that was on Fauna.

Call me crazy, but in my travels around the net, I have found that the best go to forum for straight up herp care and other related issues save the entertainment value of the drama (and I mean Drama baby!.....woo hoo!) is Kingsnake.com. Educate me Rich, how and or why would that sites owner keep up such a massive undertaking without charging people various higherarchy type fees to post?

Originally Posted by Ophis

Call me crazy, but in my travels around the net, I have found that the best go to forum for straight up herp care and other related issues save the entertainment value of the drama (and I mean Drama baby!.....woo hoo!) is Kingsnake.com. Educate me Rich, how and or why would that sites owner keep up such a massive undertaking without charging people various higherarchy type fees to post?

Someone educate this person for me, please.