OK, I know I am going to get completely slammed, called cheap, whatever. I am not yet a supporting member, but peer pressure is not giving me any incentive to become one. But before you guys chase away all of the non-supporting members, you might want to ask the moderators (offline) whether they would prefer 100 supporting members or 1000 non-supporting members.
"Non-supporting members" support this site with thousands of clickthroughs, views, purchases, and statistics, all of which yield advertising revenue. I won't discuss the business model for the forum since I have not seen it, but I would guess that advertising revenue exceeds "supporting member" revenue, and if only the supporting members were here there would be no advertising revenue. If the nonsupporting members were to all get chased away by this "pay up or you suck" attitude, then you guys would need to send in a lot more cash.
Have I benefitted enough from this site to pony up $5, $10, $50 or more? Maybe, maybe not, but that is my choice not yours. My thousands of click throughs and numerous purchases do plenty of good. And though I don't really want to point this out, this is a commercial site, not a charity site. (sorry Sal, Reed, et al, but this needs to be said at this point). The moderators really can't chime in here since you put them in an awkward position, my guess is that they appreciate what you are trying to do but wish you wouldn't do it quite this way.
Threads like this one do not add any value at all to this site, and while all of the supporting members are going to want to blast away at me, think about whether or not it is helpful to the site to do so. My $20 will not undo the harm that is being done by this thread (I personally will stay and click through no matter what you say, and I might someday become a supporting member if you guys stop acting like your $20 avatar purchase somehow makes you a better person).
Blast away. Let me help: "cheap bastard;" "trying to justify being a tightwad;" "jerk"
