Hi All,

- I'd like to see this forum charge an annual membership fee .

- I haven't included a "poll" on this question / since / this forum isn't run as a democracy & changes like this will only occur at the pleasure of the proprieters .

Membership would include ;

(A) The ability to post into all public threads .
(B) The ability to read ( "see" ) all the attachments within the threads ( excluding the Lansing Library information ) .


Reasons ?

(i) Right now, any casual internet traveller has the capacity to view & download attachments . IMO, this knowledge ought to be restricted to paying members .

(ii) Restricting membership to those willing to pay will begin to exclude the onslought of spammers that are hitting this site, more frequently than ever..

(iii) Attaching an annual fee to the site will buffer the regulars from 1 shot ( "driveby" ) price appraisals . This will begin to disengage this site from directly feeding the eBay valuation frenzy ... ( Driving up the prices of used wornout transducers till they are on par with JBLs new transducers , is just plain wrong ( IMHO ) ) .


FWIW ;
- I'm not very hardcore about these changes / but understand that I always used to appreciate the older forums regular "capsizing" and then sinking ( usually due to the stress of growth ).
- This had a very profound "cleansing" action for each new forum that emerged from it's predecessor.
- The system crashes of old had a built in "natural ecology", that is now sadly lacking .



- Another thought is to just take this forum offline for a month at a time ( chosen at random by the proprieters ) with no notice given to the unwary ...
- This would be akin to a "controlled burn" in " forestry parlance ".