The Boards are in trouble

[lougee1043]

we sail one week from today and at that time it will be my pleasure to delete this site from my favorites llist and not hve to deal with it again til my next cruise is booked

[newtocc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by newtocc

... I make 4700 dollars an hour, Laura, where do I send the bill?

 

 

Is that all? Seems like this is petty cash for you Newt.

 

In any case, expect an update tomorrow. No, not a check :rolleyes: , just an update.

 

 

Well duh on me, I’m always forgetting that dam decimal point!

 

 

Walt, I kinda think you fibbed to me, the board was really S_L_O_W today, my 2300 baud took 1 hour to load the board, twice as long as normal!

[joramrose]

An enlightening thread!

 

For the past two weeks I have been reduced to ujsing my creaky 12-year-old puter on dial-up connection, and I thought all the trouble on the boards was just that.

 

Tonight I have my better puter back on digital line, and the boards are working fine and I was marvelling at the speed and then come to find out, it has been the boards at fault all along.

 

Sorry, faithful old PC that I spent so many years clogging along on, upgrding periodically from 14. through 28 to 56 modem speed. I was condemning you unjustly.

 

love

joan

[bob278]

.........

Although I am in favor of a monthly fee of say $10, I dont think the majority of cruisers using this board would pay for various reasons. But as long as I am guaranteed less frustration with logging on and going to subscribed threads it would be more than worth it to me.

 

Laura, If you decide to charge by the month or year, thats fine with me but nothing more than $10 per month which is fair to me based on other sites that I am subscribed to, Wall Street Journal, People Magazine, (some unmentionable sites), etc.

 

Florida-Man Don

 

DON! :eek:

 

Don't give Laura any grand ideas. I posted that $10 per YEAR might be acceptable. Even if half the people dropped out, that would be over a half-million dollars a year. I doubt they'd lose anywhere near that much in advertising for having fewer members. And if the performance was good, new people would come on.

 

I agree with Garry that many people would quit because they were asked to pay for something that once was free (there's that old "entitlement" mentality at work). But $10 a year for the pleasures we get here is nothing. Maybe a 3-month free membership to get people addicted would work.

 

Just my not-so-very-humble-opinion.

 

Bob

[isujim]

Just curious.......Host walt said there would be an update on the 14th (if I read his post right)........has there been any update???

[LauraS]

Thank you for your comments and concerns about the Cruise Critic message boards. While the recent performance issues have been frustrating for all of us, it is heartening to hear that so many of you care so strongly about these message boards.

We are aware of the problems and have been working on determining the source and a long-term solution. As you may be aware our traffic on the boards has increased significantly over the past few months which has put more pressure on our Web servers. During the same time period, we have upgraded both our database and message board software on several occasions and we believe these upgrades have also slowed down the performance.

We are in the process of looking into upgrading our server hardware and hope to have a plan in place shortly for doing so. Unfortunately the reality is that these message boards are very expensive to run because of the sheer volume of postings and users and the investment in new hardware is significant so we've been attempting to exhaust all software solutions first to see if we can remedy the situation. We will be trying one more software upgrade and tweaking in the next few days to see if it helps the performance.

While it is true that more traffic should equate to more advertising revenue, it's very difficult to sell advertising on message boards at reasonable rates because typically users rarely click on board advertising because they are too engrossed in reading and posting messages.

While our preference is to keep as much of the Cruise Critic site free to users as long as it is possible to do so, we are willing to consider implementing a nominal fee on the message boards, which could, in theory, generate revenue to insure the performance of these boards.

One concern we have about this is that if we implemented a fee for everyone to use the boards it would drive many of our loyal members away and to other cruise sites. One option might be leaving the basic board features open to all but offer an optional premium set of message board services/features that members could pay a nominal fee ($10-15 per year) for, that could help in enabling us to add additional web servers and allow us to add additional message board features that we have turned off because of the load on the servers.

 

We would love to hear more of your thoughts about this and if you wish to start a poll in this thread, please feel free to do so.

 

Thank you for your patience as we work through these performance issues.

[tbelian]

If you are seriously considering charging a fee for a 'premium' service, then members of that premium service should have the ability to 'opt out' of any advertising.

 

That is one way to truly distinguish 'free' from 'premium'. IMO.

[bob278]

Now there are two interesting posts.

 

First, in Laura's is an implication that if we click on advertiser's links, it would generate revenue. Hmmmm, I could live with one click per visit instead of paying if it got the kind of performance we have seen the boards capable of providing.

 

The other is the concept of a "premium" option. It could get complicated because I would want some assurance that the performance would be there if I paid and I'm sure there would be those who would say "it was slow today, I want compensation".

