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UF funding suggestion | by Frapazoid | 2002-06-10 06:14:51 |
| My thoughts |
by Buffy_Fett |
2002-06-10 07:12:31 |
I can see how this makes sense from a marketing perspective, but not from a geeks perspective. Illiad is obviously in favor of Open Source, free information, etc. However he has to pay the bills, so he turns to the obvious method of advertising. He has done well with his choice, as there are no PUAs or annoying Flash animations covering our content here. Unfortunately this is not enough so he turns to his loyal fans for voluntary support. Wanting to retain all the information available for free, the only benefit he can offer is the lack of the advertisements that the subscriptions are covering. Charter members got a special bonus in the form of an exclusive card/letter, but that was a one-time offer (unfortunately for me) and that content was never offered for free, thus we cannot claim he is denying it to us. This site is, and always has been, completely available in its entirety to everyone. I, for one, heartily congratulate Illiad for this difficult-to-maintain stance.
Now if we were to go to this new idea with the limited strips, it would no longer be completely free to everybody. Dilbert is large enough and self-contained enough that you only need to read back a month to "get" all the jokes. UF is different. There are long-running storylines (such as the missle silo) that with only a month you might not be able to fully grasp everything. There is also another thing to consider. Dilbert is a comic strip. There is also much merchandise but is is essentially no more than a comic strip. UF is much more than that. It is a community. There is a message board which I feel is integral to the strip. If UF was just the comic then I wouldn't mind so much just being able to read a month. But with the comments I often find myself referring to previous comments and strips. I have actually been disappointed before because I wanted to reference a particular Dilbert strip that was applicable but I couldn't just link to it. I feel that limiting the strip like this would do serious damage to not only the current populace (non-members) but would severely limit the new potential.
As to the books, they do have much real value. I didn't learn about UF from a friend or by browsing, I was at my local library browsing the comic books and I spotted one called "User Friendly: The Comic Strip". Being somewhat of a geek, I began browsing through it and knew imediately that I had found a treasure. In addition, I have only 56K dialup at home and it is agonizingly slow trying to read through the archives on such a connection. Having the book on hand is much easier to sit down in a comfortable chair and read at my own pace. Also it is so much easier to show a friend a few strips or a sequence without having to tell them to remember this address/date or printing out lots of strips.
This is not a flame, I can see your reasoning behind this. I just happen to (heartily) disagree, for the reasons I have mentioned. I cannot currently afford a membership, though I do plan on getting one ASAP, not for the ad removal but to support UF.
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