Annual Fee For Your Comment?

CaptainThunderbolt writes "Imagine this: you read an interesting story on Slashdot and you have a comment to make, so you login only to be greeted with a message saying you will need to pay a fee in order to make your comment. Seems ridiculous, doesn't it? Why on earth would you pay just to make a comment? Well, that is exactly how thousands of Aussies feel right now. AtomicMPC is an Australian PC Magazine with a fiercely loyal readership and an equally loyal online community. Yesterday it was announced that access to the most popular sections of the forum will soon attract a $20/year fee unless you are a magazine subscriber or a high-ranking forum member. The reaction to this announcement triggered the most vicious backlash I have ever witnessed as the website feedback forum went beserk. Users baulked at the idea of having to pay to access a community which the feel they are responsible for creating and I must say I understand how they feel. Is this a trend I should worry about? Will I one day have to pay a membership fee to access other popular forums?"

Comments

Let Capitalism run its course.

[Creepy Crawler]

After all, Capitalism is the best, right?

Well, after you run off every worthwile user who donates their time making content, well...

I wonder how much it would cost if Slashdot paid hundreds of worthwhile scientific people to make +4 and +5 comments?

Re:Let Capitalism run its course.

[techno-vampire]

Libratarians like to say that the Marketplace will take care of it. This is a good place to let it do exactly that. Don't pay, don't comment, don't contribute. Go someplace else and watch the site wither on the vine.

Re:Let Capitalism run its course.

[Zontar The Mindless]

...after you run off every worthwile user who donates their time making content...

This is similar to what happened at Builder Buzz back in the day. CNET decided to take the "our site, our content" bit to extremes. The biggest contributors to the discussions didn't like the idea of CNET charging people for 2-3 years' worth of content that they'd donated for free, with the understanding that others would be able to make use of it for free, and left. This in spite of the fact that many of these folks (including me) were offered free subscriptions.

sign me, "Former Builder Buzz Community Leader"

(BTW, if you've ever wondered what happened to the original Builder Buzz crowd, a number of us hang out here now. Feel free to drop by sometime and say Hey.)

Re:Let Capitalism run its course.

[FLEB]

After all, Capitalism is the best, right?

Yep. People will buy elsewhere when a seller does something dumb like this.

Re:Let Capitalism run its course.

[NetSettler]

Don't pay, don't comment, don't contribute. Go someplace else and watch the site wither on the vine.

The market only responds to the high-order bit, where the decision about which bit is highest-order is also decided by the market.

Suppose you have a great Chinese restaurant near your house. The food is world-class. The owner is nice. But the service is consistently slower than you wish. You can't simply stop going there and expect a new one, just like it, to pop up to compete. The market doesn't work that way. It can't discriminate why you are failing to send it money. Especially if you're eating Indian food at the restaurant next door in the interim, in which case it will conclude you have stopped liking Chinese, and you're more likely to get two Indian food restaurants than an Indian and a punctual Chinese one.

It's common in US Presidential elections for newly elected Presidents to claim, as our latest president did, that The People actively wanted the whole platform, when in fact mostly all a vote ever shows is that "for some reason(s), you thought this president was better (or less bad) than the other." It certainly does mean "for all reasons" nor does it help you discover for which reason(s).

Salon Magazine tried the same thing as is being complained about here quite a while back. They wanted to charge people for posting on TableTalk , their online forum, but continue to allow people to read for free. I was incensed. Charge the content producers and let the users get things for free? As a sensible poster, I stopped posting and went away. Salon continued, though, in spite of that.

What's hilarious to me about complaining about such matters here is that Slashdot is a haven of free software buffs--that is, people who champion the idea that people should pay to produce stuff (you do have to eat while you code) but you shouldn't have to pay to use stuff (you don't pay for the result of all that free software that it cost someone to produce).

Perhaps the human mind is some sort of capitalist market, deciding what rationales are most and least important based on internal market forces that we can only barely understand because we see only that same, elusive, high order bit of outcome. Maybe understanding the process from the outcome is more than we should expect...

Re:Let Capitalism run its course.

