Re : "I do not have permission to view photos"

[Mike Kreinhop]

The real motive behind the phased removal of priviledges seems to be to get peoples' attention.

I am speculating, but there could be another reason for the current policy of who can view images, and it relates to bandwidth. Keith uses his own server and pays for the bandwidth we consume, and since all images uploaded to the SMC server must be downloaded each time they are viewed, this costs Keith. Restricting the viewing, and thus the downloading, reduces the bandwidth requirement. But I could be wrong.

This does not appear to be the case for images hosted externally, since the user's computer fetches the image from the external hosting site and there is no burden on the SMC server.

As a test, I am adding two images to this post. The first is from my external hosting site and the second is one I uploaded to the SMC server.

Everyone should be able to see this image of a car:




Only paying members should be able to see this image of a truck:

Ranger-1.jpeg

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Mike, I'll confirm I can see both.

[Lee Schierer]

I am speculating, but there could be another reason for the current policy of who can view images, and it relates to bandwidth. Keith uses his own server and pays for the bandwidth we consume, and since all images uploaded to the SMC server must be downloaded each time they are viewed, this costs Keith. Restricting the viewing, and thus the downloading, reduces the bandwidth requirement. But I could be wrong.

This does not appear to be the case for images hosted externally, since the user's computer fetches the image from the external hosting site and there is no burden on the SMC server.

As a test, I am adding two images to this post. The first is from my external hosting site and the second is one I uploaded to the SMC server.

Everyone should be able to see this image of a car:




Only paying members should be able to see this image of a truck:

Ranger-1.jpeg

The problem with externally linked photos is the host site can go belly up or pay to play and the photos disappear, just like they did for Photobucket.

Guys, the change is open to polite discussion and opinions are valued. Name calling and things of that sort don't help anything, so please keep it polite.

How many of you that are complaining about the $6.00 contributor fee are running ad blockers? The ads here are far from intrusive, yet they pay for the site. I have my ads turned on and I even click on them from time to time just to create a hit. If the complainers all did that then maybe the bills could be paid without fees.

[Greg R Bradley]

Mike, I'll confirm I can see both.

And I'll confirm I can only see the first. The reason why is that I hate PayPal so much that I just have a tough time using it for anything so just never get to it. So this is what it took to force me to use the evil PayPal.
Edit: and now that I've finally been force to use PayPal, I can see the second.

[Mike Kreinhop]

The problem with externally linked photos is the host site can go belly up or pay to play and the photos disappear, just like they did for Photobucket.

True, and I use the free Flickr and paid Smugmug for my image hosting. The image of the car is from my Smugmug site, and the only way it will go away is if I go belly up and stop paying the annual hosting fee. This is a legacy from my photography days.

The ads here are far from intrusive, yet they pay for the site. I have my ads turned on and I even click on them from time to time just to create a hit.

I whitelisted the SMC in my adblocker and Ghostery, and also opted to see the ads, even though they don't benefit me at all.

[Lee Schierer]

And I'll confirm I can only see the first. The reason why is that I hate PayPal so much that I just have a tough time using it for anything so just never get to it. So this is what it took to force me to use the evil PayPal.
Edit: and now that I've finally been force to use PayPal, I can see the second.

You can also send a paper check, then SMC gets all the money with no fees.

[Greg R Bradley]

You can also send a paper check, then SMC gets all the money with no fees.

Sure that makes sense in general, particularly with the older crowd here.

Checks are almost obsolete and just a few years from not existing at all. Probably won't even be legal.
I've got a floor standing laser printer with 6 bins for printing checks out of various accounts in my AP department. One business has about 20 packs of 100 left over from the last order of 10,000 when we used to generate about 80 a week. I'll probably get to open one pack of 100 before checks are dead. Down from 80 a week out of that bin to 1-2 and falling fast.

[Patrick Walsh]

Let me make clear I’m not complaining about rating with $6. I could care less about that. I’m just suggesting and making the argument restrictions adding to a falloff in quality content and that there is a price to pay for everything.

We all have choices to make and our own personal reasons for those choices.

