RandyTF said:
For me the best part of this site are the jokes and cartoons but that's just me. I do post occasionally when I see a thread that interests me and it has been enough posts to continue to look at and participate in classified ads. So I don't really think the policy is that strict.
But, since there is a classified section, it would be great if it were expanded to aid all of us who are enthusiasts to have a bigger audience. It has gotten a lot more difficult these days for private folks to sell guns to each other. Opening that up to more people would be a great service. Something that would also be 2nd Amendment friendly.
As you've hopefully read (since I've posted it countless times), the purpose of this site is NOT to act as a venue for buying/selling firearms. It's not "Backpage Lite". That is NOT the reason this site exists - it's an added benefit to the members who actively participate as contributing members of the AZS community.
Further, remember that those jokes and cartoons you enjoy wouldn't be there if someone wasn't providing that content. Like that's a draw for you, other firearm-related posts and content is what brings others to the board for them to read, comments and discuss - not just passively read it. The key is that people need to actually provide that content - and the more that's provided, the more people chime in on it, more discussion occurs and more content is generated. The "occasional posters" or the ones that just like to browse and read without participating - which has been the
vast majority of people on this site - don't help in that regard. We need to change that metric so that the majority - or at least a considerable amount more - provide content rather than just consume it.
You are forgetting or conveniently ignoring that fact that it isn't free to run a web site. It requires monthly hosting expenses that scale as usage increases, code upkeep, updates, time spent maintaining, etc. While I've been paying that out of my own pocket for 2 years now, that's not sustainable long-term and the hope of all web sites like this is to offset that with advertising revenue or membership fees to at least break even by covering the operating costs, or make a bit to cover time and other intangibles spent by me or developers. To make a site attractive to advertisers (we have ZERO after 2 years), you need to have more visitors, more people, more users. To bring in more users and people, you need to have more fresh, new and relevant
content. Letting *everyone* post/read ads, might attract more people, but provides little to no new content as they rarely post. Look at the number who are "complaining" about the enforcement of the new policy who have been around for 2 years and have 10 posts - how is that helpful to the AZS community?
But if you insist that you only want access to the classifieds and don't want to help by spending some of your time and knowledge by providing some content, you can just put your money where your mouth is and become a patron supporter of the site to get access to the classifieds. Either way, if you want to use just that one feature (the classifieds), you have those two options - but I can't afford to keep paying out of my own pocket indefinitely for everyone's convenience. That's the bottom line. People who are complaining seem to think they are entitled to this and that I should pay for them to be able to use it. I don't understand that mentality.