[j-turkey]

You greatly underestimate the stupidity of the average capitalist consumer.

Is it stupidity, or they just value the service more than you and are willing to go through what you're not? Are the companies greedy, or just trying to turn a buck? Have you looked at their SEC filings to see how much they're really making? Don't they have a right to charge whatever they want, since they've invested billions in their infrastructure, or do you just deserve the service for free?

Wireless companies are a little more willing to beat up on individual consumers than businesses. However, in order the subsidize their phones, they have to lock consumers into a contract. Terminating your contract early without cause is a breach of contract. Otherwise, providers would either have to charge an insane amount of money for the phones, or simply lose gobs of money on them. Since they're a business, they won't jsut eat those dollars and not turn a profit. Besides, most will allow you to go contract-free, but you won't qualify for discounted phones or their most aggressive rates. Some providers have business level agreements (for multiple phones) where contracts aren't required (like Nextel and Cingular/ATTWS). Others have these requirements. That's where capitalism comes into play -- you have a choice, and if you don't like your choices and don't want to play, you don't have to.

Oh dear

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an entirely original occurence, a trend like this would be Something Awful.

*cough*

fees happen

[yagu]

I, for one (and hopefully not the only), would be more than willing to pay a fee for something I find useful... Just because it started out free isn't a guarantee it stays free.

And, juxtaposed with other things in my life.... $13/mo for tivo subscription (and don't flame me about mythtv.... time invested is worth money, too), $600 insurance/year to drive my car, $30/mo for ISP access, $30/mo for satellite TV.... I only marvel so many things have been so free for so long. So, in context with other things I pay for, I'd happily pay $20/yr for something like the right to do this on slashdot. Not saying it should happen, but sometimes things just gotta be paid for!

I may not WANT to pay for yet another "thingy", but it's a system of choice, and if the sum total of things I want and their costs exceeds my budget, I selectively cull thingies until equilibrium is re-established. It's the way the market works.

And, for the record, I sometimes fear the OSS/(and linux) community hurts their cause by their sometimes overly militant won't pay for anything mantra. I once asked a commercial vendor of a really good product if they'd consider vending a linux version.... they responded they were too small of a shop and really couldn't afford to create a version for a community that didn't want to pay for their product. Not speaking for the "community" I did tell that company I thought there may be more of a paying public out there in the linux world (but I really don't know). ~

Re:fees happen

[applef00]

I don't know if I'm alone it this, but I don't find Slashdot useful in the least. I mean, this isn't flamebait, but that's probably what it's going to be seen as. Slashdot is fun, but I mean, really. The news that's posted here is inherently culled from other sites. Maybe it takes a little longer for me to find the tech news I need, but the day Slashdot starts charging me to read/post is the day I stop reading/posting. The fact is that most things that start off free are free for a reason: nobody wants to pay for them. Looking at ads is one thing. Shelling $20 a month is another. Like I said, not flamebait. But go ahead and mod me down if you want.

Re:fees happen

[makomk]

You pay a monthly fee for telephone service, even though YOU provide the content of the conversations. Get over it.

The last time I looked, telecos didn't publicly broadcast the contents of your phone conversations and make money on selling advertising spaces in the broadcast. At least, I'd hope not.

Re:fees happen

[blincoln]

You pay a monthly fee for telephone service, even though YOU provide the content of the conversations.

The content of phone conversations has no value to the carrier.

For many types of forum, the things that members post in them are the entirety of the value. Imagine Slashdot without the discussions. Would it be profitable at all?

What about the forums for Eidos Interactive? They are a meeting place for fans of their games, sure. Some of us sometimes also provide unofficial support for one game or another. That is valuable to Eidos because it builds goodwill towards their products and saves them money on support staff.

That having been said, I think getting upset about this is stupid and futile. It's the owner's site, they can do whatever they want with it. If my friends and I go to a bar every day for five years, does that mean the owner owes us something extra? Does it mean that we should have a say if she wants to change it from industrial music to all Van Halen all the time? No, it means we should go somewhere else.

