Thank you guys for all the kind words and support. And if you comb through my posts more carefully, you will know that I'm not a flip-flop type of person. When gregr rolled out the Platinum plan a while ago, I've made it very clear that it's not wise to charge just for browsing (which is actually in the interest of paid members). The Silver membership later became free to embrace this suggestion (of mine and others). I've also said that THEN WAS not the right time to start charging. Without sending you guys to the other board, this was what I posted on 03-11-2003:
I honestly don't think there is any room for debate on whether forums should be free. Paid forums DO WORK. The question is whether DNForum.com is qualified to be a paid forum NOW. My opinion is negative. I have made that clear from Day 1 at DNForum.com.
It actually surprises me that there are more than 100 paying members in such a short time; but that doesn't really help when DNForum.com needs WAY MUCH MORE than that to survive and grow.
Anyway, I'm glad that gregr actually listen to some of the feedback, probably from his paying members, to keep browsing free. This should at least allow the DNForum.com to stay afloat. Honestly, I don't want to see it go down.
But with the amazing growth of Platinum membership (which has since TRIPLED), I have already admitted that gregr might actually have a better grip of timing than I do at
http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=200815#post200815. Now with the ownership change, I guess things will only get better.
Originally posted by yesonline
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yesonline: I can understand Chinese, but it took me a while to switch to the appropriate character encoding as I usually read and write in English (99.9% of the time) and have not set the auto/default thing with my browser. Please don't make me type in Chinese, it takes me at least half an hour for the line you just posted.