Hi Mark,
I actually had a very long post right after yours and the first part of it was about the images. We used to have it just the way the Pantera forum had it - you had to click on the images. But, everyone complained about it, including myself, since it just doens't flow that well in my opinion. It takes forever to look at a series of photos. So, we have it the way it is now which I like better.
Keep in mind - bandwidth is not the problem it used to be. If we increase bandwidth by 100x in a month, yes, we'll be forced to move to a different level of service. But right now we are fine and I don't see us having a problem.
The problem right now is sorting out services (internal ones you do not see) and these "memberships" which are actually groups inside the software. The services are loosely linked to the groups and causing some softare problems with some ad software, again, none of this stuff you see. So I have not "decided" to keep imaging posting open to all, it is just that I am trying to fin danother way to do what I was trying to do last week. Image posting being closed to non-members was not a decision, it was a non-intended result of some other work we were doing. But it did raise a very interesting discussion.
Personally, I don't feel it a bad thing. If a forum provides you a service, that is hosting your photos for whatever reason, then it seems to make sense you'd be willing to support that forum. I completely disagreed with Jim though in that that people should pay to see photos, as apparently they do on Ferrari Chat. I don't have illusions that what we do here is so special it is worth money for people to pay to see, but maybe the F car crowd feels that way - to each his own.
In the end the people I feel that should pay to keep a forum or site running are the people that stand to profit from it - and those people are those that sell goods and cars to members of the forum. But, if we depended on income from those groups only we'd be sorely underfunded as only a couple support the forum in any way shape or form. So, it is good we have a tight community that gets along well and we work to keep things running via donations and personal time from various members such as Lynn and others, otherwise it'd probably not exist.
Ron
