Serious Discussion?

[Leaveammoforme]

I have been sitting back and watching the forum for a couple weeks. It no longer 'feels' like M4C to me.

What makes a forum great is the Members. No/low Members equals no advertising money. Thus, new forums look for members to be Site Sponsors. Once a forum establishes some foot traffic the advertising falls into place and starts paying the bills.

The Snipers Hide situation left a bad taste in my mouth. The Forum owner(s) sold out the members. The members that made the site prosper.. were sold.. as numbers.

As I am not privy to behind the scenes here nor do I have any vested interest here, I am still part of the M4C machine. I feel the information shared by members carries weight in the long term. Recent threads have had Staff and Mods being critical towards non Site Sponsors and interjecting that they should bow down for the 'free' stay. Do we need money from members still? Really?

I saw a sharp rise in this sites dollar value in the past 3 months. This has me thinking about what will happen coming up to the 10 year.

I know I can start a forum, I know this isn't my house, I know. I don't even claim to add any value here. Half my posts are goofy with the other half being factual and on topic. None the less, a part of me is here and I'd hate to see this fine forum brought down by freaking Adsense. If we need money, come to us. Otherwise it looks fishy.

I don't know if I presented this in a coherent fashion. The recent rise in TOS style threads has me worried that we are going for quantity over quality. I don't expect this thread to last long but I have tried to convey my feelings.

I respect our Mods , past & present. I hope that if AC logged in today He would be proud with where we as a forum are.

As others can answer the same questions I would take on, it should have no bearing on me being here or not. I would like to thank all the members of this forum for the advice, know how , experiences, laughs and tears that they have shared.

I will check back in October,

See you fellas.

[LowSpeed_HighDrag]

I really wish STAFF would have just done a pledge/membership drive. I have wanted to be a member, a long with many others, but I can never get a straight answer.

I listen to NPR (shhh, I know I know) and I appreciate the info gleaned from them so I donate (even though I am a conservative!). I have learned more from this forum over the last 5 years than I ever will on NPR, and if STAFF needs money to keep it a float, run a pledge drive and give us a chance to keep our forum-home standing.

I am also hoping that STAFF will see that many of us are actually COMPLAINING that it is almost impossible to become members and change the process. Tundratalk has a very simple, pay by paypal and get a lifetime/silver/platinum membership badge next to your screenname with the added PM and ad free benefits.

What if we had a similar system? One where if you become a 1 year or lifetime member, it automatically removes the ads ( or lets you at least remove the garbage ones forced on us right now), gives you the PM boost, gives you a badge next to your name, and allows you to have a stake in all of this?

I bet with this system, STAFF could MORE than pay the bills, and still keep the ads if needed.

[jpmuscle]

I'm up for paying in if that's what needs to be done. Gladly.

[4DAIVI PAI2K5]

I'm just curious what ad you guys at talking about, I haven't seen any? I do run AdBlocker + on my stuff so I have to assume that is why I'm not seeing anything, besides the banner ad at the top of the page which is currently BCM

[MBtech]

delete, truth spoken below.

[TXBK]

I didn't find it to be an ordeal to become a sponsor. Just as the site sponsor thread stated, I PM'd STAFF and received an address and instructions. Other than having to go to the PO to send a MO, it really took very little effort on my part.

As far as the ads go, while maybe being a little unsightly, they are very easy to scroll over. I consider it to be a minor inconvenience at the most, and only see them on certain devices that I use. I don't believe the ads do anything to harm the integrity of this site, it's content, or it's members. Integrity would have to be pretty thin around here for them to do so.

[3 AE]

I like free! If the forum Owner(s)/Admin/Staff felt that they needed to charge everyone a membership in order to keep the forum up and running, then they probably would have done so. Since they went with a small row of ads on the first page only, and didn't "Require" site sponsorship from everyone, fine with me. Did I say I like "Free"? It's an Internet Forum, not life and death. You get out of it with what you put in to it. It's a place where one can learn a lot, a place to help another member, a place to bitch and whine, within reason, a place to go full bore linear crazy and get "time outs", temporary or permanent. Your choice!

We will see how the future pans out for M4C.net. As for now, people above my pay grade have made a decision to venture forth in a slightly new direction in order to benefit the entire membership. No harm done IMHO. Besides, the "Taboola Ads" are a funny diversion to link to when a thread heads south in "General Discussion"! "I LIKE FREE!"

[Abraham]

So far, I haven't seen one pop up ad.

If though, as someone else advised, it's the internet, not life and death.

If this site goes down in quality with over doing spam, vote with your keyboard and go elsewhere.

Easy.

There are tons of gun sites...ah no pun etc.

[STAFF]

Most every large forum has been sold to a corporation. We are one of the last hold outs. When a corporation buys a forum, they need to monetize it as much as possible to get their investment out of it. We don't have any interest in selling M4C as it is our home. With that said, this is also a business (not a charity).

A quick look at other forums (big, medium and small) will show you that the ads you don't like on here are 3-4 rows deep on those forums. We only accepted one row of them. Are they goofy? Yes. In the future, they will start to automatically tailor to our clientele.

If you do not like the ads, get an ad blocker and ignore them. Easy as that.