I'm going to pay. I just wonder if its going to turn out the way HP wants it to. Please dont take any of this the wrong way. I really like surfing snowest. been doing so since 2001.
But, it seems to me that there weren't any problems before all of the changes started taking place this year.
I find the statement that snowest.com has lost money for it entire existence to be very hard to believe. I'm sorry but nothing that costs money runs on hopes and dreams.
The magazine and snowest.com go hand in hand. How many people saw something in the mag and then came here to read more about it. Or read about a product then bought it. Then the vendor buys more ad space with the mag.
I've stated this before. I know nothing about running a website. I do how ever run a sizeable farm operation. A profitable operation at that.
I only even mention this because, if something is having trouble floating itself from a profitablilty stand point, it needs to be evaluated why. Just throwing money at issue doesnt usually fix things without correcting the root of the problem.
All of the forums that i participate in, the free ones always have more members than the member only or limited ones.
I just checked, dootalk.com has 63,000 members. Vs. 35,000 here. Could it be demographics? Brand site? I dont know. But I still think the question should be asked. why do they have two times the membership?
Myself, I think just a simple sled site is great. I'm not sold on all of these new features. Seems like alot of fluff to me. People dont come here for fluff, they come here to hang with old buddies, meet new ones, and talk sleds. And sell something in the swapmeet once in a while. Thats it. Its just that simple.
If it aint broke, dont fix it. It seems like adding new fluff to snowest.com and making the hardware in place work harder and consume up more server processing power, just the opposite should happen? maybe thats a sign that its a bad idea? Just talking out loud. Like I said, i dont know the first thing about runnng a website. But why not cut the fluff and get things stabilized on the current sytem, since HP is having a money issure with floating the site. I dont see how buying a bunch of new hardware and then having the maintenece costs to support the new gear helps the situation when money is an issue to begin with. Not to mention you now have to pay for the new gear just to be even with where you are now, not counting bringing a return on the investment.
I will pay to be a member. I just hope all of the greatness of this place doesn't evaporate. That would be a real shame.
Signed, dumb cow milker who likes to surf snowest.
