Well, at this time, the votes are 6 for and 1 against.
Here's a crazy idea that I'd like to throw out there for discussion... We all know that the value of the forum is in the contributions (postings and pictures) of our members. Better postings/info, more contributions, and a better "atmosphere" to make people comfortable (i.e., make them want to come back and make them want to participate) will result in more visitors returning more often and, if we run AdSense ads, more income.
I'd like to find a way to give back to the people who are making this forum great. If we put up some AdSense ads, there's a possibility of the forums earning several thousand $ per year. I'd like to take half of that and invest it back into the forums for enhancements and return the other half to the top contributors to the forums.
There are several ways we can work this out, and I'd like to get your thoughts on this. Maybe we can have a discussion here and if we end up with a few good options, we can set up a poll to find out which one we should use.
Here are my ideas... Let's pick a date each year (say, December 1) and take the top 10 or so forum contributors (by messages posted), not including myself, and either:
- pick one at random and send them a check for 50% of the ad income for the year, or
- share the 50% of the ad income among the top 10 contributors, with the most going to the top contributor and a sliding scale down to the #10 contributor, or
- share the 50% of the ad income equally among the top 10 contributors.
The only risk that I can see in this is that it might cause lots of low quality postings by people trying to get their numbers up. That wouldn't be good.
Here is the list of the contributors with over 100 postings as of this moment, with myself excluded:
- Hub - 884
- Romans - 512
- Kruz - 469
- blue07 - 462
- Steven14 - 329
- Rook - 304
- reevesmreeves - 290
- Toecutter - 257
- DogoZX - 256
- Slowninja - 210
- Badzx14r - 208
- JDC - 188
- Bud0212 - 187
- juicey69 - 140
- Philhnnss - 127
- masszx14 - 115
- privateer - 108
- lytnin - 108
If we're going to do this, we should count postings in the current year only.
It's just a wild idea. Maybe it's not a good idea. I dunno. Anyway, we can discuss it as much as we need to.
I'll work on getting the AdSense ads up in the next few days so we can get the income stream started.
Soooo..... Whaddyathink? -bg