Would you PAY if GFY *CHARGED* for the SEARCH FUNCTION?
 

Let's admit it, despite the constant charges of too many BS threads at GFY there's a TON of useful info and nuggets here. The old free search system exacts a heavy cost on their infrastructure (despite being limited to 1 year or 2 year searches). So I'm asking this question: if GFY were to charge for search to offset its costs would you PAY for this feature?

I would rather pay if GFY itself charged.

Free search for the users, but you must pay to use GFY.

I see where you're coming from. While it may cut down on "noise" it might cut down on the freewheeling spirit/ambience that makes GFY unique.

I wouldn't pay a single cent to use the search nor would I pay to use gfy.

This board is a cash cow and it's pretty obvious that not a cent is spent on trying to upgrades / maintenance. Hell, how long is it since TD left and they still haven't replaced him.

Ya, why would anyone want to pay to come and talk shit on a board? What would GFY be without the trolls? Boring I say.

:2 cents:

what he said.

one of the worst ideas lately....

forum and it's features are here to serve it's users, not vice versa...

As a past advertiser here I will say in public the reason I stoped advertising here was the sheer amount of surfers, non webmasters, and quantity of fake nicks (fake views). So less users though a higher concentration of webmasters would make for more reasoning for advertising.

Maintenance issues really would not be an issue if there was not a 10 to 1 ratio of surfers to webmasters. A Tsunami of sigwhores, five thousand fake nicks stirring up shit, a whole series of bot wars trying to win contests or raise their post counts.

As for the spirit/ambiance, if you were here when it first opened up that was far from the case and it was 100% webmasters. Hell I would say the best drama was when it was real webmasters.

i agree....

Nope, I wouldn't. I might pay to use GFY itself.... particularly because paying would mean weeding out a lot of the riff raff.

Think about it, no more contest whore/post bots... no more "would you hit it" threads. People would be here to make more money than what they pay to be here.

At least, that's the theory. Should that fail, I'd cancel my membership.

NO! But I would pay a small ($x.xx) monthly fee for RSS.

Have a charge for those who want to post with sigs and use that to pay for the search.

:2 cents:

Your suggestion carries some good points.

The day they allowed people to sell their sigs or get paid per post is the day this place went to shit.

The reason there are 10 times more surfers here than webmasters is because a surfer can make $200 a month for posting a zillion times and gets to look at porn while doing it.

If we kick out the surfers, they could run this place on half the equipment and it would still generate just as much if not more ad revenue.

No I don't use search

The advertiser value might also go up since the audience is "purer"--ie., online entrepreneurs and marketers. I see it as a battle between mass page views/community vs. highly targeted page views/specialist community

as long as we processed for it...