The **only** reason I can see people having a legitimate complaint is with something like GameFAQs, which is just a collection of docs people have written about games and submitted. But you know what? If those people really wanted to have complete control, they should have posted them on their own website.

SomethingAwful proves it works

[fahrvergnugen]

The SomethingAwful forums charge $10 to join, $10 for access to premium features, and other various small fees for things like custom smilies, titles (for yourself and others), etc. It is ruled with an iron fist, and the banhammer falls with startling regularity.

It's also one of the best, most vibrant communities on the internet. Cash is an effective gatekeeper.

(I think the secret to SA's success is that the fees are one-time, as opposed to subscription-based. It creates a sense of ownership and value. I bought an account, not just a subscription)

Re:SomethingAwful proves it works

[yog]

Gee, that sounds rather awful. You have to pay a one time nonrefundable $10 fee, and they reserve the right to ban you from future participation for something as trivial as telling an "old" joke? No thanks; I'll spend my money elsewhere. I'm not quite that desperate for community.

Actually there are plenty of specialty forums out there that are reasonably well moderated and free of idiots. Slashdot does seem to have a large number of idiots but the moderation system more or less keeps them out of the mainstream. The problem with Slashdot is that they let idiots become moderators, and then perfectly innocent comments get modded down just because the moderator disagreed with the poster. So I tend to read at -1 to make sure I don't miss a relevant comment.

I don't think this is a good trend at all. These web sites need to have a real service to offer. If it's a user-contributed knowledge base then they are biting the hand that feeds them. When the Motley Fool forum (www.fool.com) went private, I stopped reading it. It didn't seem right to me that after contributing my comments for a couple of years, some of which received high ratings and helped stimulate a few interesting discussions, I suddenly had to pay, on top of having to wade past banner ads and such. Sure, it's a fairly high quality forum, but I already waste too much time online; why should I add yet another subscription fee to my load so I'll feel even more guilty if I don't use it every day?

I pay for services that seem like a good cause, such as sourceforge.net and lwn.net, and for excellent content providers such as the Wall Street Journal online (wsj.com). I don't subscribe to Slashdot because, oddly enough, I like to see the ads.

Re:Umm, Something Awful?

[John_Booty]

I recently went through this at my own site, but we faired much better because we handled it with a lot more class than the owners of this Australian site. The result was a member community that has been exceptionally supportive and just a wonderful group of people.

"The SA forums have been doing this for years, and you know what? They're popular as hell"

I'd go so far as to say they're popular because of the small fee, not in spite of it. The big problem with webforums is the amount of people who just like to make trouble. When people have to pay for something, no matter how small the fee, they tend to act a little more responsibly. Most people aren't going to pay $5 just to act like an ass and see how quickly they can get banned. When you have a lot of "troublemakers", it overworks your mods and starts to drive away the good forum members. You can ban somebody but there's *nothing* preventing them from signing back up with another IP address!

The downside is that a fee definitely will reduce the amount of new members you get and some members will definitely feel indignent about having to pay for something they've been using for free. (And I don't blame them!)

At the site I run, we started out free, but I always made it clear the members were beta testers and that the site would be for-pay someday as opposed to suddenly going pay without warning. About three months ago we made the transition to a for-pay site. There was some grumbling (which I totally understand) but overall the atmosphere was highly supportive. To ease the transition, we've done the following:

* Early site members had the chance to earn free memberships if they completed all of the beta testing requirements
* This was unintentional, but the beta testing phase stretched on about six months longer than initially planned, so everybody basically got a free six months anyway :P
* Perks for paid members such as giveaways
* Parts of the forums are still accessible for free
* Free members can earn paid memberships by doing things like printing up flyers, etc.
* Invite system allows paid members to give invites to their friends, entitling their friends to enjoy paid memberships without paying anything

All in all, I've probably given out 2x as many free memberships as have been paid for. I'm 100% okay with that because it's made the site better and that increases the number of people who want to by memberships in the long run. It's still an experiment in progress but it's been going well...

Re:So?

