Why don't you become a supporting member?
- Thread starter the_vape_nerd
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My posts have been quite clear I am seeking information.
I don't quite see what that has to do with "supporting anything" or "moving on".
As much information and encouragement as I have recieved here, I just purchased the yearly subscription. This forum may not be a non-profit, but this forum probably saved my life. If I compare the value I am getting in return, I could care less if its for profit or not. This forum is most deserving of my hard earned money, ymmv...
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If I could pay cash, I'd be a member. Last year I traded a vmod for membership, but this year when it expired the classifieds had been cut off.
I PIF and contribute, that's all I can do.
Cool badges.
I PIF and contribute, that's all I can do.
Cool badges.
What information are you seeking? This is a website that costs money to maintain and run. You either choose to support those costs or not. You are not paying for membership into anything. There is no secret club. By sending in a donation you are not entitled to review their books. You either donate or not. It is really quite simple.
You make it sound like ECF is making millions of dollars off of the donations sent by supporting members and not telling anyone. I am fairly certain this was not started as a cash cow.
You make it sound like ECF is making millions of dollars off of the donations sent by supporting members and not telling anyone. I am fairly certain this was not started as a cash cow.
The fees collected by supporting members I am sure are going to things like Domain registration fees, site bandwidth, hosting fees, vB licensing (The software isn't free)... The more users we bring to the table, and the more hits a site brings in, the more it costs to host the site. Not a bad thing, but it can get rather pricey if you have a popular site. Also, crawler fees and search promotion are not free... There is a reason E-Cigarette-Forum.com ranks so high on related Google searches... It costs money to get on the front page, more to be at the top. Which in turn brings more users, which necessitates higher bandwidth, and we are back full circle. The more traffic we generate, the more it costs...
So if the $25 I paid in helps make this board available to 10 more members, and those 10 people end up quitting smoking, and in turn end up living an extra 10 years each, and none of them die from lung cancer... Yeah, I'll pay $25 a year forever to help save a life or two.
It's not to fight the FDA, it's to help our current and future vaping community stay informed, and help each other, support each other. We create the community... Think of it more as a voluntary contribution to the homeowners association of your virtual neighborhood.
So if the $25 I paid in helps make this board available to 10 more members, and those 10 people end up quitting smoking, and in turn end up living an extra 10 years each, and none of them die from lung cancer... Yeah, I'll pay $25 a year forever to help save a life or two.
It's not to fight the FDA, it's to help our current and future vaping community stay informed, and help each other, support each other. We create the community... Think of it more as a voluntary contribution to the homeowners association of your virtual neighborhood.
I'm going to say this because it appears that people really do not understand the expenses of running a large site.
ECF runs a cluster of servers on a fat pipe. We have multiple web facing servers, a database server and multiple VPS servers to handle ancillary functions such as monitoring, email, IDS, Live chat and the live chat statistics and moderators sites. We get around 12-14 thousand posts per day, and bandwith costs money. Additional expenses include server technicians and vBulletin technicians (code and server monkeys) and banana's don't come cheap. (The going rate for a linux admin is about $110/hr and app developers charge comparable rates.)
The ECF staff consists of unpaid volunteers, thank god -- if we had to pay the staff we'd have to turn off the lights today.
Without the supporting members and advertisers (read suppliers) we would not have been able to afford to upgrade the servers last year to handle the exponential growth of the forum.
By supporting ECF you are helping it grow and keeping the lights on. We aren't selling memberships we are offering folks a chance to help support the Forum so It can grow and offer more services to the community.
ECF runs a cluster of servers on a fat pipe. We have multiple web facing servers, a database server and multiple VPS servers to handle ancillary functions such as monitoring, email, IDS, Live chat and the live chat statistics and moderators sites. We get around 12-14 thousand posts per day, and bandwith costs money. Additional expenses include server technicians and vBulletin technicians (code and server monkeys) and banana's don't come cheap. (The going rate for a linux admin is about $110/hr and app developers charge comparable rates.)
The ECF staff consists of unpaid volunteers, thank god -- if we had to pay the staff we'd have to turn off the lights today.