Hear me loud and clear I’m not complaining.

As of now this place is still entertaining to me. Although I admit the lack of quality content has me loosing interest quickly. But I’m still here and happy to pay pretty much whatever is asked within reason.

I just hope that my concerns rattle the administration enough and hope that my saying something will inspire others whom feel the same to speak up and that there may be power in numbers and this strategy reconsidered.

I’m not suggesting I’m right, I’m probably wrong and there is probably way more going on here that’s many of us even understand. At the end of the day it’s a forum and if it’s here and worth visiting great, if not probably better to spend less time behind the computer and more building..

[Ken Fitzgerald]

One last time. There are 2 owners, Keith and Jackie. They have already sacrificed one business to bankruptcy trying to keep SMC flowing. It didn't work due to rising costs. When it looked like the Creek was going to dry up, a former Moderator came with the paid membership idea and thus started the "Contributor" /"Member" labels and donations. That didn't pay all the expenses and thus came the advertising. The decrease in advertising dollars isn't just at SMC but across the internet because of ad-blocking software. Keith has mulled over the many options and chose what has been discussed to the point of nausea.

At the same time, the labor that Keith, Jackie, and the volunteer, unpaid Moderators generously give to maintain the friendly atmosphere here at SMC is taken for granted by too many members. The servers are located in Keith's shop a short distance behind his rural home. Paying $6 annually not only helps pay the bills but also is a form of acknowledgment of the fruits of their joint labor.

In the end, only 2 people have any financial or legal liability involved with the Creek, Keith and Jackie.

I'd suggest that nobody has a right to publicly challenge or berate Keith for the decision that is being made since nobody else has the responsibilities or liabilities. It's takes no commitment or knowledge to be critical of someone's decision.

[Mark Beall]

The decrease in advertising dollars isn't just at SMC but across the internet because of ad-blocking software. Keith has mulled over the many options and chose what has been discussed to the point of nausea.

Don't tell google that: Google's Q4 ad revenue rises 20% https://www.mobilemarketer.com/news/...erodes/547666/ - a selected quote from that “The worldwide digital ad market was forecast to grow about 18% to $273.3 billion last year”

Maybe you’re just doing it wrong. I distinctly remember Keith writing that he could use and ad service that would make him lots of money, but he thought it would be ugly. (I don’t really feel motivated enough to search for that thread, it was less than a year ago, I think it may have been deleted - not because he said that, but because it became a not very civil thread). I would just say that ugly ads with the option to turn them off (if you pay), are actually quite a good idea.

For those people that think everything should be free - just realize that something being free usually means that you are the product being sold (information about you is sold to fund what you get for free). You have to decide if you’re ok with that.

[Dan Friedrichs]

Let me make clear I’m not complaining about rating with $6. I could care less about that. I’m just suggesting and making the argument restrictions adding to a falloff in quality content and that there is a price to pay for everything.

Well said. Non-contributor members provide lots of content, the objective value of which certainly exceeds $6. I worry that this pay-to-play will just scare away the folks who are providing (for free) the content. The problem isn't lack of Contributors - it's the lack of a way to monetize this valuable content being provided for free by members.

• Adblockers work by hiding domains associated with services which serve ads. One option to show ads and not have them blocked is to just not use those services. Approach potential advertisers directly, say "I've got 10k page views per day - would you pay $x to display an ad?" and just host the picture comprising the ad directly on SMC. It's not as easy as using Google AdSense (or some similar service), but it's completely blocker-proof. I believe this is how many more specialized blogs continue to serve advertisements, today.
• Many sites (Canadian Woodworking, NBC News, others) have popups which require disabling adblockers to continue. That could be implemented. Obviously some risk it stops being workable in the future, but could dramatically increase ad views, now.
• On Reddit, people pay real money to give each other virtual "coins" which unlock additional features. I know similar has been attempted on SMC with access to sub-forums like the Lumberyard, and for entry into FreeStuff drawings, but that benefits oneself - there is an interesting different angle to giving it to others. For instance, I love reading Mr. Patrick Walsh's thread on his Martin restoration - he has poured hours upon hours into documenting that for our benefit. If I could press a "Like" button on his posts, debit my account by ~$1, and have 50c go to him and 50c go to SMC, I certainly would. It would incentivize quality content creation AND support SMC costs. (This is just a back of the napkin example - my point is that people are willingly giving money to a $2B private company like Reddit...I imagine they would do the same, here, with the right incentives)
• Simply being more clear about the impact of adblockers would help. Another site I visit has a red blinking banner at the top that says "We're a non profit and adblockers are starving us! Please turn yours off!". So I did. I had no idea. I suspect most people don't.
• Transparency about costs and revenues may drive philanthropic funding. I give to Wikipedia because I understand who they are, what they're doing, how much they raise, how close they are to their goals, etc. I have no idea if SMC is a non-profit, even (not that it needs to be), what the costs are, what they fund, etc. If Keith doesn't desire to share that, I totally understand - just suggesting that this may be an option, given the right circumstances.

I just list these ideas to show that there are options. I don't know much about the operations behind this site, but I'm a smart guy, and my intuition is that the $6 fee will simultaneously be the death of the site and insufficient to generate any real revenue. On the other hand, if the site ownership just doesn't want the hassle, wants SMC to condense into a smaller group of like-minded folks, etc - well, that would be sad, but I'd understand.

[Greg R Bradley]

I am sure Keith is getting a lot of grief over any changes. Nobody likes change, especially old people like us and this includes me. Almost all of us are old so we are set in our ways and resistant to change. We are not a good market for many advertisers. We are a lot more careful with our expenditures. Some of this should be PAINFULLY obvious with endless whining about SIX. BUCKS. Really? Even threads started about being proud to be a cheapskate even though most of those people are spending more being cheap than if they were reasonable in their spending.
However, there are lots of other forums that seem to be doing OK selling advertising as their major source of revenue. Perhaps they are that different or have a different user group where ad revenue is better.
Some of the numbers don't seem to make sense. Huge numbers of non registered visits? Are these just people looking at the results of an internet search or are they taking up serious bandwidth? Are there really SO few people that regularly use the site but won't pay $6 to do so?
Making it necessary to pay $6 to view pictures would seem to have been a good first step. Its sad that people didn't read the announcements and were confused so this thread was started but that is reality. I'm assuming this is making a big difference in contributions. Next step would be to have to pay the $6 to post. Perhaps that would make another big difference.

I think eliminating the ability to view the forum at all without paying will be a HUGE detriment and will result in a decline. However, perhaps the costs of non registered viewing really is that high. Not streaming pictures to them should result in a huge reduction of bandwidth but the server still needs to process the large number of connections.

[Frederick Skelly]

* Most of us understand that Keith's not "going private" because he wants to. He's fighting to keep the site alive - literally keep the lights on. To me, this is this is like a medical triage situation - we must save the site first, and handle the side effects of what we did to save it afterwards.

* Membership loss is one side effect. Lack of new blood is definitely going to be another. That is the one that worries me the most - far more than paying a subscription fee. (I found this place via google and got hooked.) And there will be other side effects we havent thought of yet.

* Keith's looked at the options he feels are credible and going Subscriber-only is the best fit in his view as Proprietor. By "credible", I mean the option is affordable to him and within what he is willing to do. From what he's already said, he's not really seeking more ideas. His son-in-law is a professor of computer science and has presumably helped him weigh what he wants to do. From what I can tell, "this here's a done deal".

Each person will stay or not as they see fit. There will be impacts. We'll either work through them or we won't. But we gotta try.

[Harold Balzonia]

Well said. Non-contributor members provide lots of content, the objective value of which certainly exceeds $6. I worry that this pay-to-play will just scare away the folks who are providing (for free) the content. The problem isn't lack of Contributors - it's the lack of a way to monetize this valuable content being provided for free by members.

