SNOWEST FORUMS: Member Comments on "Letter to All Members"

[chip13]

The cost seems reasonable, especially if online copies of your magazines are included.

 

[IShartd]

I absolutely can not believe all the ruffled feathers on this one. Its $9 a year for three years!!! Come on...... Really??? All the arguments and "I'm done as soon as I have to pay" threats are a little over dramatic. Is it your times of the month or what? This site used to be a lot better when there were more people that cared about snowmobiling and shared useful information and I hope this fee helps weed out the post whores that reply to every singe post with "Cool" "Thats sick" etc etc etc. just trying to get their post totals up. Personally I think one of the worst things that have happened to this site is showing the number of posts. Its just a target for people to shoot for.

My only concern is that we seemed to have lost some really good members along the way and I doubt they will come back even when the site is improved and less cluttered. I will be paying the fee when it comes available and looking forward to having a much less crowded and much more informative site back.

I understand what your saying, its not about money, its more the potential of less good content coming to the site as a result. And that's reality, your limiting the scope of members, in effect limiting the overall scope of content. I really enjoy this forum, and would just like to have a justification for the current issues.

 

[MtnDoo]

OPEN LETTER TO HARRIS PUBLISHING EDITOR:

11/13/09 via email

Harris folks,

As you know, there is quite a community built around your forum site. Most folks will gladly pay a small fee to contribute to what has grown up there.

However, your new admin is way off the reservation w/ the administration and circus atmosphere envisioned for the next generation forum and users aren't having it.

There is no trust from the community in the ability or need to execute on such grandiose plans.

There is a real user revolt going on, and it could threaten the viability and future of the site.

I wish you the best of luck with the forums as I've been a member since 2001, but fear it's quickly heading in the wrong direction.

Corey

 

[mountainhorse]

Speed was not a issue until you started making changes, this is very apparent. So, once again, have created the problem, in an effort to justify the fee.

I could be wrong here but... The way it was told to me....and read in some posts on here by admin of the site...

These forums have been sharing servers and connection with all of the other Harris magazines and LDS publication activities...

Harris owns these servers we are currently using and paid for them as well a the connection that they are hooked up to.

The slow down may have been caused by increased activity of ALL of the users of the servers and not just SnoWest.. this at the same time when the snow-season is cranking up and A LOT more members are loging in now that the season is here.

The new servers, I'm told will stand alone and not be shared by ANY other part of the Harris corporation or for any other activity.

The reasons I'm staying and looking forward to a great site are in this post... have a look.

 

[christopher]

This I find is unfair to say though, I myself joined the snowest forums, I found they were so useful that I decided to subscibe to snowest to support the forums, so if it was not for the forums, snowest would not have my subscription, and I would hazard a guess that I am not alone, does this get counted? No, its impossible to track, tracking how much money a forum is bringing in is nearly impossible, so has it REALLY been losing money when all this has been taken into account? because the forum could be directly responsible for driving traffic to your magazine! Thats something no one knows just how much snowest magazine has benefited from, to say either way if the forum has had a positive/negative impact for harris publishing as a whole is almost impossible to tell when you take into account how much traffic the site generates, and how much of that traffic has driven people to the magazine.

You are absolutely correct.

It is VERY hard to know the cross effect the forum has had on the magazine over the years

What they are able to track are the real direct costs of the forums and it's associated support/overhead for the last many years. And what I have been told, by several people at corporate, is that the income has never matched the outgo, and that the forum has always been a service provided to the general snowmobiling public.

The rates that are being asked are no intended to generate some vast amount of profit. I think anyone with any real integrity can look at them and see that this will never generate a million, or half a million or even a quart million dollars like some members are suggesting. Thats just not in the cards, and not part of reality.

 

[rotaxhippie]

I haven't noticed the slow issues people are complaining about, but whatever. It sucks that a top 100 forum can't get enough advertising money to pay for the site. This is my favorite forum of the six I am members with, but if this change has too big of a negative effect, then Thumpertalk's new snowmobile forum might become more appealing.

Don't scare off us free-loaders, that is what made this site so successful. And if you want to argue that, try starting a forum with a membership fee from the get go. Hooray for snow!

 

[j_e_summit]

I am currently a member of atleast half a dozen forums and this is the first one that I have had to pay for. Some forums have "supporter" catagories that you pay for and, in return, get special features like more attatchment space and other features, but non have required payment to become a member.