[jonfelder]

What if ad revenue doesn't pay for the site? Several years ago ad revenue may have been enough to pay for the site. Ad rates have dropped a lot since then and clickthrough rates are steadily decreasing as adblocking technology becomes more widespread. Also, as the forums become more popular the amount of resources required to maintain them grows. Finally, I imagine that several years ago a higher percentage of forum users subscribed to the magazine.

Why shouldn't they charge? Just because people made the forums great, doesn't mean the people who host the forums should lose money. $20/yr isn't so much to pay if you've made lots of friends there. Perhaps if they think the forum are so great, they should subscribe to the magazine and attempt to ensure the forums can be sustained.

I think it's a crock that people pay nothing for a service and then feel they have been cheated because they used it for free and now have to pay.

Oh, and their "payment" for contributing to the forums and making them great was the enjoyment they got from reading and posting.

It's not even just a matter of money

[Moraelin]

I remember briefly being a coder on a MUD. The owner was a very loud mouthed advocate of OSS and GPL, and I figured that, hey, it's just as good a project as any to take part in. And I actually wanted to give something back to the community.

In hindsight, I should have been suspicious of anyone who plays the GPL champion but doesn't actually have CVS access or released any code in years. But, still, I figured it must at least be a community among those donating the content, if not open to the world at large.

It turned out that behind the scene it wasn't even vaguely near being either OSS or a "community", or was just becoming something else. The "waah, others are copying our content" paranoia had struck big time, after someone had discovered a few of their rooms on another MUD. Think a Stalin officer purges class paranoia to find which spy is giving content away to others. You were treated like a thief until proven innocent... and there was no way to be proven innocent.

The real ridiculous part is that room descriptions and such were stuff that you didn't even have to be a coder or a builder/wizard/whatever-you-call-it to see. Any player could just bloody well turn on logging in their MUD client and have the descriptions for whole areas. But try telling that to the owners.

I suddenly needed to go through a ridiculous bureaucracy just to get the files I needed to do my work.

Worse yet, others needed to go through that bureaucracy to see _my_ code. They actually didn't even bother any more. I couldn't shake the feeling that it's like donating code to Microsoft, just for the sake of being locked by someone in a vault and called _their_ property.

I left and never looked back.

Though I suppose the damage had been done. Around that point is where "OSS" and "GPL" stopped being magic words for me. Was a bit of a rude awakening at the reality that some people will pay all the lip service in the world, but only because they like having a free ("as in beer") OS on their server. Ask for access to _their_ code, though, or in this case to code that they just took from others anyway, and it's suddenly "Noo, you can't take my preciouss."

Re:MacFixIt

[ramblin billy]

what if you had to pay a fee to get a newspaper to print your letter to the editor? And, then the newspaper still charged to get reprints of that letter and the op-ed pages?

Do you often write letters to newspapers to which you don't subscribe? Maybe you should just consider that you are paying to read other people's comments. And newspapers do sell your letters - along with everything else in that issue. If the site can't find a way to make enough money to pay for itself with ads I guess it should just shut down. I don't know about you, but I really don't want newspaper level ad density on online forums. Popups are the online equivilent of newspaper inserts, do you think that would be a good way for the "ad people" to "figure out how to get sponsers to support the forums"? Most places people meet have some sort of entry cost involved - be it cover charge, admission fee, taxes, or just the cost of a beer to sit at the bar. Try going down to your local office supply store and telling them you deserve free paper and pens because you're going to put up some valuable 'content'. Try plastering some of that content up on the wall at your local mall. I'm sure you can imagine the form 'moderation' would take. You know, if you place so much value on your comments, maybe others would also. Then you can become a columnist and get paid for your views. You could try it yourself but I doubt your revenues would cover the bandwidth. Don't forget though that every bite of your reader's comments is going to cost a little for storage. Do you really believe that 80% of the content in most forums has value to anyone besides its author? On /. for every good post there are 4 or 5 that don't make sense, repeat other posts, or are just plain idiotic. Hell I post idiotic comments for a laugh from time to time - they SHOULD make me pay for some of them.

billy - the checks in the mail