On Mon, 13 Nov 2006 20:37:06 -0000, "Darren Griffin -
PocketGPSWorld.Com" <
[email protected]> wrote:
Hello Darren (I'll come back to that in a minute)
>ty wrote:
>> Dont get me wrong, I am a member of several clubs which require subs
>> and I pay them gladly, because (a) I get benefit from them, and (b)
>> there is a cost in providing what the club give me and I dont see that
>> they should pay those costs for me. But an online forum aint one of
>> them, and as I said above, its hardly in keeping with the idea of
>> expanding the vehicles popularity, is it?
>
>I'm a DOC member and find it worth every penny. Notwithstanding your views
>on supplier discounts etc the DOC is not juts an on-line forum.
As someone running a similar forum you'll be well aware that the
supplier discounts are as I said - in fact its quite likely that
suppliers offering discounted services to members via an ad on a forum
will actually be _paying_ for that, rather than _charging_.
>They
>organise many events which require club insurance, and membership gains you
>
which are of course chargeable for participants. BTW, I'm not the OP!
>associate access to the Wayfinder Green Lane Database which saves you money
>and would have provided the information you initially posted enquiring of.
>
Again, there would have been little or more likely no cost to the DOC
to have that associate facility for members
>Many of us are members of other forums and clubs such as GLASS, Mud-Club etc
>and I still find the combined knowledge on the DOC forum and the general
>helpfulness worth every penny.
>
As I said before, I too am a member of several on and off line clubs
too and am happy to pay membership fees where applicable, including
both those you mention and (gulp) the Pajero Owners Club (yep, okay, I
know...). The point is, _all_ those organisations provide an online
forum _without_ charges.
>I have no idea why your post was deleted but it's not a heavily moderated
>forum and many other non-members have posted queries and received responses
>so maybe this was a one off error?
Who knows?
Anyway, as I started... Hello Darren. What a bizarre coincidence that
you should pop up in this discussion. I've been a member of
pocketgpsworld forums for quite some time too, long before the
(in)famous decision to charge for the download. That's not what this
thread is about though, so we'll not go down that road save to say
that I kept quiet about it but had a great deal of sympathy with the
objectors to charging.
The coincidence to my way of thinking is that your position mirrors
that in your own forums - the _useful_ part of the DOC site is the
info given freely by the members, and the most useful part of pgpsw is
the camera database, similarly provided by the members. Although the
charge levied in your case is much smaller, the returns generated are
substantially larger - not to put too fine a point on it you made a
bit of a killing on the backs of site members and DOC _appear_ to be
doing likewise. Now I paid my two quid and I'm happy to continue doing
so as I think the benefit worthwhile, but if you're so sure that
charging for forum access is acceptable, why are your forums free?
