A debate forum?

[DuckLady]

I am sure Nifty can explain better, but what it boils down to is he bought the BYC domain name and he is responsible for all hosting fees, which are usually based on traffic and bandwidth used. There are ads which help offset the costs. There are also ads on this message board that are not visible to registered users. I doubt he is making money off of this site especially when there is no charge for being a member, unlike other message boards which have subscriptions to use upgraded features that we get her for free. It is a lot of responsibility to run a message board this size.

 

[Barb Schuetz]

Thanks Terrie,
How much does a message board or domain or whatever end up costing?
Are the ads the only means to off set the costs?

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

Quote:
A LOT more than 99.99% of the people think.

Quote:
Offset costs and provide more features / tools for members.

But, I digress. The BYC staff has been discussing this and we won't be adding a debate forum. Everyone should feel free to openly discuss ideas and concepts while politely expressing their opinions (within the forum rules). If people want to debate we suggest they do it via email, Instant Messenger, or one of the many other less friendly / moderated forums out there (and there are PLENTY to choose from).

Thanks everyone for your comments. We appreciate the ideas and feedback.

 

[Barb Schuetz]

Niftychicken wrote: "A LOT more than 99.99% of the people think."

That doesn't tell me ANYTHING and who are "the" ppl?

Niftychicken wrote:"Barb Schuetz wrote:
Are the ads the only means to off set the costs?

Offset costs and provide more features / tools for members?

This makes no sense- how do offset costs provide funds to offset costs?

And- do you mean that by providing more feature/ tools for us members provides income to offset costs?

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

Quote:
We don't make available the information regarding costs of running this board, nor the funds generated by sales of store items, bumper stickers, or advertisements.

All that needs to be said is that even with all the above sources of funding, we're happy if we can break even. I promised Cindi 9 months ago that all the money generated from the forum would go back into the forum. This is how we got more smiley functionality, chat, mark as read features, version 1 & 2 of the "BYC Personal Pages", multiple redundancy daily forum database backup procedures, server upgrades, etc. etc. etc.

 

[Barb Schuetz]

I didn't realise it was such top secret information. And I didn't specifically ask how much THIS forum costs. I was just curious, but glad you defended yourself nonetheless. From what- I've no idea.
I don't know what time of day it is your way, but here it's after 1am. Maybe we're all just too tired to think straight.

 

[eggchel]

The questions regarding the finances and infrastructure involved in maintaining a message board may be of interest to someone starting their own forum, however, it is way off topic and getting off topic in threads is one of the complaints of members within this very thread!!.

Please remain on topic and please remain polite, even if you dont get the answer that you want.

Barb Schuetz said: I think all that's being requested is a place to agree to disagree on various topics in a place that's optional for members to be a part of. I don't think that this place should lack any of the forums rules or regs and on that note should be perfectly safe for young eyes.

If the debate section had all the same rules and regulations as the rest of the board, thereby making it safe for young eyes as suggested, then how would be any different than posting on the board?
We would still be trying to nip problems in the bud, get threads back on topic, and, deleting inappropriate language or locking threads that have disintegrated into fighting .... just as we do now.





Chel​

 

[Barb Schuetz]

First, I agree, it got off topic- sorry, I was just curious.
Second, you must not have read the thread in it's entirety.
Third, I thought Nifty pretty much ended that discussion when he said that there would not be a debate forum. Actually, I'm surprised the thread wasn't locked.

 

[Barb Schuetz]

And I didn't realize I was being impolite- my apologies.

 

[Alleyoops25]

Barb I personally dont see you as being offensive, I actually had the same questions. I never really knew how one gets a forum started, or what it takes to keep one going. I do like diversaty and some of the topics that have gotten closed in the past like the one about animal ID'ing with the government and a few other topics that were very informative, and interesting because we ended up with to many different oppions on it. I wished lilke the animals I.D. thing wouldnt had been locked. It was very informative, and it also offered up a lot of different web adress's so ne could decide for them selves wether or not it was a threat to them. Then two people decided to come in and start name calling and the thread got locked. I feel that if it were me incharge of this I would have probably deleted, the offensive posts, and keep the thread unlocked. However moderators I am not trying to step on your toes, but I thought since we have been discussing the debate forum and all the swabbles everyone has gotten into I think that it was a good time to bring that up. I have seen a lot of good topics get locked becuase some one got out of line. The is always going to be arguements its human nature. And out of the thousand some dd people the are on this forum, you can never expect that some where along the lines there isnt going to be spatts. But it shouldnt have to end the thread because of it. Not to many of the arguements on here have gone past a PG13 rating. I have only ran across one or two posts or threads that had used a lot of swearing, and propanity. And one of these was this last week when some young person got on here and posted about a sick chicken, they then came back and started swearing and name calling because no one knew what to do for them. Those are the ones I think should be locked, or Deleted.But not the ones that have debat in them as long as they all have sources as to what they are debating over. Debate in its self isnt bad, it gives one more views, on a certian point other than the starting topic. As long as name calling and swearing stays out and people can back up their arguments, the threads need to stay open.