Forum / Is it a money thing?

• 
  Dolemite

  Jan 16, 02:12am

  this loss of comment notification, loss of ability to send Invites, loss of ability to use different fonts, loss of ability to Center, loss of ability to Full Justify...

  I find Duotrope's Digest very useful, feel no one should be obligated to offer a great service for free (I wouldn't), and therefore gladly pay for it.

  I find Fictionaut very useful, feel no one should be obligated to offer a great service for free (I wouldn't), and am gladly willing to pay for it.

• 
  MichaelDickes

  Jan 16, 02:43am

  *note to self: Jose has too much money. Dock his next pay check and give it to the hungry writers.

• 
  Dolemite

  Jan 16, 03:00am

  "Jose has too much money."

  It is to snort und to larf...

  *snort*

  *larf*

  (und a free *kerspunclesnarff*

  Boot, I'd prefer zee old good compertunt Fnoot and would be willink to carf up a few burckles per moomph to mark it happle.

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Jan 16, 07:25am

  I would be willing to pay a small membership fee to cover more sophisticated and consistent technical support. It would greatly enhance the website.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Jan 16, 02:28pm

  Too late. Everyone's already inside the gate. They're demanding Facebook, MTV, unlimited access to endorphins... Didn't I see a Toyota ad here the other day?

• 
  Dolemite

  Jan 16, 02:53pm

  I don't see any ads anymore....

  Are they really there?

  I'm on Firefox.

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Jan 16, 03:43pm

  I see the ads when I log in to my husband's computer because he isn't a member. There are book ads on every page. As a member, I saw them at first, complained about them, and they faded away. I'd rather pay a membership fee than look at ads. It distracts from the content.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Jan 16, 03:54pm

  I forget my audience sometimes... never mind.

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Jan 16, 03:58pm

  I would rather look at ads than pay membership fee! Why? Because I don't look at them: it is easy to get rid of them even if you only read things on the computer. Software that helps you do this (at the push of one button) is free, like readability.com or getpocket.com and will work both on tablets and on regular computers. Check out readability's rendering of the current top story by Sam Rasnake:

  http://www.readability.com/articles/6kggzuab

  The ad money that's coming in probably doesn't pay for more than the server space and rare routine checkups...

• 
  Dolemite

  Jan 16, 04:04pm

  The ads never bothered me (and also figured they didn't bring in much more than overhead).

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Jan 16, 05:11pm

  Over time, if no technical upgrades are applied to Fictionaut, the site will turn into a kind of archaic place where people will go because of its retro chic, because of the OLD writers you can meet there (like myself) and because of the clean design, much imitated by many, but here you can see how it all looked like at the dawn of social media...people will put it in their CVs: "I hung on Fictionaut in 2010." There may even be a badge for making it through the forums and the stories and the groups and the search engine ALIVE. etc.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Jan 16, 06:42pm

  I don't know. The site becomes irrelevant over time, with many of the active people moving on. There will always be 'the next thing' on the internet... people leave when it becomes less interactive or overloaded with in-crowds, in-jokes and general chisnickery.

  There have been other active social sites for people who identify themselves as writers and I did belong... but darn if I can remember what they were called.

  This too will pass and maybe now is passing. It's been fun, though. I think the site's moving now from literary cabaret to something with less appeal. Of course, the membership can make it happen all over again, but the momentum needs a bigger wave than I can see here at present. The owners could make it exciting and I've heard a lot of good ideas in the past, but they need to be implemented. That's something the owners need to do.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Jan 16, 06:44pm

  Right now, if they charged a fee, I'd have no reason to be here... is what I'm trying to say.

• 
  MichaelDickes

  Jan 16, 07:21pm

  OK, OK. I'm going to pay Jose and James. Will that work?

• 
  Dolemite

  Jan 16, 07:32pm

  Don't forget Tony.

  NEVER FORGET TONY!

  I made that mistake, once...

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  I use this site as a

  (wait for it...)

  writing tool.

  As a place to work on my...

  writing.

  It also provides a handy back-up system for WIPs should my computer crash.

  As such it is of great value to me.

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Jan 17, 12:48am

  It's always depressing to come into a group thing and hear "Oh, those were the days. Those days are gone forever. Those were the days that really counted." I felt that way when I entered the radical feminist movement in the early seventies and the real movers and shakers were their own little club. I think it's ridiculous to imagine that a little technical upgrade to this technically quirky site would just turn it into facebook. And you have no idea what this still could become just because the first (superior) wave has left or is leaving.

• 
  Dolemite

  Jan 17, 01:56am

  "Oh, those were the days."

  W-R-I-T-I-N-G

  the act of creation,

  is alive in the moment

  or not.

  What was...was.

  It's either an active, living, thing or a static, dead, thing--not a posting and hoping for an Invite to the Online Gentlemen's Club, with its "Good job, Old Boy...have a brandy unt a ceegar...you're one'a us, now...you've MADE IT. Ain't we swell? And by all means DO post thick slabs of blah-blah in me next inane forum question, for how else are we to know who's one a' us?"

  There is no "making it."

  Posting here is NOT publication.

  There is only the search (and hopeful capture) of IT.

  This place helps me do that.

  I'd cough up a few buckles a month to keep that happening.

• 
  Sally Houtman

  Jan 17, 02:11am

  As someone with no creative energy in my daily airspace, I need that energy. I get that here.

  It is what we make it.

  She (Fictionaut) may be an old, slow, broke-down mare, but she's one I, too, would pay to ride.

• 
  Sally Houtman

  Jan 17, 02:27am

  What is chisnickery and, more importantly, where do I get me some.

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Jan 17, 03:33am

  I've started regularly publishing in on-line literary journals I never knew existed before Fictionaut. I'm so grateful for that. It's a wonderful little world and I appreciate all the connections. The effect on my writing life is HUGE. I'm sure the writers appearing in the fancy paper glossies think we're ants, but fuck them. They're just in their own "special" networks they got into by chance, luck or guile. I'm very resistent to sending out stamped envelopes with the internet available.

• 
  Dolemite

  Jan 17, 03:44am

  I'm not talking about publishing online.

  I'm talking about a mindset re this place.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Jan 17, 04:09am

  Chisnickery, often confused with a blue flowering weed that is used as an additive for coffee, esp. in the southern states, is a quality of satire that can be incautious and intemperate when used in metaphorical language.

  You can order it in tubes from the same company that publishes ads in the back of manly men's magazines... offering x-ray glasses and correspondence courses for locksmiths and private detectives.

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Jan 17, 10:13am

  I'm talking about a mindset primarily. I was just giving one example. I don't get the Chisnickery remark. It must have gone over my head. I do in fact have a brain injury. Maybe that's why.

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