• Adblockers work by hiding domains associated with services which serve ads. One option to show ads and not have them blocked is to just not use those services. Approach potential advertisers directly, say "I've got 10k page views per day - would you pay $x to display an ad?" and just host the picture comprising the ad directly on SMC. It's not as easy as using Google AdSense (or some similar service), but it's completely blocker-proof. I believe this is how many more specialized blogs continue to serve advertisements, today.
• Many sites (Canadian Woodworking, NBC News, others) have popups which require disabling adblockers to continue. That could be implemented. Obviously some risk it stops being workable in the future, but could dramatically increase ad views, now.
• On Reddit, people pay real money to give each other virtual "coins" which unlock additional features. I know similar has been attempted on SMC with access to sub-forums like the Lumberyard, and for entry into FreeStuff drawings, but that benefits oneself - there is an interesting different angle to giving it to others. For instance, I love reading Mr. Patrick Walsh's thread on his Martin restoration - he has poured hours upon hours into documenting that for our benefit. If I could press a "Like" button on his posts, debit my account by ~$1, and have 50c go to him and 50c go to SMC, I certainly would. It would incentivize quality content creation AND support SMC costs. (This is just a back of the napkin example - my point is that people are willingly giving money to a $2B private company like Reddit...I imagine they would do the same, here, with the right incentives)
• Simply being more clear about the impact of adblockers would help. Another site I visit has a red blinking banner at the top that says "We're a non profit and adblockers are starving us! Please turn yours off!". So I did. I had no idea. I suspect most people don't.
• Transparency about costs and revenues may drive philanthropic funding. I give to Wikipedia because I understand who they are, what they're doing, how much they raise, how close they are to their goals, etc. I have no idea if SMC is a non-profit, even (not that it needs to be), what the costs are, what they fund, etc. If Keith doesn't desire to share that, I totally understand - just suggesting that this may be an option, given the right circumstances.

I just list these ideas to show that there are options. I don't know much about the operations behind this site, but I'm a smart guy, and my intuition is that the $6 fee will simultaneously be the death of the site and insufficient to generate any real revenue. On the other hand, if the site ownership just doesn't want the hassle, wants SMC to condense into a smaller group of like-minded folks, etc - well, that would be sad, but I'd understand.

Dan - this kind of logical, unemotional list of solutions is everything that’s right with SMC... but you’ll soon get pounded with “if you’re so smart and this is so easy, why don’t you start your own website....?”

You’re original idea of forcing people to turn off ad blockers to view the site, is a perfect answer to the stated problem of “not enough money coming in due to ad blockers”

Ultimately it doesn’t matter if I give $6 to the site or 100 new people join tomorrow and each give $6 or 1000 people do it... the $6 is not the issue, at all. It’s a pittance. If management implements your idea of requiring ad blockers off to view the site, and turns off the ad blocking requirement for those who contribute the $6, all the money comes back. Many times over. Stated problem solved.

But the majority here would rather scream “pay $6 or shut up and go away!” Not helpful or constructive, in my mind. This is why I’m certain the goal here is to shrink SMC considerably, not recoup lost money due to adblockers. And that is management’s right. But it’s disingenuous to cry about not having money due to adblockers, then a relatively easy solution is provided to remove adblocking capability and the company screams, we don’t like that answer, we like $6! Clearly, what’s really wanted here is a smaller forum with a much smaller footprint and only “club members” allowed. And that’s ok, by the way... that’s the right of the site owner.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Don't tell google that: Google's Q4 ad revenue rises 20% https://www.mobilemarketer.com/news/...erodes/547666/ - a selected quote from that “The worldwide digital ad market was forecast to grow about 18% to $273.3 billion last year”

Maybe you’re just doing it wrong. I distinctly remember Keith writing that he could use and ad service that would make him lots of money, but he thought it would be ugly. (I don’t really feel motivated enough to search for that thread, it was less than a year ago, I think it may have been deleted - not because he said that, but because it became a not very civil thread). I would just say that ugly ads with the option to turn them off (if you pay), are actually quite a good idea.

For those people that think everything should be free - just realize that something being free usually means that you are the product being sold (information about you is sold to fund what you get for free). You have to decide if you’re ok with that.

Google is selling personal information..... your information, the data you create. You are right. Nothing is free.

Keith on the other hand isn't comfortable with that and has said he won't do it.