Personaly, I have paid to be a "supporter", but I am not sure if I want to pay just for basic use, which is all I use this forum for anyway.

Oh, and I am more of a reader then a poster, so maybe I will just view it as a visitor from now on

 

[live2beel]

$10 is no big deal; some will pay, some won't...whatever.
But, unfortunately for-profit forums rarely succeed.
This is a very risky strategy.
Especially for an admin that seems to be deaf to his users.


But, the false hope of $10 x 36,000users = $360,000/year can make an admin tell management lots of really dazzling stuff.

MD.

So how is this going to cost let's say $300,000/year? Somebody is going to be riding new sled's every year.

 

[WarHorse]

R.I.P Snowest

 

[jrsnow]

AHHH the death of SlowWest - RIP

Any one remember snowmobile.com- was free - was the number 1 snowmobile site - started to charge - DOA. Everyone will move to another free site IMO

 

[rmk727]

I've come to really enjoy this forum and will support it all the way, I feel I have a lot of freinds that I will never meet or ride with on here yet we share the love of this great sport. Also moderator please make a note when the time comes I will pay full price for Revolution and his dial up for a 3 yr go round, I can afford it. One last note , boy spell check would be a nice addition

 

[sp_20022006]

I only have a one year subscription of the mag, so after that year, 9.99 sounds like a good deal because I will actually get to read the mag. someday they will show up right????

 

[JJFlash]

Thats It.
Your a genius.
This is all part of my master plan to wreak havoc and destruction just so I can come in and fix everything.
The Hegelian Dialectic in action.

Ya, Right.

I'll gladly buy a three year tour if the site adds a 19th "cool thing"......How about an automated grammar feature that can distinguish between "your" and "you're"??????

 

[raysxc700]

i have been a member of this forum for a long time and to tell you the truth
i cant believe this didn't come sooner got lots and lots of info off the old snowest
and after the switch i lost interest as far as having to pay for a site to get info
naa ill pass and go eles wheres good luck SnoWest

 

[Edsled]

I think it's GREAT. I have saved much money from the information on this form. The people are the best and it time to ride. Can't think of a better time to have this form.

 

[sledjunky3]

are the canadian rates two and a half times more than the us rates? would my magazine subscription renewal fee be 14.95 per year u.s. up here in canada?

 

[chadincolo]

Personally, I hate most of the upgrades. That scrolling thing at the top of every screen is a waste, instant chat, my garage...why? What was wrong with the old forum? That format was fine, easy to use, easy to find info, no worthless "extras"...

I'll probably still peruse the forums on occasion, but that's about it.

If you offered subscribe to the magazine, get access to the forums, I might do that...pay extra for the forums? No thanks.

 

[christopher]

its more the potential of less good content coming to the site as a result. And that's reality, your limiting the scope of members, in effect limiting the overall scope of content. I really enjoy this forum, and would just like to have a justification for the current issues.

Agreed.
We see and recognize that this is a risk.
But...

On the other side of that very same coin is the all to real possibility that we will successfully bring in people who have studiously avoided participating in any of the public forums simply because they are not willing to deal with all the juvenile nonsense that so frequently attends this place.

There are a whole lot of real players in our industry that DO NOT PARTICIPATE on any forums.

We will be working to bring some of them in here.

 

[Chief]

Because people are tired of the heavily biased liberal viewpoints. On the other hand, The Wall Street Journal is doing well in both print and electronic versions.

Wow.. found your bias...

Most serious studies about the failing of print media point out that the majority of the American population is not interested in traditional NEWS and is more interested in entertainment (Entertainment Today anyone?) and care more about who Paris Hilton is seeing then the Health Care Reform bills.

They also point that interested parties (like myself) want opinions and reporting from more then one source. I take the Salt Lake Tribuine, read Reuters, the Washington Post, The New York Times, WSJ, and the Times of London on most important subjects.

On Sleds I read Snowest, SnowTech, and use DooTalk and ArcticChat...

Perhaps we should all remember that operation and moderation of this forum, like the news media, is supposed to be non-biased..

 

[christopher]

Don't scare off us free-loaders, that is what made this site so successful.

We will be fine tuning our memberships with that in mind!