 

What would that look like? Maybe no access to roll calls without a fee (you have to register now for that); no posting (also requires registration); what else is available? While eliminating advertising from the premium area is interesting, unless it comes as pop-ups, I can generally ignore it with little effort. But still, it would be attractive to many people.

 

Any poll on this would be complicated. First you'd need to detrmine if people would even consider a fee then try to describe some reasonable features people would be willing to pay for. Option 1 would probably have to be: "If it ain't free, it ain't got me".

[tbelian]

While eliminating advertising from the premium area is interesting, unless it comes as pop-ups, I can generally ignore it with little effort..

 

Eliminating the advertising from the pages would (well, should anyway) speed things up, because it takes time to deliver that additional content?

[isujim]

Bob that does raise some interesting questions.

 

I am not with a wave of the hand opposed to a fee based service.......I use the boards enough that $10 to $15 a year is still a great deal.......however.......when I look back to when I was a "newbie", I'm not sure I would have registered and paid the fee starting out........I think it would all but kill any growth the board might have as far as gaining new members.

 

As you mention, what is free and what is premium, could be a poll in itself....with probably not much consensus.

 

Also I would need to be convinced that adding new servers would correct the current problems...........didn't we just do an upgrade last May??

 

Jim

[sue d. miller]

Actually, I have had no problem with the boards this time, but I would be willing to pay a fee to keep CC up and running!! I feel we do a great service on all the boards answering questions and giving help where needed!!

[bob278]

Hi Jim,

 

I thought the basic upgrade last year was just to go to the vBulletinBoard software, but servers may have also been involved.

 

As to a newbie probably not paying upfront, I agree. That's why either some features to "grab" them such as being able to read (and maybe post) on "public forums" would show the value. Or possibly the 3 month free trial. I know by the end of three months after I found this place, I would have coughed up $10 pretty quickly while things were working pretty well. When the old "infopoop" problems were at their worst, I almost left even with no fee, but was hooked. So, if things ran well, I would think a lot of people would get addicted fairly quickly and then pay up.

 

tbelian, I hadn't thought about the advertising links taking bandwidth, I guess they would and if eliminating them helped, then great. And, if the advertising revenue is based on link clicking, then there probably wouldn't be much drop unless a lot of people left over a small fee.

 

I realize it looks like I am advocating a fee. I'm really not, but I also recognize that you frequently get what you pay for and if we pay nothing, then we really don't have much room to complain. And before anyone flames me and says that, as a group, we are valuable to the owners, sure we are. But who among us hasn't gotten pleasure and maybe even saved money from what they found here? My mere presence doesn't entitle me to any particular level of service, but paying a fee sure would.

[excitedofharpenden]

I'd pay $10 or $20 a year to use this site, without doubt. I can understand the issue of frightening off new posters though, which of course we all were once.

 

A question. Would it make any difference if signature options and the animations and countdown clocks that go with them were removed? I am not a techy, but this must surely use up quite a bit of space.

 

Phil

[bob278]

Phil,

 

Fascinating question. At this moment, the response time is pretty good and I can't see anyone's clocks.

I do still see avatars and signatures. Could you be on to something?

[kitty9]

Paying to use these boards? That absolutely won't work. Think about it. You've got literally thousands of people who post here who smuggle booze and soda on the ship, and who don't want to pay for a passport, and you think they'll pay to use these boards? I'm not trying to be mean or act a snob, but when you think about how many people do things to save a buck on a cruise, do you honestly think they're going to pay for CC?

 

When you go to other cruise boards that have just as much content as CC and don't have the slowness problems, you have to wonder if it's not the provider rather than the number of people who post that causes the slow times. I'm an insomniac and I'm on this board sometimes at 3am CDT, and they're still slow. While infopop might not have bee the greatest, I don't remember having this many problems when they ran the boards.

[bob278]

Darcie,

 

I have two thoughts about that. First, even thought many would prefer to take booze on board to save a few bucks, those same people are probably among the more addicted since they need to share ideas on how to save that dollar or two.

 

My other thought is less charitable and will probably get me flamed, but if someone is so adamantly opposed to paying for what they get, then I'm not sure how much I'd miss them. I guess I'd better clarify that I don't see anything wrong with saving money or wanting to take something that isn't available (such as a particular favorite wine, etc.).

 

Your memory of infopoop is different from mine. I remember periods of a day or so at a time when it was flat out down, not just maddingly slow.

 

Still, you are right, there would be a howl of protest and people would leave. I don't know what the answer is, I hope Laura can fix it and we can go back to decent response and keep all the people we have and grow even more. That just doesn't seem too likely to me.

 

So what are the possibilities?

 

• It stays rotten and people will abandon it (and that may well include me if it gets much worse).
  