Without the supporting members and advertisers (read suppliers) we would not have been able to afford to upgrade the servers last year to handle the exponential growth of the forum.
By supporting ECF you are helping it grow and keeping the lights on. We aren't selling memberships we are offering folks a chance to help support the Forum so It can grow and offer more services to the community.
I understand being cautious, but I've moderated forums before and it's pretty standard practice to ask members to become supporting members if they want to. There are expenses involved with hosting a forum and the support pays those expenses. If you aren't comfortable with that, it's fine, but I don't think expecting the admins to pay the expenses is fair, so I choose to kick in to keep this forum up and running and saving lives.
Wouldn't you think that if the admins were trying to scam us all out of a bunch of money, you would see threads begging members to kick in all the time? I never see them from the admins. There is a sticky telling you how to do it if you want, but this thread, started by a grateful member, is the first one I've seen in nine months about becoming a supporting member. I belong to a writing forum and they also offer the option of being a supporting member. It's not a scam or a get-rich-quick scheme. It's just a way to help cover the cost of domain names and hosting fees, etc.
You get more room in your signature so you can list more mods is why I became a supporting member;-)
I would imagine the bulk of the money is used to pay the fees for bandwidth and server space.Theres a popular misconception out there that its cheap. I had an opportunity to take over a gaming website with only a semi-active small forum and it would have cost me 700 bucks a month. I declined.
How about you actually reading my posts first before you respond to them?
My posts, if you read them, already query that.
Seeking information has nothing to do with such assumptions.
It's a gift/donation then ... I understand that, but does not address my queries.
Nothing in any of my posts that suggests that.
Thank you, that answers my queries, as that clearly shows no profit motives are involved. It might be a good idea posting someplace that ECF is non-profit. I, as have many others, have gotten tripped up in the good Samaritan roles previously and cautions are in order.
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I believe this quote shows that I have read your previous posts. I stated that ECF was not out to make millions from supporting members and I believe that to be true. You stated that you had been involved with charities that had.
I am still curious as to what information you are seeking. You seem to want to be privy to things that you have no business knowing due to the fact that you simply donated, thus my question. It had nothing to do with not reading your posts. I just wasn't sure what information you thought yourself entitled to by donating.
ECF is not a NPO, so saying that would trigger an avalanche of "you lie" posts
What I can say is that ECF makes enough to cover the bills and we try to keep enough reserve to pay for unforeseen (read unbudgeted/emergency maintenance / service upgrades / bandwidth) costs. As was stated before our mods are volunteers and unpaid, so if we ever got to the point where we could afford to do so I would lobby the boss to pay the moderators a little bit to thank them for their time and effort. Realistically I don't think we will ever be able to pay the staff minimum wage. They put in a lot of hours and even at minimum wage the payroll would be a huge burden.
Most mods are on the forum at least three to four hours a day (if not more) and many of the admins spend 60+ hours a week trying to make ECF run as smoothly as possible. ECF is a labor of love, not a cash cow.
I just wanted to know where we are at. It gives me comfort knowing exactly what "Membership" stands for.ECF is not a NPO, so saying that would trigger an avalanche of "you lie" posts
Point clearly illustrated. Thank you.
OOH ... been down that highway with a traffic of over 10 million a day ... I can fully relate.
Cheers.
Well Oldsoldier refuses to say it so I'll have to bust him out. All the supporting members money goes towards creating his army of sharks with frickin' lasers.
And as far as I know this is the only known photograph of him:
And as far as I know this is the only known photograph of him:
It is NOT a Gift or Donation Payment.
It is a Subscription Membership.
You receive Something in return for your Subscription and at the same time you are helping the service that has given you the opportunity to voice your Opinions on this Platform Freely.
It's really not That difficult to understand.
I cannot understand the bickering, nobody has Insisted you take a Subscription and Nobody here has requested anybody take the role of a Good Samaritan through the purchase of Membership.
Your Good Samaritan-ship should come from your heart as it does from many members here that cannot afford to take a subscription but their Excellent advice and teaching Skills are often the life blood and talking point on many ECF forums.
If you do not want to be a Subscriber, then Don't. There are NO Strong Arm Tactics when it comes to Subscriptions on ECF.
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