Agreed - why not a gofundme or something similar, with a goal constantly updated so people can see when it's time to contribute to the kitty again? Then, just a little reminder to ante up when necessary along with a clickable link should get it done.

Bob said:



I find it had to believe that Doug et al. do not have the traffic and bandwidth stats for RyPN easily available to them.

There are also many parts of the existing site that are either obsolete or misconfigured -- see the recent issues with Matt Austin's staybolt poll -- and some of the fixed content (articles and the like) are addressed so seldom that, while they may constitute a fairly large amount of disk storage, they would involve little or no bandwidth most of the time. Is BBS traffic, even with the odd embedded image, all that bendwidth-intensive (compared to the usual modern craptacular 'social' site with all that blinkin' bloomin' buzzin' ad confusion?

Honor system for paying for RYPN would look like this;

Joe Smack Talk would say to himself (and already does say to himself and is saying to himself while he watches this discussion.)

"Hey, I'll hold off on paying until the last minute and as long as they meet the goal for the year, I will not have to pay......but, I'll still be able to get on and engage in my personal attacks and my faceless jabs and stabs at others when the reality is, I don't know jack about what I am talking about.....but it will still be free thanks to the rest of those who pay. Suckers.....I can even bad mouth those who paid for my freedom to bad mouth them."

I'll wave my flag proudly:

Mitt Romney said in the 2012 elections, which I was reminded of the other night, that;

"Nothing of any value is free. We all need to pay something." A free RYPN to those who abuse it is still a free RYPN abused by so many that use it for the wrong reasons. Pay for it and you have to follow the rules and be a member of the club. If you want to respect something, pay for it. If you want it have admiration for something, pay for it. I think the term is "Pay to play?"

My vote is no honor system. No paying by a few kind donors for the rest to show no respect and no admiration. If one person pays, we all pay. No pay, no play and it may clean things up a bit. Maybe?

If you think having a paid-subscription model cuts down on the "riff-raff" and insult-flinging, and improves the signal-to-noise ratio, I invite you to examine TrainOrders.com--particularly anything relating to UP steam of late.

I agree fully there. I let my membership lapse immediately once I saw the mess there and have never missed it.
It's also not laid out nearly as good as this forum, too.

You and Mitt really need to read "Free" by Chris Anderson. Seriously. You can afford $10. http://amzn.to/1il8OOp

Mitt's just wrong. He's confused about currencies. He's trying to put everything in terms of USD, when on the Internet, the relevant currency is attention. And QoS. Nobody wants a broken or hostile site at any price.

The upshot is, paywalling a site kills it.

I don't mind kicking in a few dollars per year for the higher quality of probably about 40% of what's posted here, and ignoring the other 60%. For an online forum, that's a high signal to noise ratio. I think it's worth it, just to have a ready means of broadcasting a question or idea to kick around now and again in a place where it can be ignored by the raving foamers, while getting some worthwhile responses from the people who actually have something worth reading to say. I'm a pragmatist, gave up on idealism decades ago..... it's not ever going to be perfect, but I'll gladly help support the best available. What I need is a ready and convenient means of doing so.

What he said... Quick, name the biggest site on the internet? Facebook! How much does it cost? Nothing!

How many paywall railroad websites are there? One that I know of, and that's TrainOrders. It's an exception and there are two reasons for that. 1) Apparently free accounts are relatively easy to come by. 2) You can read much of the content for free.

That is the only "pay to play" website that I ever visit. How about the rest of you? How many websites, of any kind, do you subscribe to? That should tell you something.

The key to a successful forum is an active membership. Creating a paywall will stifle that and kill the place off. In any case, the amount of money needed is insignificant. A few hundred per year at most. Nobody's trying to get rich, they just need to pay for hosting. I'm sure there are folks here that could write a check for the whole thing and not be too bothered about it.

Well, not in monetary payments, but it DOES cost you--in privacy, etc.


You forget Trains.com, tied into the subscription for Trains Magazine. All the Kalmbach magazines have online content available only to subscribers of the specific magazine in question, as well as enough free content to entice web surfers.

I don't bother with the proprietary crap on any of the Trains sites, and am frequently irritated when someone links to one of those NewsWire articles that only gives the first couple of sentences of an often flack-grade article. The blog columns and the forums are free, and if they started charging for them I wouldn't bother with them.

One of the great things about the RyPN community is the willingness of so many here to provide free advice ... quality advice and good experience ... at no charge. That should not change. One thing I thought about (for a few minutes) was establishing a "priority access" to experts following some of the Web "expert advice" sites (where you pay to get higher-quality information, manuals, etc.) - but so many of us are willing to provide, or even e-mail or photocopy, material for colleagues in need. Why ruin that with a pricetag?

I am tempted to add another category to the current 'split' between 'interchange' and 'railfanning' -- a board just for acrimonious opinions, slanted innuendo, loaded questions and the like which have valid technical or preservation content, or at least subject. At any time one of the moderators thinks the tone is getting extreme, instead of being high-handed he or she can shoot it over there, where those of us who remember the old freewheeling Ampex list can 'take what we need and leave the rest'. From what I understand, adding this to an existing phBBS site involves trivial storage and bandwidth expansion, and I think it would solve the predominant remaining concern expressed by the serious preservationists, including 'not a serious preservationist', who use and do not abuse the Interchange.

(This category is, of course, also the lightning rod for all the April Fool's humor; it lets all of us who are playful have our fun, while keeping the serious content undeniably serious...)

I was introduced to this forum by the late Kevin Gillespie, who was one of the moderators. Since then I have viewed the forum almost daily and gleaned both historic information and news about preservation efforts. I have also used this forum to post information about the preservation activity I am involved in, the Keokuk Union Depot, and have occasionally posted in other threads. I want to see RyPN continue to serve both the rail preservation and railfan communities -- which, I suspect, are largely coextensive.

I have a server operation (through GoDaddy) for my particular rail and other interests, but I don't have the technical expertise to offer advice on how to migrate and preserve this RyPN forum. However, I will pledge a contribution (tentatively, in the $50 range) to aid whomever is legitimately able to take on that task. When that happens -- and I believe someone will step forward -- please make an announcement to that effect and provide instructions on how to forward my contribution.

Richard C. Leonard, Ph.D.
Hamilton, Illinois

Several years ago (5?) the hat was passed (during 501C3 days?) to support RyPN. Does anyone have any information about the results of that appeal? Maybe we could do that again?

-John

I must apologize to one and all. I've just spent 3 days in the ICU and one more in the ordinary part of the hospital, I am overwhelmed with the responses to our plight. I am quite confident that today, I could win a wrestling match with a small kitten, and will wade through everything and involve the rest of the staff between naps.

Which brings up a critical factor:

Share the "keys" with enough of the right people, and don't all fly on the same plane or attend the State Of The Union address together.

I have been called in once to help "rescue" a useful, well-regarded website after someone's untimely passing. Only one person had the necessary account information, and thankfully in his case the account passwords had been saved by his browser, and I was able to gain access and change the passwords for the family so they could hand it off to a new caretaker. And right now I have to once agauin annoy people by handing them necessary account information in a sealed envelope for another website I'm going to be babysitting for a bit, just in case *I* get run over by a streetcar or whatever.

Be cool and rest easy, Doug. Bob's got you covered, and most of us are ready to kick in to the kitty when you need it. Use the kitten for purr therapy, it works great.