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 |   Members help other members with technical questions and problems using Writing.Com! |
1. The current usage limits have been in place since January. For several years before that free/guest access was not available during heavy server usage. The ownership limitations have been in effect in stages since early 2013. 2. This so-called fairness complaint has been addressed many times. You might find these posts informative: "Re: Server Volume error"  by The StoryMaster  due to the advent and proliferation of ad blockers, we've had to significantly limit the amount of server resources available to free accounts as they produce a whole lot of load on the servers with no revenue to pay for it. "Re: Re: Re: Re: Server volume message" by The StoryMaster It was indeed always the case that free members would view ads to monetize their usage of the site, while paid members paid to cover their own usage of the site. Even then, though, it was difficult to monetize the type of content the majority of interactives on Writing.Com contain. Brands with money don't allow their ads on adult, giantess, shrinking, fan-fic, erotica, etc etc. Most readers of interactives didn't want the type of adult-oriented graphical ads we were allowed to use accompanying the written content they were reading... so limitations were the best option to provide the service ongoing, rather than ending it completely. As noted, ad blockers, now a standard part of most browsers, have more or less ended the days of many sites monetizing based off advertising. Members pay for their own usage and storage... not the usage of other members, most particularly when it comes to interactive stories where our resource limitations are in effect. I understand some members do not and will not like this. We apologize to those members but do believe our model is the best to continue on with our 18+ years of non-corporate, family owned offering to writers. We have to make decisions that we feel are best for the long term, for the community and site as a whole. It should be noted there are few, if any, sites that allow the type of uncensored, unfiltered content that we do; we're extremely proud of our independence and ability to offer a free-speech venue. We do our absolute best to accommodate everyone wherever possible, but we do realize we'll never be able to make everyone 100% happy 100% of the time. "Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives" by The StoryMaster Our history, of course, goes back to 2000 when Writing.Com was opened as "Stories.Com"... as a completely free interactive story site. Our goal was to be a sustainable free venture, supported by advertising only.  The history as it were, we realized that was not feasible or sustainable. We changed to offer memberships and more while plenty of other sites came and went, attempting a free model of some kind or another... With the advent of ad blockers, many content sites are moving to outright paywalls. But there's a variety of models for this which are sustainable. We've adopted a mix of that; free to a limit, then paywall after -- and only for the interactive stories segment of Writing.Com. Our 18 years of making decisions for sustainability, and demonstrating those in practice, should give us a little extra-credit. "Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives" by The StoryMaster Perhaps it's not properly understood that the Interactive side of Writing.Com has always been a non-revenue generating drag on the "actual" Writing.Com site. Interactives being a niche more "gaming" aspect with, well, let's just say for many folks with rather "interesting" reading preferences... compared to the portfolio services and "writing" community that are actually the main "revenue" generating side of Writing.Com. I hate to say subsidized, but indeed, the non-interactive side has always subsidized the interactive side. Period, no doubts about it, no questions from our end - it's a fact. "Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Server volume message" by The StoryMaster Yes, our policy is absolutely "more drastic" now than it had been for limitations in the past because it's simply just come to that. The point of this particular response of mine being that in our 18 years, we've tried many, many (many) ways to monetize the interactive stories. They are a small subset of the actual writing here on Writing.Com but the highest (by far) use of resources. We're happy to continue providing them, unlimited in use to our paid members (6 cents per day for a 1 year basic) and with limitations to free members and visitors to the site. This is not to offend anyone, but instead to be realistic with the economies of running such a project for the long term. As many other free venues have come and gone, we remain strong and stable, and with our proper planning, will do so for a long time to come. "Re: Re: Site is becoming unusable" by The StoryMaster as it stands, we have no plans to increase the spending on our free member resources. To be sure, though, we're still providing a lot of free resources. Hope that helps.  Northernwrites___ ~~Image #6000 Sharing Restricted~~ ~~Image #603504 Sharing Restricted~~ |
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