[BlackTalon]

damn -- I forgot Jazzbass just retired as well!

[Jazzbass]

Yep, living the easy life off my Dorkiphus earnings. Once a month Charlie and I take our yacht, "Dorki II", out for some deep sea fishing and all night coke fueled partys with the cadre of models that follow us around because of our deep pockets and fancy sportscars.

Here's a picture from our last trip:

[Jazzbass]

Originally Posted by spazegun2213

So even on the boards I'm often on, i dont feel that i need to donate money for them to survive.

I'm glad you're in the minority on this; otherwise this BBS would not be here.

Originally Posted by spazegun2213

Its NOT the money from the forum goers that keeps a forum alive, its the fact that there ARE people that are on the forums. The more people the more the forum will stay around and profit.

This is unequivocally, indescribably, absolutely 100% WRONG.
Let's just say I know a little something about running a Porsche themed internet BBS.

Server space is not free. Especially when you have lots of users = lots o' bandwidth. Say a medium traffic site runs you $100/month in hosting fees. That's 70 paying members at $17 each to just pay for the fees. That doesn't cover the cost of paying someone to run the site, paying someone to update the UI and the BBS, paying someone to fix it when it crashes (because everyone gets mighty pissed when their BBS goes down for a few days). There are a lot of costs. I bet Rennlist’s costs are much, much higher than ours.

OK, so you get 100 or so people to cover the cost. Let me ask you – why should you benefit from an online community that you’ve openly acknowledged you won’t support? Dorkiphus and Rennlist are free, if you just want to browse, post some BS, whatever. However, Rennlist feels that they do offer services that put money in your pocket and think you should help bear the cost of running their business for access to these premium services. I agree with them.

An internet BBS site like Dorkiphus is just like any other club. If it’s just a few people, you can get together in someone's garage and there are no costs. However, when the club grows, you start incurring real costs. Saying a BBS that supports hundreds of people and has over 10,000 hits a day should be free is like saying PCA Potomac should just let me join for free, despite the costs of insurance, event organization costs, etc, just because ”I believe a car club should be free”. In both situations there are costs and someone has to pay.

So, just because a bunch of people go to a web site doesn’t mean that somehow magically pays for all the costs. Every time someone comes to Dorkiphus, it costs us money (by using up our bandwidth allowance). We pay this cost via donations (notice most of the guys here have “Sponsor” under their username). There are no ads here, so where else is this money supposed to come from? Your argument reminds me of the glory days of the pre-2000 dot com boom:

1. Start web site
2. Get lots of traffic
3. ????
4. Profit!!!

If you can explain #3 to me, I'm all ears

[BeerBurner]

Originally Posted by Cliff Claven

Maybe it would be more fair if 944 drivers should only have to pay 10 instead of the full 17....

Originally Posted by }{arlequin

oh, you mean the vw price vs. the porsche price?
makes sense to me

Nah, he's talking about the 944*, not the 911...

BB.

* The 944 would be Audi.

[Parenn911]

Oh BTW...

[Trak Ratt]

Originally Posted by Jazzbass

I'm glad you're in the minority on this; otherwise this BBS would not be here. This is unequivocally, indescribably, absolutely 100% WRONG. Let's just say I know a little something about running a Porsche themed internet BBS. I'm all ears

Nicely said, we are not worthy!!!!

[BlackTalon]

Chris -- when did you guys downsize the yacht? Is it time for another round of donations?


p.s. Did you see the pm I sent you last week? I was hoping to catch up with you at SP, but obviously that was not possible

[jbailey930]

I hope I can bring some perspective too that is relevant. Back in the day - 97-98 through 2001 or so Rennlist ads were free and open, just needed an account. There wasn't even a water cooler bbs there. At this time Rennlist was not disimilar to this here baord. There were less than 50 or so frequent posters then. John started the board much like Charlie and Geoff here to help others communicate on shared topics.

But you know in the internet you pay for impressions, clicks and conversions. You got to pay for the best leads...

Pelican was spawned out and supported by core members at REnnlist and by Johd D. They went down path Wayne supported more specific for the diy'er which helps sell parts.

Since the popularity, availability, access, etc exploded so did all those things Jazz mentioned. They started taking ads, bringing in sponsors, getting more servers, bandwidth, etc. Charging for memberships really is a use type tax but as a flat fee. I mean you got to pay for an ad in the Post, buy a space at Hershey or the local swap meet or you could post those parts for free on Craigslist. Are you a PCA member (sorry if this was posted, I didnt read the entire thread), if so you can post on the local and national boards?

Now having said all this, I have been on Rennlist maybe 4 times in the last 4 years. Maybe due to my mothballed 930 but thats another story. Good luck selling your parts

[Eli]

Good stuff...

[Parenn911]

Screw you Chris, you are the MAN. Who do you think you are, "Captain Ron"?