I have to agree with you. Status isn't terribly important to me - I would donate simply because I like this website, and a donation button might do surprisingly well. The issue I see with the subscription is it's a freaking subscription. I could only really see the regulars paying for one without a second thought. When I came here from elsewhere, I would have been immediately put off by the idea that it would eventually cost me money to use this site. Hubski is slow to grow and pull in users, so this may make that even worse. The regulars would all buy one, and then where would we be?
Sitting free from spammers and drive by goons? Don't get me wrong. I don't like the subscription idea either. I think people should give of their own free will. However, that financial barrier to entry does have one nice perk.The regulars would all buy one, and then where would we be?
But not just free from spammers and drive by goons, also free from new people that might grow our community and improve the conversation. People move on and don't stay in one place forever. At least some of our regulars will eventually move on for whatever reason. If we don't have enough new people replacing them, this place will stagnate and shrink. I don't want to see that. I, personally, wouldn't have stayed for a second after I had seen that it would eventually cost me money when I was a new user. Now that I've been here for a while, I'll gladly pay, but I wouldn't even do the 30 day trial if on day one I was told this was going to cost me.
Well, but it doesn't have to cost you. You're actually a perfect example. Your account is 33 days old and you say you would gladly pay, but you wouldn't have when you started. (Now, you may have lurked before - but lurking's free for everyone, still, I guess.) The thing about a 30 day trial is you don't have to opt in if, after 30 days - of participating - you decide you aren't into it. And yeah, you could still lurk and read content if you wanted. You just couldn't comment or post. Sure we could have people who just make new accounts every 29 days, too. But the committed users would do exactly that, commit.
But my point is that I wouldn't have stayed around this long if there was the threat of eventually having to pay. I never would have even finished making my account after I saw that. I would never have started hanging out here, I would have gone to one of the many other content aggregation and discussion sites.
Exactly. It's not the platform itself, but it's the threat of payment. Too many things are thrown at us "for only $19.99 a month" - perhaps it's a social thing, but people are immediately wary of something if they've gotta pay for it. Especially if it's something on the Internet.
>they can get somewhere else for free I really have to agree with this. Hubski is a great community, but it's still small and content trickles in pretty slowly. I'd like to spend more time here as the conversations, as far as I've seen, never derail into memes/puns/inside jokes, etc., but I can only check it once a day. If setting up an account came with a 30 day trial period, I wouldn't have bothered and I'd just have kept spending time on reddit/looking for free alternatives.
To expand on spam. An option, that I'm fairly sure would be unpopular with mk judging by his comments, would be rate limiting free accounts. It doesn't prevent free users from participating, if anything it encourages more thoughtfull posts and provides a better opportunity for people to learn who they would want to buy memberships for. It also encourages heavy users to suppot hubski.