edit note: It's my impression that iHub gets most of its income from ad money, and as the stock market got more bullish, and active, there's more interest in stock boards. There's more advertising as a result of this, and the more members there are, the more ads can be sold. Ads cost more in ratio to the more people who see them. It's to iHub's financial advantage to have more members of quality and to thereby be able to generate more members, and thus be able to make more money advertising. That's where the major money comes, in my opinon.
churak: Doug's a very good writer, and I am enjoying his posts.
I didn't intend to ask for an increase in posts for the free members. I did say that I've been okay with the 18 and it's probably good for me to discipline myself to stay within that number. However, as this service becomes more active and popular, and more and more interesting threads and discussions are started, it might be reasonable to increase the quantity of free posts by half or even double, for everyone.
It's to the advantage of the service to have the activity, as well as to the members to have more posting. This is my opinion, and it is certainly not an attempt to get the premium membership for free. The premium membership consists of many many quality features, like PMs, for example. I think it's a reasonable suggestion, given the growth of iHub, and a reasonable response to that growth.
You keep harping on my paying for membership here, and I keep telling you I will not do that. The fees are too high. If they were more reasonable, I and many others, would pay them. That's the bottom line for me, and no amount of pestering will change it.
If the service becomes unworkable for people, because they cannot do the basics here, many will leave. Me, I will not leave. I will just continue posting in two or three threads and not participate in the other threads, from which I might benefit and which also might benefit from my own participation. I'll simply confine my reading here and my posting here to the few threads that are most important to me. This is not a hardship for me, but I think the service loses from that.
Doug: I was going to suggest that certain boards be taken off the message count, as you have now suggested. I didn't make the suggestion, because I think the criteria for that privilege might be hard to quantify. As an active trader myself, I could post dozens of posts in a day if I were simply reporting my trades alone. That could probably apply to more than one board here. It's not a bad idea. I'd endorse it.
I was going to suggest that the Q&A board be free of message counts, but it gets so littered with chatter already. If it were on topic, like this issue is, it would be good to keep it off the message count, in my opinion.
Linda
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