Exciting Team News - April Fool Joke (1 Viewer)

[herrbasan]

A decent server to run a forum like this on will cost about 100$ a month. Depending on the number of user's who agree to pay, it might come down to less then 2$ per year per user.

About the forum, i'm not quite shure if this is a good move. The forum is there as a support-plattform, and it should be free. Why dont you ask for donations with a goal (1200$ for one year of service), i'm pretty sure that this sum would be easy to reach in a very short time. It would only take 120 users donating 10$ to have it free for all the rest.

The difference would be that you dont scare people away.

But since this is not much money for me, i'll go with it either way.

 

[erdtn]

$10 is ok for me. (even 10€ would).

But the point form cornhoulio should be taken in account.
-> people paying more for helping me out ? Doesn`t sound fair for me, too.
free months for received thanks ?

 

[thepahakurki]

A decent server to run a forum like this on will cost about 100$ a month. Depending on the number of user's who agree to pay, it might come down to less then 2$ per year per user.

About the forum, i'm not quite shure if this is a good move. The forum is there as a support-plattform, and it should be free. Why dont you ask for donations with a goal (1200$ for one year of service), i'm pretty sure that this sum would be easy to reach in a very short time. It would only take 120 users donating 10$ to have it free for all the rest.

The difference would be that you dont scare people away.

But since this is not much money for me, i'll go with it either way.

This!

There are quite a few private bit torrent trackers that stay alive because of a system that works like this.
There should be a donation progress bar on the front page and when the deadline starts to get closer, put a news message to the front page that the forums will be shut down if there aren't enough donations... I bet that would work really well!

BTW where can I donate?

 

[rekenaar]

free months for received thanks ?

There is the "constructive inputs" we were looking for. We will investigate the suggestion.

 

[Nuisance]

Adverts?

What are the analytics's numbers?

 

[JoeSmith]

nice one

 

[dcwp]

I'll be happy to pay the $10. I'll just consider it my annual subscription to MP itself, and what a good deal that would be!

I do think there are some compelling reasons not to do this though.

*The point that many people will effectively be paying for the right to offer support and those at the lower level are more likely to receive support is a good one.

*A subscription fee is likely to scare away new users. I certainly needed a lot of help in the beginning, including some that I got by starting my own threads. If I hadn't had that, there is no way that I would have gotten my sea-legs and become a devotée. And if there had been a fee, I would likely have gone to another product or given up altogether.

*For a lot of us, this might just result in directing money that we would donate to the broader project into the subscription. I have recently decided on a personal policy that whenever I spend money on hardware or software to upgrade my machine, I will donate a percentage of what I spent to Team-MediaPortal. I'd be likely to sit on my next donation (in a couple of weeks when I get new drives) and send it as a subscription instead. So from the donator base (those most likely to spring for a subscription fee), this might not result in any more dollars or euros coming in.

Not to say it's a bad idea, whatever it takes to keep this amazing forum running is worth it to me. But the idea of a pledge drive might be a good one. Set a target, state what it is intended to pay for, and watch the MP community (hopefully) come out in support.

Either way I'm in!

 

[hanoota]

First thing you could do is to decrease the traffic of the forum.
For example you could replace the search function by a googlescript or you could turn off functions like "how many people are viewing this thread" or smaller avatars eg... just small things but these are things that are producing traffic. Maybe a other forum-software would be more efficient (I'm not sure about that, but there are always possibilities to reduce traffic!)

At the moment i would not spend money for supporting the webpage. the webpage ist absolutely outdated and incomplete! But i would donate for keeping the forum alive!

I would prefer a appeal for funds. So people can get further on free support and are able to donate optional!

//shit xD 1st april

 

[happy]

personally i dont mind paying $10 or the equal amount in what ever currency, MP is a fantasic peace of software and has really helped me organise my media, but i dont think any restrictions should be placed upon the forum as new users will be put off asking questions and stuff 9/10 times its already been answered, prime example, "Can i have moving pictures twice" but thats not the point, i personally think, and most people will agree, a donation scheme should be setup, i mean some people would donate maybe $2, some of us $15, but if you take into consideration the amount of users and active forum members you could generate enough revenue to pay for the server etc.

also tarting the forum and website up could help, also other means or marketing, i havent seen like "Official Facebook" group setup, or if there is one should be promoted, now ive used MP, ill never go back to double clicking in explorer, and i would happily support you guys (no pun intended)

 

[DQ]

I agree with most of the above regarding scaring people away, penalising people who give most help etc. but I wouldn't mind helping keep MP going as I use it everyday. $10 really isn't that much and any money left over could be used to buy hardware for testing or give a small prize to the top skin/plugin developer every few months.

As a side note, I use adblock in Firefox but MP and similar sites are always set to let the ads show!