38 ms·

> it costs 10 bux to register an account, if you're a nuisance your account is banned and you pay 10bux to get back on. You've highlighted its biggest tradeoff

by jart 4y ago

> it costs 10 bux to register an account, if you're a nuisance your account is banned and you pay 10bux to get back on. You've highlighted its biggest tradeoff which is that it creates an economic incentive to ban people. The only way to make more money, is to have more rules and culture for ostracizing people. It would have been smarter of Something Awful (since that's the site we're talking about) to charge $4/month or something.

bluedino 4y ago
You used to have to really, really try to get banned or even probated on SA, now it doesn't take much at all.
- eropple 4y ago
  I can't remember the last time I saw a ban on SA that wasn't after a string of "stop trashing discussion" probes--sometimes in the dozens--or wasn't some flavor of FYAD-escapee bigot or death-threat-spewing weirdo. Even extremely tedious, thread-killing arguers will often be left alone unless a IK is ignored when they say "drop it" or whatever, and that's usually just a sixer. There are people who get really mad that they eat probes for, say, misgendering trans people, and I for one would like those people to be madder still. And preferably no longer on the site.
  - piaste 4y ago
    > I can't remember the last time I saw a ban on SA that wasn't after a string of "stop trashing discussion" probes--sometimes in the dozens--or wasn't some flavor of FYAD-escapee bigot or death-threat-spewing weirdo. Well, you made me curious so I looked at the leper's colony and looks like things haven't changed much: - Ban for offensive joke: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&postid=525156774&noseen=1 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&p... - Ditto: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&postid=525143105&noseen=1 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&p... - Ban for insulting a political movement: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&postid=524819272&noseen=1 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&p... That was just on the first page, mind you. There were some funny bans in there, though. "No, climate change does not justify pedophilia" and "Do not ever ask how to convert commercial drones to deploy grenades" are my favourites.
coldpie 4y ago
Nah, there are other ways to raise money. The forums have you pay for avatar changes (or to change others' avatars! which is a fun chunk of the forums culture), there are various upgrades like no-ads and unlocking private messaging and stuff. And the forums now have a Patreon, too.
paulmd 4y ago
> It would have been smarter of Something Awful (since that's the site we're talking about) to charge $4/month or something. The innovative thing off that model is driving the revenue off the misbehavers instead of good citizens. You don't want to have the shitters around even if they are paying $4/month, and you don't want to drive off good-faith users even if they're mediocre/hapless/etc. So run the site off the backs of the people you don't want to have around. People don't like paying monthly (this is even true of, say, app store revenue today) and if you apply recurring charges then when people don't think they're getting enough value they'll leave. You have a hard enough time on the user-acquisition side, why make it worse on the retention side by driving away the users who you're actually trying to keep? Billing good citizens works in some situations where you have some specific value that you provide to them - providing sales listings on classifieds boards inside interest-specific forums is a good example, since you are providing access to interested buyers, which is a value-add, same as ebay taking their fee - but just in terms of operating a forum, you aren't a big enough value-add that people are going to pay Netflix-level subscriptions to the Parrot-Ass Discussion Club. You need the users more than they need you at that point. But a one-time fee is viewed much differently by people. People will pay $5 for an app, they aren't going to pay you $5 a month for it though, or at least far fewer.

by jart 4y ago

bluedino 4y ago

You used to have to really, really try to get banned or even probated on SA, now it doesn't take much at all.

eropple 4y ago
I can't remember the last time I saw a ban on SA that wasn't after a string of "stop trashing discussion" probes--sometimes in the dozens--or wasn't some flavor of FYAD-escapee bigot or death-threat-spewing weirdo. Even extremely tedious, thread-killing arguers will often be left alone unless a IK is ignored when they say "drop it" or whatever, and that's usually just a sixer. There are people who get really mad that they eat probes for, say, misgendering trans people, and I for one would like those people to be madder still. And preferably no longer on the site.
- piaste 4y ago
  > I can't remember the last time I saw a ban on SA that wasn't after a string of "stop trashing discussion" probes--sometimes in the dozens--or wasn't some flavor of FYAD-escapee bigot or death-threat-spewing weirdo. Well, you made me curious so I looked at the leper's colony and looks like things haven't changed much: - Ban for offensive joke: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&postid=525156774&noseen=1 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&p... - Ditto: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&postid=525143105&noseen=1 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&p... - Ban for insulting a political movement: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&postid=524819272&noseen=1 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&p... That was just on the first page, mind you. There were some funny bans in there, though. "No, climate change does not justify pedophilia" and "Do not ever ask how to convert commercial drones to deploy grenades" are my favourites.

coldpie 4y ago

Nah, there are other ways to raise money. The forums have you pay for avatar changes (or to change others' avatars! which is a fun chunk of the forums culture), there are various upgrades like no-ads and unlocking private messaging and stuff. And the forums now have a Patreon, too.

paulmd 4y ago

> It would have been smarter of Something Awful (since that's the site we're talking about) to charge $4/month or something. The innovative thing off that model is driving the revenue off the misbehavers instead of good citizens. You don't want to have the shitters around even if they are paying $4/month, and you don't want to drive off good-faith users even if they're mediocre/hapless/etc. So run the site off the backs of the people you don't want to have around. People don't like paying monthly (this is even true of, say, app store revenue today) and if you apply recurring charges then when people don't think they're getting enough value they'll leave. You have a hard enough time on the user-acquisition side, why make it worse on the retention side by driving away the users who you're actually trying to keep? Billing good citizens works in some situations where you have some specific value that you provide to them - providing sales listings on classifieds boards inside interest-specific forums is a good example, since you are providing access to interested buyers, which is a value-add, same as ebay taking their fee - but just in terms of operating a forum, you aren't a big enough value-add that people are going to pay Netflix-level subscriptions to the Parrot-Ass Discussion Club. You need the users more than they need you at that point. But a one-time fee is viewed much differently by people. People will pay $5 for an app, they aren't going to pay you $5 a month for it though, or at least far fewer.