Slug, It Is TIME To Make Everyone Payup...

[trrsranch]

Slug, Please set a permanent deadline of say two weeks for everyone to payup or DELETE their accounts. All these problems due to lack of users paying their share is just NOT fair to those of us who do pay. All the hours I've spent arranging my photos are down the tube as they are scattered all over the place. Way too many Internet Sites have gone belly up due to weak management. It is TIME for you to step up to the plate and make it mandatory. Without the freeloaders we won't keep having so many problems with over loaded servers. Please do this for your Loyal, PAYING Customers and QUIT fooling around with the 'FreeLoading Never Pay'ers'. You have a great site and that is the only thing you owe us paying customers. Much more of this and the good, paying customers will be looking elsewhere for a photo album site and I don't think any of us want to do that. So give these people who haven't paid two weeks from today and if they haven't paid by then, they just ain't gonna pay, PERIOD, so DELETE their albums!!!

BTW, I do hope that all the photos will be returned to our pages and in the order we've put them in. If not it is going to be a nightmare.

Thanks Bud...

[griffin]

I think so too. Frequent down time is annoying. Well, it may not relate to any free riders here but I begin to feel I want my money back.


Griffin.

[valsharp]

<p>I certainly haven't experienced 'frequent downtime', since I joined a year ago.</p><p>And given that we don't exactly know why the current outage has occurred, I wonder why anyone feels the need to immediately start scapegoating the non-payers.</p><p>This is Slug's baby, not a democracy, and 23USD certainly doesn't give me or anyone else the right to tell him how to run his business. I admire the generosity he has shown, and I'm subscribing to that as well as to having my own gallery space.</p><p> The current situation is unusual, and I'm missing the service badly at the moment, but he's managed it just fine up till now, and I have confidence he'll continue to do so in the future.</p>

[shaun]

I have to agree with valsharp, there has been very little down time until now. Down time before now has been a few hours at best. With any online service some downtime is to be expected no matter how big the company or service.... It's certainly been worth the money as far as I'm concerned. There is no better photo site, no question. I am sure that Slug will have everything back again soon.

Shaun

[minoltaman]

Two weeks is quite short and Slug would lose all of the marketing advantages ha has by having those 'potential customers' here. Two weeks is possibly too short for people to evaluate the service I think.

I do agree all of the inactive and very large free accounts need to go, and go soon. I also think more of the features of the non-payers need be limited to give them more of a reason to upgrade. Just cuz we paid the giant sum of 23 dollars does not give us the right to tell Slug what to do at the first sign of trouble.

I think all of the free acoounts should be place in a secondary members list. The paid customers should have more of an advantage than just direct linking and a couple small things. My US$.25.

[trrsranch]

shaun and valsharp, I'm not sure if either of you know what and how much it takes to run a site like this? Literly thousands of web business's went broke in the late 90's and early 2000's due to cost/expenses being more than income. Slug himself has mentioned to everyone here that it takes money to run this site. When you have a bunch of people using this or any site for free where others pay their way and the servers go down due to too much traffic, I think anyone with the slightest bit of grey matter can figure out that EVERYONE should carry their fair share of the load.

I was in NO way saying anything bad about Slug, as he has been great over the years. I for one want PBase to succeed and someone has to pay the bills for that to happen. Glitches in the past has been because of too much traffic on the server(s) and Slug has already upgraded a couple of times. Servers, routers and T1 lines are not cheap. A couple weeks ago we were experiencing the little red 'x' in place of our photos. This is usually server overload, if I'm not mistaken. Slug addressed it and fixed it.

Have a good one and hopefully the problem will be fixed soon.

[trrsranch]

minoltaman, two weeks is too short???????? Slug has been asking everyone to pay up for a year now. It is time for the FREELoaders to pay up. Most of us evaluated this site within an hour. If it takes someone two weeks then they should take up another hobby. The people who are still using this site for free know what we have. If they haven't paid up by now, they NEVER will. It is that simple!!!

[flashboy99]

people with multiple free accounts to bypass paying is a problem also.... and a very low way of getting out of paying 23 bucks....

[zevs]

Hi everyone!

There is one thing we can do NOW to show our continued trust for slug and his gang and PBase and that is buying more space! I just did that, I think I will need it during the year anyhow, but doing it now is a good gesture of appreciation for a fantastic site I think!

Zevs

[minoltaman]

Trrsranch. Yup 2 weeks is too short for some folks. Some peeps don't have a lot of time to spend at this. By the time hey figure out the galleries, layouts, and advantages of pbase they could be well past the two weeks. Or they may need a week or two to scrounge up the 23 bucks. Some folks only uplaoad a few images perodically and don't need an account til later. Their are a hundred other reasons I am sure.

