fluffysquid;86589 said:
That's an unfortunate suggestion. I've been around here for a few years now, havent justified to myself to fork up any dough, though. I'm a college student... I make minimum wage at the NRCC.
When the supporter's area was started the push was to allow people to discuss "off topic." Now it seems to be barring people from discussing or seeing discussion of something that simply got posted in the pay-to-post area first. I suppose it's a good marketing tool to convince people to pony up.
I found that squid v. sailboat article just now on a sailing website and was checking to see if someone already posted it here... apparently they sure have!! twice.
edit: a Caveat: The rambling opinions below are 100% my own, and I'm not trying to speak officially as TONMO staff or anything, although my opinions have, of course, been influenced by discussions among the staff.
Whether Tony's post was, er, lacking tact or not, I think this raises a complex issue. I think that the value of the TONMO community for its participants should be incentive for people to make some sort of contribution, monetary or otherwise, to the community, and I guess the problem is that there hasn't been enough incentive there. I tend to think that Tony shouldn't be forced to bankroll TONMO with his own money, blood, sweat, and tears. I actually agree with you that the current "supporter" business has a number of problems, but I don't know what should be done to improve the situation.
I listen to NPR a lot, and gladly give money to support them, but I also absolutely detest their pledge drives. But in their case, all content is completely accessible, but they have to (or choose to) have these 1-2 week blocks of horrible, invasive, high-pressure guilt trip fund raising in order to break even as a non-profit.
I find the "paid supporters get special treats" thing kind of repugnant, too, but I'm not sure what other models could do better. I guess subtle appeals for donations haven't worked in practice. Tony's thinking, as I understand it, is that having a separate "premium ceph content" section is a lot more value-added than just "if you pay, you can discuss non-ceph things with the other TONMO people," which, although it is fun, isn't really in the spirit of the site.
I've been involved with some groups that use "pay what you can afford" donations, in the sense of "we're asking you to chip in what you feel is right for you, and to use your own knowledge of how much value you get vs. how much money you have" somehow. This works for some people, but a lot of people will take advantage of this, and it seems like our culture is moving in a direction where a larger portion of the population just says "I work hard for my money, why should I have to pay anything?" and use that to justify it. Tony's not some mega-corporation, so as far as I know he's not trying to make a profit, he's just trying to use the supporters fees and advertising to keep TONMO running and improve it for us all. In fact, there's been some vague discussion that if TONMO makes some sort of profit it could be given back to the community in terms of scholarships, grants, or some other support for ceph researchers.
Anyway, I gather that the "premium ceph content" stuff rubs you the wrong way, so I flip it back to you: if we open up all (or most) of that content, what do we do instead to encourage people to support the site? Or, do we keep a "private" area, but offer alternatives, like a lower supporters fee for college students (is that fair to ceph-keepers who have minimum-wage jobs, though?) or some sort of sliding scale, or maybe a rule that if someone writes an article or something that they get the fee waived or reduced?
In all fairness, I suspect that a reason why Tony pushed the "premium discussion" for this post is that there is really not enough "premium ceph" stuff there so far. I think some researchers see it as useful to have a space where their tentative stuff is only visible to committed TONMOers, and not visible to google to be in search engines, but for the most part the best ceph-related discussions are here on the outside, although for me at least I'm hooked on the off-topic stuff, because the supporters and staff are really a fun bunch! Which reminds me, I promised myself when Tony asked me to join the staff that I'd keep making donations since I don't have to pay the supporters fee, and I'm probably overdue for one.
Hypothetically, if I were to ask you to assess the value you see in TONMO relative to your resources, can you put some sort of number on it? Is it worth anything to you, whether that be in money or some sort of time/effort/work contribution, or is it just something that's nice that it exists, but if it died for lack of funding you'd just shrug and say "oh, well." Future value may be worth something, too; when you're a well funded famous teuthologist, you could use a small fraction of the funds you use to send students to CIAC to help out TONMO. Or, perhaps, you could convince the NRCC to support TONMO, and in exchange all NRCC affiliates should get access to the supporters section... I dunno.