A blog site I'm on, livejournal (also run by a man named Brad- hmm) just instituted posting limits as the site got more popular and bandwidth issues got out of hand.

This is what they came up with:

If you are a free member, you can make 5 posts to your blog in a 24 hour period.
If you are a paid member (US$25/year), you can make 50 posts in a 24 hour period.

the concern was people using the site for malicious script-kiddy posts were most often "free" users, whereas anyone paying for access was prolly a legitimate user.

How that might work at SC:

new members would get 5 posts to forums per 24 hour period, and 10 comics per 24 hour period. This would perhaps cut down on some of the "manboobs" type noise posts, while not restricting legitimate discourse. most newbies tend to post mostly in RMDC only, anyway.

after you've been here a month, you can donate and have unlimited posts/comic creation. If you don't donate, you still get some kind of upgrade- ie, instead of 5 forum posts and 10 comics a day, you get 10 forum posts and 15 comics a day. a month later you get 15/20, etc.

Also, brad, I know you're a Canadian and therefore not used to being pushy like us Americans, but you need to be more diligent about seperating us from our cash. I donated once, probably about a year ago. There's no "membership" or other reminder to me that I need to donate again, so therefore, I'm prolly unlikely to. and since my donation isn't tied to a "membership", there's no personal incentive to give more (like if I don't donate $10 every 12 months, I lose the ability to delete comics, have a cool title under my name and have my comics at the top of the screen).

I think the above ideas would make SC better in the long run. it would also answer the ageold question of "when am I no longer a newbie"?

opinions?

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When they invent BookFace, I'm -there-.

I agree that I haven't been guilted enough to make another donation. Brad, I think you should go with ZenBoy's suggestion. ;-)

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Dad was flammable

I don't know what zenboy's suggestion was, but from past experience I suspect it involved suffering on a large scale. I like lara's idea - though I think you should only get any upgrade if you donate.

Also, I'd like to register my approval that "manboobs" seems to be becoming a byword for nonsense posts.

Yes. More guilt please. You really dropped the ball on that one, Brad.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

And where did the PayPal link go? That was pretty convenient.

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"And Wirthling isn't worth the paper he isn't printed on."

These are cool suggestions, lara, thanks a lot.

While it might be an option if traffic fully went batshit insane or if people start abusing things, I'm not really keen on posting limits at this time. The bandwidth and disk space isn't a big deal for posts and the comic storage. It's the art that's the big killer.

I'm also not sure how much it would really solve the community problem. A lot of the people who I hear complaints about have sent in donations and under this system would still be happily within their rights to get on other people's nerves.

Some have also suggested a donors-only forum, which has the same problem. I may do it anyway, but I don't think it would accomplish what some may think it would.

I'm hoping that the private message system will allow you guys to attract new good users rather than having to constantly fight down the new not-so-good users.

As for guilt, I'm probably going to eventually offer subscription accounts for more artwork. I think everything else will stay more or less the same. But when art goes up, so does the bandwidth.

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www.bradsucks.net

It's just on the front page now. I should probably put it back in the footers like before. And also crazy popups and popunders and then install Bonzai Buddy and so on.

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www.bradsucks.net

But I'm unemployed... I can't afford to say manboobs 6 times a day but I think it's necessary

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Scratch and sniff porn isn't as good as I'd hoped