It took me about 3 minutes to decide. And I was more than happy to pay and will be paying for more space in the future. I think I was a trial member for longer than two weeks. If I had been deleted I would have went elsewhere just to check it out. Any biz Slug keeps here is biz not paying his competitors....even if they are not paying him. Ahhh....sorta lika aol.

[vsteven42]

Paying a user fee may not give anyone the right to change how the site is run, but it most definitely gives users the right to say how they think things should be run or how they would like things to be run. Obviously that conveys not obligation on the part of Slug, but it may convey that if a user doesn't like the site, they won't pony up their 23 USD next time around.

VES

<p>I certainly haven't experienced 'frequent downtime', since I joined a year ago.</p><p>And given that we don't exactly know why the current outage has occurred, I wonder why anyone feels the need to immediately start scapegoating the non-payers.</p><p>This is Slug's baby, not a democracy, and 23USD certainly doesn't give me or anyone else the right to tell him how to run his business. I admire the generosity he has shown, and I'm subscribing to that as well as to having my own gallery space.</p><p> The current situation is unusual, and I'm missing the service badly at the moment, but he's managed it just fine up till now, and I have confidence he'll continue to do so in the future.</p>

[srijith]

A confession - I try not to pay up as far as I can. I do it only if I find the site that great or if some feature I want is available only for paid customers. I am not a pathological "free rider". I am sure most people are like that. In these cases, forcing (instead of easing us into the notion) would just have the reverse effect.

Give enough time to make this decision, bring in enough limitation for non-paid members and I am sure a lot of people will pay up. slug can even bank on pbase's community feeling to get people to pay. I remember when kuro5hin.org used that method to raise thousand of $ in days from (mainly) pauper geeks like me

Pbase has an enormous user base. It will be mad of the managment team to loose them by pushing that hard.

[trrsranch]

srijith, I think one PLUS year is more than ample time for a person to decide if they like PBase or not. Not trying to be sarcastic, BUT, it is VERY Obvious that there are quite a few here taking advantage of those of us who DO Pay, and ultimately are taking advantage of Slug as well. If a user is not checking, adding or deleting his/her photos within a year, then I'd say they have NO interest in a photo album in the first place.

Slug can give everyone two weeks and after they've tried PBase for the two weeks they have to decide whether they want to continue using and paying for their album rights. How much time are we given to use and decide whether we want that car? Truck? Motorcycle? Boat? House? Circular Saw? Computer? Clothes? Food? Beer? LOL OK, you get the point. If a person cannot figure out whether or not PBase is what they want in a two week period, then they probably should take up Tiddley Winks instead.

TWO WEEKS IS MORE THAN FAIR FOR A USER TO DECIDE. After that, I'd say they have NO intention of EVER Paying!!! Each time a new user shows up, Slug can give them a 2 Week Free Trial, after which they make payment arrangements OR they lose their album and privaleges on PBase. Freeware works like this...some giving up to 30 days....BUT, the bottom line is There HAS To Be A Cutoff Period in fairness to those of us who DO PAY!!!

[rnold]

I purchased $23 more space the night before pbase went down...

so. did I cause all this? LOL

for the record: I don't mind paying for services provided.

no problem-o at all.

*pixelmaid

[trrsranch]

minoltaman, LOL...OK, they can afford a camera and film and development and a computer and possibly a scanner, YET, they can't afford $23????????? C'mon, give me a break! That is weak!

Slug can decide on the time frame...whether 2 weeks or some other time frame. but, shutdowns like we're experiencing is not helping PBase out in the PR dept. of those of us who do pay. I had time available this past weekend to work on my albums but, now that time is lost. For some who have their PBase account on Google (like some Universities and web sites I've seen) long down time like this can actually cost a business or institution thousands of dollars.

IT IS ONLY FAIR THAT EACH AND EVERYONE OF US PAYS OUR FAIR SHARE!!! If one doesn't feel like paying, fine! They can move on and use Yahoo or MSN or someother site not nearly as professional as PBase is. This latest shutdown should be a wakeup call for all of us. Look at what has happened to Raging Bull. They've lost half of their posters since Rusty sold it to CMGI. And now it is a cess pool like Yahoo. Slug can give any new user a grace period BUT, at some point they MUST pay or leave. It really is very simple. If a user doesn't have much time to spend here like you say, then fine...once he decides he wants to use PBase, he can pay and he has a whole year to download photos on his timeframe. That has no bearing on paying within two weeks after trying PBase. And like I said, if they only have a few photos to post, then possibly Yahoo or MSN is the best place for them. PBase is suited for those of us who have a bunch of photos.