Do new members now have to pay to post on Ausfish?

[PixieAU]

$10 per annum for such an active forum a this is great value. If it wasn't active and didn't have all the great contributors then it might not be the same.

I reckon some of the regular reporters shouldn't have to pay because it's their content which makes the site what it is. But I also reckon they'll be the ones that are first to pay!

[Freeeedom]

Sorry Mate ,
Must say you lost me with that analogy .
Shawn

Many community organisations rely on the work of volunteers to keep them afloat. Ausfish is in the same category. Steve Brown says that there are over 1.3 million posts on Ausfish that can be read for free. That's fantastic - they represent an enormous body of knowledge and skills compiled over a very long time - and many of them are mine. But all of those posts were put up on the website by members voluntarily. Their motivation, in most cases (certainly mine) was to help fellow anglers who might not have as much experience fishing for certain species or new locations or trying new techniques etc.

When a new member joins and wishes to make a post he/she is saying 'can I add something to your knowledge base?' If you say to a volunteer who wishes to make a contribution 'Yes, but only if you pay us' many will simply say 'Up yours' - or words to that effect, as my mate did. I would also expect (although I have no evidence except my own point of view on this one) that the more experienced the member is, the less likely he/she is to pay to contribute.

An organisation which actively discourages the voluntary contributions of its members will inevitably be poorer as a result.

Cheers Freeeedom

[Ausfish]

This is not a community organisation, it is a privately owned and funded online community. Although community organisations do rely on the work of volunteers but they do need to do a lot of fund raising to stay open, so it is slightly similar in that respect.

People are given a choice, bit like going into a newsagency and buying a fishing mag, you have a look and decide if you want to, except here you can read over 1.4 million posts for free not just the current issue.

As i said, if your friend needs a free subscription so he can ask the questions that he wanted to ask then I am more than happy to shout him a free subscription to do so. Or you could post up the questions for him.

I have been running and paying for this website for around 19 years and have put in many tens of thousands of dollars out of my back pocket to keep it running. The decision was made to make it a subscription site in order to keep it running and also to stop the spammers and scammers and keyboard cowboys that have ruined many other sites.

Yes the contribution by members has helped this site grow to the most popular fishing site in Australia and I am thankful to all the members for their contribution, but without turning the site into a subscription site it would not be here today for all to enjoy as my money tree died a long time ago :-)

[Freeeedom]

No problem with that. Ausfish is a business and as such it has to make money. If it did not it would not exist. You have invested your own money into building the site and good luck to you. How you choose to run it is, of course your prerogative - I hope it continues to be successful.
Cheers Freeeedom

[myusernam]

has there been some sort of change in the last few days? I can't view classifieds anymore. seems odd. Would have thought the whole purpose of classifieds is wides dissemination.
I would have thought a better idea would be to charge for classifides, but keep the forum free, keeping the site relevant with lots of traffic.

[Triple]

has there been some sort of change in the last few days? I can't view classifieds anymore. seems odd.

http://www.ausfish.com.au/vforum/sho...9-Forum-outage

[Steeler]

$ 10.00 well spent just watching NAGG and Deckie go at it in the politics section LOL.

[Ausfish]

Yes, classifieds are still off line while we try to work out what caused the outage, a few other small parts of the forum still offline while we fault find. Not an easy task with such a large forum/database.

Hope to have everything up and running again soon.

Probably change the classifieds in the next few days as it is running on an old script and may do a few updates that it will not be compatible with. Will see how it works out in a few days.