• It gets slightly better for a while until more people join than leave (and then more people leave, it gets slightly better, more people join, it gets worse.......you get the picture)
  
• They institute a small fee (people scream and leave, but the boards are really quick and word-of-mouth slowly builds it back up)
  
• Laura finds the magical fix and we all live happily ever after (don't we wish)
  

The real answer is "Who knows?"

[gkm]

I think if there was a fee, you'd see a drop in membership, but I bet a good majority of them would be back. They'd miss the boards and after their ruffled feathers had a chance to smooth out, they'd realize that this is the best board for information and a wonderful place to meet friends. I kinda like the idea of maybe a three month trial membership that's free (just to hook them), then we can reel them in.:D

 

Garry

[isujim]

As usual Bob..........some very good points...........and what........you get flamed?:D

[mafig]

I think that the assumption that those who leave will come back may be incorrect. There are, after all, other message boards (gasp!). Are they as good as Cruise Critic? No, that's why we're all here.:)

 

 

However, if the people who leave migrate to other boards, those boards will become more active. That is, really, what sets these boards apart, activity.

If even 25% of those who are here went to another board, those boards would become more competitive to this one, and they would be free!

[idssms]

I tried to get on this morning and was unable to again which is frustrating.

 

I wrote a repsonse to my Millennium Post (Roll Call) and pushed "summit post" and it never made it. It got locked up. I backed out of it and darn, I lost 10 mins of time that it took to write the post. I guess I should use word pad to avoid any of that.

 

I will go with the flow but have no problem paying a fee to use these boards. I admit I have never checked out an advertisement on here. I wouldnt have a problem clicking on one each day if that helped.

 

I am a classic example of someone who smuggles soda, booze and wine on board the ship to save money BUT enjoys sharing my experiences on here and would be the first to sign up for $$$$ membership to support this board.

 

I belong to Camera (nikon, digital camera), Auto (Porsche) and Cruise Boards and this board is the best run board that I have ever used. It would be well worth it to support Laura and her staff with whatever the fee was. I have personally gained so much knowledge from reading threads about crusing and much more.

 

As Bob M stated, maybe there should be a fee for posting and participating and no fee for reading. I am sure this issue will be resolved soon and this board will be at 100 percent.

 

Don

[excitedofharpenden]

No flames from me either, Bob. I think you make some good points. My memories of Infopop were similar to yours. It was awful in the end and when working fully, the functions on these boards, including the search facility are far superior. Is it going quicker now or is it me? Time to quit whilst I'm ahead.;)

 

Phil

[L11]

Bob, interesting thought. If the problem is with th server and heavy usage, i would think that some of the problems sould be solved by limiting or eliminating certain things like huge animated signatures, countdown clocks, etc. I am noticing the same thing you noted.o countdown clocks and the process is quite quick just now. I'll look later if it slows down to see if the countdown clocks are visible.

 

I would also pay a yearly fee to join. Allow a 2 or 3 month access period for newbies before charging the fee.

 

If I can think of any other suggestions, I will post them.

 

Linda

[wvufan]

The information I have obtained on these boards has literally saved me thousands of dollars, helped me avoid considerable grief, and has immeasurably heightened my cruise enjoyment. And the friends we have made-priceless.

 

I would gladly pay a periodic fee. The best ideas seem to include a several month free trial for newbies and some variation on privaleges (posting etc.). I would not, however, limit viewing of roll calls, as that is one of the attractions that may entice newbies to stay.

 

The number one feature I would like to see that I would hope might be available if funds are sufficient is a set up for our roll calls so that they can be indexed and found. That way, we could easily find our sailing and see if there is a roll call. It would also limit it to one roll call per sailing.

 

Sign me up:)

 

OOOEEE:D :D Bob and Phyl

[raudacruise]

Getting rid of some of the overhead (avatars, countdown clocks, imbedded images, etc) would probably speed things up.

 

Also, aging some the posts away would probably help as well. One noteworthy thread is climbing to almost 7000 posts. Who is going to wade through those. Puts a big strain on the search engine.

 

Laura, clickthroughs are only a subjective measurement of the sites value to an advertiser. Lets face it, X's customer service stinks and if were not for this board several first time X cruisers would have said "forget about it". The loyalty shown on this board also is a big factor. You should point this out to X next time contract renewal comes up.

 

Hope these were construct critiques. We definetly are not going to pay a fee for answering questions 90% of the time vs. asking 10%. If that happens we will move on.

[mafig]

I lurked for over two years. I would not have a problem going back to lurker status.

 

 

Who is to say that charging a fee will improve the speed of the boards. If they slow down again, will the fee increase? Or will we just be stuck with a slow board AND a fee.

 

Incidentally, there's a poll over on the RCI board. While still in its infancy, it is running over 80% AGAINST a fee.