Do you think there should be an option for Members to earn an Upgraded account rather than only through monetary donations? If so what should they have to do? Accumulate a certain amount of FP? If FP is used for criterion then how much FP for each Upgrade?
I like the idea of members having the option of "rewarded" upgrades. I don't know if I can speak for the amount of FP they would need to accumulate. Here are a couple things I thought of though.
Perhaps we could do a monthly or quarterly scenario where certain type of upgrade privileges are up for grabs. Maybe one month the option is a free RPG upgrade or something of that sort. The next month might be a "chat room pass" that is good at all times and not just between the evening hours. Once the upgrade for that month is decided then a post is created with the upgrade that is up for grabs. Members that are interested in the specific upgrade can respond to the post and either submit their name or someone else including why they feel they should be rewarded. Perhaps the post is only open for 24 hours or so. This means people would have to be online during a certain time in order to respond to the post or be actively watching for the post to show up at any time. If lots of people respond and are interested in the specific upgrade then we vote as to who we think should receive a reward, depending on their contribution here. Then if that certain person who is nominated uses that certain reward or upgraded privilege wisely for the month that they won it, then perhaps an upgraded account can be rewarded.
Just a thought. Might be more hassle then it is worth. Either way, I like your suggestion of earning upgraded accounts.
My idea is this: you should give premium membership (from one month to another) to those who manage to keep their activity rate at 100% the entire previous month. Ex.: if I have 100% activity rate in Sept., I'll get premium privileges in Oct. This way regular members will get the taste of the upgraded features and (1) will keep their rate at 100% (or you could decide to be 75-80-90%) or (2) will donate, thus becoming upgraded for a longer period without having to worry about the activity rate. How does this sound?
These are great suggestions however, there are obstacles of which I will share and you can continue to give feedback as you wish:
1. All scripts here are based on permissions that are integrated. For instance if you have Premium membership then you have access to everything Premium. It cannot be that you just have access to 'one' Premium feature, but to all. I coded it that way to make life easier since we have too many features to give permission for each one.
2. This will most likely be for Premium Membership as Raul indicated since it would be unfair for me to give away any higher upgrade since in most of these features I spend countless hours coding and designing and I think one can only truly appreciate them when a donation is made. This also encourages me to keep coding and designing in the Community.
3. The activity rating is good, but it is hard to track. Also someone could come one day and blitz a Board and then post nothing for the rest of the month and then claim they have earned the 'prize'.
4. This is why I originally associated this with FP, since this is something a member would have to work for over time.
More feedback welcomed.
Well, my view is quiet different to the rest
I am not in agreement with "Earning Upgrades", I would be in agreement if we have a huge community of people killing themselves posting constantly and helping the site to grow, then it would be great to award those who try their best but this is not the case right now. Very few people decided to be a "loyal" part of our family therefore I think in order to reach this thinking, all of us need to work very hard in order to get things going, how do we do that?, showing interest in threads, posting, suggesting new ideas, referring to people, etc. The site will continue running with or without us, but if we feel we are part of the "family", then we will want to try our best and see the site grow and become a great place for everybody to enjoy. And then we can talk about earning upgrades...just my opinion of course. *smile*
I do not think there should be an alternative way to get an upgraded membership. I think it costs money to run this forum. It costs even more to manage the extra benefits that are a part of the upgraded accounts. I think those who help financially with that should get the extra benefits because they help pay for the added costs as well as contribute to the overall financial support of the forum
Now, if a member lives in a country where the exchange rate is really awful and contributing would be really beyond reach for the average person, then an exception can be made. However, I think they would need to be an active regular participant for quite a long while. At least a year. Then, maybe they could be given an upgrade for a finite period of time as long as they were contributing in some other way.
I think anything else has too great a risk of abuse. For example posting blitzes.
I've been thinking about this for a couple of days. I don't have a problem with "earning" an upgrade for meeting specific goals. However, I think it should be temporary -- periods of, say, 15 to 30 days -- and on a continuous "earning" basis. Okay, so I earned 1000 FP this month (high number just for an example), for a month I'm on Premium. During that Premium month, if I don't earn 1000 FP, then my Premium status expires and I'm back to Basic. Ongoing Premium status should be paid for, in my opinion.
Well here is the latest that I have been publishing on other sites and basically only in this way would I consider Upgrades without Donation: