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Subject: 
Re: LUGNET Memberships
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.people
Date: 
Tue, 16 Nov 1999 02:27:54 GMT
Viewed: 
6201 times
  
In lugnet.people, "Richard Franks" writes:
In lugnet.people, Alex Roode writes:
Ummm...
I don't really want to pay anything... do I have to?

Nope!


And if I don't, will I still be able to post messages on LUGNET?

Yep! AFAIK, everything you see here today is free, and will continue to be so.
What memberships will give you is the ability to have an 'identity' on Lugnet,
and participate in Auctions where Lugnet is an active hub. There are a lot more
things to come in the future (see the long-term plan on the first web-page),
obviously including things we haven't even thought of yet! But for now,
membership for me means support for something that I think is worthwhile,
deserves to grow, and also a way to say thanks!

But as Todd wrote in the message that you responded to - membership isn't
something for everyone.


I'm sending out a follow-up message to clarify things...  I pasted a copy
below...

(Yuck, I hate sending out unsolicited e-mail in quantities like this -- it
feels like spamming.  :-(  Last time anything like this went out to everyone
who'd registered to post was about a year ago.  Once a year is more than
enough, if you ask me.  I wish I'd made a checkbox for "email me important
announcements about new LUGNET features" so that people who might not want
to see this wouldn't have to...)

--Todd



============================================================================

<Gulp!>  Sorry about the confusion, folks!

Several people wrote in and asked whether LUGNET memberships and/or the
fees were mandatory.

The answer is no -- definitely not.

Nothing about LUGNET is changing, except that something new (memberships)
are being added.  The memberships are 100% optional.  You don't have to,
and aren't expected to, become a member unless you yourself want to.

The word "membership" is somewhat confusing because LUGNET has only had
users up until now, and it's mostly only the old-timers who remember the
original LUGNET Plan documents which talked about memberships.  So...

  - A "user" is someone who accesses data in the system and reads news
    and possibly also posts messages.  (This is about 3000 people over
    the past year.)  And this is all free.  Nothing is changing here.

  - A "member" is someone who has all the capabilities of a "user" but
    also has a personal page on the website and an actual account with a
    password and a member ID number and lots of other neat things into the
    future (like holding auctions and participating in formal surveys and
    voting and things like that).

So, just to reiterate -- if you don't want to pay anything, then you don't
have to -- and you can keep using LUGNET exactly as you have been.

No money is being charged for news or data or anything like that.
Memberships are just something extra -- something to form the backbone
of new infrastructures being built atop everything else.

Here are a couple relevant pages describing a bit about memberships,

   http://www.lugnet.com/admin/plan/4.html
   http://www.lugnet.com/admin/plan/8.html

from the LUGNET Plan document which was published in late 1997:

   http://www.lugnet.com/admin/plan/

Again, I apologize for any confusion...I should have made it more clear in
the first message.

If anyone has any more questions, feel free to ask them on the lugnet.people
newsgroup:

   http://www.lugnet.com/people/

Over and out,
--Todd

p.s.  About 90 people have filled out membership enrollment forms so far
in the past 36 hours.



Todd Lehman wrote:
I'm happy to announce that formal LUGNET memberships are now available.  :)

Things won't be very fancy initially (no map or other web-toys yet) but this
gets the ball rolling and begins to pave the way for much more to come later
down the road.

At this point, the memberships probably aren't something for everyone, since
they don't actually do anything (for now, they just store data about you),
but it's still kinda fun.  Here's how to sign up:

   http://www.lugnet.com/people/members/join/

From there, you can hop to the actual enrollment form.  The form is quite
the little beastie to fill out, so I recommend printing a hardcopy and
jotting down a few notes before beginning.

Take your time filling out the form -- there's no rush to get into in queue
-- because the member ID numbers are assigned upon receiving the membership
fee, not upon receiving the completed form.  (In other words, while a day or
two might make a difference, a few minutes or hours certainly won't.)

It was suggested a while ago that the lifetime membership fee be a high
number since it was a for-life kind of thing, or to charge some sort of
periodic subscription fee, but we wanted it to be much more open and simple
than that, and, most importantly, easily affordable for anyone.

So we set it up that you pay what you think is fair, based on what the value
of LUGNET is to you, with the minimum being 10 dollars (U.S.) for lifetime
membership, leaving anything else up to you.

Enjoy!
--Todd

p.s.  Here's the announcement posting and its related thread if you're
interested in following along...    http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?n=376



Message has 2 Replies:
  Re: LUGNET Memberships
 
Umm...Todd, you said we can join but those who do not want to pay they do not have to, right? If so how come you cannot finish the form without filling the $____ parts out? For example if you leace it blank you get: "Information missing: Membership (...) (25 years ago, 16-Nov-99, to lugnet.people)
  Re: LUGNET Memberships
 
(...) so. (...) Lugnet, (...) more (...) I love e-mail! As long as it takes at least two minutes to read, I love it! (except for those dumb webpage newsleter thingies, I HATE those!) (...) Okay, I'm sorry if I don't wanna pay anything, but I don't (...) (25 years ago, 16-Nov-99, to lugnet.people)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: LUGNET Memberships
 
(...) Nope! (...) Yep! AFAIK, everything you see here today is free, and will continue to be so. What memberships will give you is the ability to have an 'identity' on Lugnet, and participate in Auctions where Lugnet is an active hub. There are a (...) (25 years ago, 16-Nov-99, to lugnet.people)

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