Sheesh, Miss a topic for a few days and spend hours catching up on 133 posts! I'm sure more will come in as I eat dinner and type my response.
There have been a lot of well-thought statements and a lot of heated comments. For those of you posting snarky comments, BEHAVE.
Advertising banners? Sure. No problem. I ignore them all anyway.
Clip art, corporate logos as enticement? Not for me. I design most of my own graphics.
Do I learn from this site? Yes and no. I'm an avid reader. I don't apply most responses to my business needs, but merely store facts learned as "mental notes."
$99/year? Not without full knowledge of what I am paying for. I have the same concerns that many have expressed. We want to know what we will be paying for BEFORE we pay for it.
Deleting people's prior posts from the new pay-only forum? While I fully stand behind any person requesting their posts be deleted if that's what they choose to do, if you do that, you just greatly decreased the value of the forum as a resource.
My suggestions? Leave the forum intact and free or at most $30/year as that is what drives many people to visit this site and contribute information. Offer products such as "How to maintain your <insert equipment here>" articles and supplier databases, file downloads etc as items people must pay for to access.
If the new format proves to do well and people are paying for the optional services as well as use the forum, then offer a "full service" option where they pay $100/year and can download anything they want.
Michel |