[Jazzbass]

Originally Posted by david riley

The old bull walks down the hill, opens the gate and gets all the cows! Utterly fantastic![/size][/font]

That's why I said - there's doesn't have to be just one winner!

[good hands]

now that thread was sheer entertainment.

that's why i ponied up the big money to join this funny farm.

What, i didn't have to pay ? what the f*ck

[swftiii]

Rennlist is not a for profit operation. John and Jen (Husband & Wife) have been running this site for a numbe of years in their spare time and money. There is no way that the measly $17 annual membership fee and couple of advertising $$$ pay for the operation and maintenance of that site. You cannot support a web site like Rennlist on 200-500 month - think about the bandwidth, think about the servers, think about the maintenance, think about the upgrades, etc. Technology and the operation of the Internet is not cheap - someone has to pay for it and why should that entire burden fall on one family or person when we all benefit from it.

The intent of the bylaws is to keep businesses from using the open forum as their marketing tool, but look at it this way - you would receive a significant marketing benefit for only the membership of $17. What would it cost to sell all the parts individually on eBay? What about advertising in the Washington Post - what does that cost you...

-Skip

[spazegun2213]

ok, ok, ok, I'm a computer guru and i keep getting this mythical quotes about prices from people saying what this and that would cost.

here is a board (about the same size as rennlist):
http://www.nancies.org/boards/

stats on the site:
$250, 2 servers (1 dedicated apache, 1 dedicated mysql), they have never gone over their bandwidth limits at all (2+ gigs of transfer last month)

This is comming from the owner of a company called Radiant Networks (He is a good friend of mine) and big-boards.com. So for 250 a month they get their own dual server layout. As much disk space as they want and a TON of transfer. Thats not bad at all, and the site has a LOT of traffic (like rennlist) so please dont say that it cannot be done.


edit
there is also people like www.dreamhost.com

[Vicegrip]

If John and Jen are not clearing some pocket $ from Rennlist then they are doing something wrong as the costs are only going down overall. More power to them and I hope they spend my $17 on something fun. Rennlist was around and stable when there was little else. From Rennlist I have learned well more that $17 worth of info and saved it a hunderd times over in money not spent unwisely. Same goes for this site too.

[edevinney]

I don't much care if John & Jen fly their Rennlist Gulfstream down to the private island where Chris keeps the yacht & the babes. They own the sites, they make the rules, I use the sites, I like the sites, I slide them some cash in return. If they make more $ than they spend, great! It's not wrong to have a business.

Further, cost and price are unrelated - I get value for my $ from these services regardless of what it costs to provide.

Spaze, that example you have is 3 grand per year just for hosting costs. You'd pay that bill out of the goodness of your heart, in addition to doing all the work to support a site, just because? Being a guru must pay really really well and leave you with lots of free time. Maybe I should look into it.

[spazegun2213]

Originally Posted by edevinney

Spaze, that example you have is 3 grand per year just for hosting costs. You'd pay that bill out of the goodness of your heart, in addition to doing all the work to support a site, just because? Being a guru must pay really really well and leave you with lots of free time. Maybe I should look into it.

if the site was worth it like rennlist.. yes i would. But then again i would probably find some way to have the sites fees covered in some way. And I say "guru" as a lot of people would not understand my job, so i say guru, keyboard jockey, etc. As for the pay, i own a 944... so you know where all the money goes

[Jazzbass]

Who's giving mythical quotes? You say this site runs on $250/month. OK. Look in the Dorki fundraising thread in Tech Discussions, where I state our costs are about $100/month. This = $1200 a year. Dorki has 125 paying sponsors, which comes out to a little less than $10 per person per year. We're smaller than Rennlist, our server costs are less and the price per person is also less. We also have over twice that number of lurkers and no-sponsors out there using the bandwidth we pay for. No big deal, because we can cover the costs and its worth it to us.

So I don't understand what your argument is here. This site costs $1200 a year to run. You show in your post that this is in the realm of reality. So what's the argument? There are no mandatory fees here. No adds. No one here wants adds. Google and Yahoo run their sites fueled by ad revenue, but - and the is a big but - we decided as a group that's not how this BBS was going to be funded.

If you go to Pelican, that site is free. Why? Its an add tool for Pelican. Good for them, I think its a great part of their business model. But, try saying something negative about Pelican there and you'll quickly find your post removed. Likewise if you mention a competitor. Our goal here was to have a forum where any vendor, repair shop, whatever could be discussed honestly and openly without fear of the admins deleting posts because it might scare the commercial sponsors away.

So, the $1200/year has to come from somewhere. We all donate (well, most of us do). If you don't want to donate, fine - no one says you have to. You can post your for sale adds here if you want, no one gives a shit. I do have to say I don't much care for your "I don't feel I have to support this site because I feel I'm entitled to use your resources for free attittude", but whatever.

I look at it like this - if you were to visit my house, I'd offer you a beer - free of charge. Come over two weeks later, another free beer. If you start coming over every day and drinking a 6 pack, well, I'm not going to be so happy about giving away stuff I pay for to you for free. It really comes down to manners, IMO. If you use and benefit from something that cost someone else moeny, you should chip in and pay. Everyone else here seems to get this concept...

If you hang around this group, you'll see people don't donate because they have to, but because they want to. Likewise, we help each other out for the same reasons. There is not set donation amount for members, and you can donate whenever you want. For those of us who use the BBS frequently, we donated a good bit of money. Hell - there are guys here with ZERO posts who have donated a considerable amount of cash to run this board.

Make all the "the internet should be free" statements you want, and claim your computer guru* status, and claim to know how we should be running our site. But I personally find your attitude of "I shouldn't be expected to pay because my mere presence here makes this site better" somewhat rude. I paid, and so did 124 other people. We decided that's how we were going to run it and did. Our money, our choice. If you don't like it, don't post.


*FWIW, most of the guys here who aren't laywers are IT pros and so called computer gurus, too (including myself). Probably at least 1/3 of the board.

[jbailey930]

{still on box/beating a dead horse/defending rennlist} spaze,

last i checked back in 2003 they had something like 14 server supporting the site. Also members get email account and 200mb of free space. Since then hw/bw costs are down but archiving and storage and activity is up. Probably a wash but I *think* Rennlist has more equipment/stuff than the examples you provided. Perhaps you can contact John D/admin at Rennlist, give him some suggetions to save them cash and maybe then get a free membership?

[mroberts]

Don't even get me started on the Dave Matthews Band.