Thread: Boonex is now going to charge to ask questions

They announced today that they are changing Unity to force users to pay a lifetime membership of $5 for the privilege of being able to respond to posts, ask questions, blog post, or otherwise participate in their forums.

Announcement here

They claim this is to reduce the spam posters (a.k.a. non-essential users). IMHO, it is to cater to certain members on Boonex who have complained too much that newbies are not welcome there.

This is a very poor business move and I can see them losing a lot of legit (Non spammers) users to OSDate or other software. To alienate the very substance of users and force them to pay to "play" with the others is wrong. I know $5/lifetime is very small indeed, but I am going on the principle.

I think in Australia, I heard the sound of a gunshot shooting their owner in the foot.

If they are doing it to "verify" people, through payment (as most payment providers require at least some level of verification) - then they could have gone with a micro payment at least... $0.99 or less... or just enough to cover the costs of the transaction... usually about $0.30 cents.

Smoge

I dunno Smoge, I can almost see a site taking advantage of the discord of Legit users and start enticing those members over to there site for free discussion. (*hint* *hint)

I even had the idea to do that myself when I read that, but instead of doing that since I am not a Dolphin user anymore, just going ahead and letting the experts do it.

I may go back to Dolphin later, but I can assure you that it won't be their version, probably a heavily modded one since it is opensourced.

I've been following this over at the expertzzz site, and It just amazes me that so many people would complain about paying a lousy five bucks. If it keeps out the spammers and helps improve the product and the support, then I'm all for it!