I’ll agree that it could potentially add to the professionalism of the forum. I somehow doubt that people that are pirating their software would be very likely to pay a fee to post on a forum.
But on the other hand, I think there would be far too much risk involved. For a few reasons:
-I would guess that many professionals simply wouldn’t bother, because they don’t really need this place. For that matter, most people won’t bother. It’s not so much the money, but the hassle. A couple hundred people would probably pay, while everyone else would find another site to post at, professionals included.
-I believe that one of the main things that draws people to this site is the image galleries. The quality of the work viewable there leaves an impression on people. Right now, new work is almost constantly flowing in. And a lot of the work in the finished 3d gallery forum is coming in from new members, less than 15 posts, who just joined up to show their stuff off. Regardless of how reasonable a $10 registration fee may be, not a lot of new people are going to sign up when they have to pay for it. Hell, the registration process is usually enough of a nuissance. So you would be cutting off the flow of new work to these galleries signficantly. And as less work shows up in these galleries, you’ll have fewer people wanting to register, and show off here.
-No matter how willing the community sounds when asked about how they’d feel if changes like this were implemented, there’s always going to be a backlash. People usually bitch (and some people are ludicrously pashionate in their bitching) when you try to add a few ads to the forums. I can’t imagine the kind of reactions you’d get from a registration fee.
-Expectations. People get mad enough over the critiques as is. Can you imagine how they’d be reacting when they PAID to be able to have their work critiqued? You can’t tell people that it’s just an open public forum, where people take time out of their busy schedules to help others for nothing, and that they should be thankful to be receiving any responses when there’s those extra expectations that come with paying a fee.
-Incentives. Honestly, for someone that hasn’t been around this place, and doesn’t know how they can benefit from it, how are you going to get them to sign up?
But above all, it’s being an open, public forum, and all the exposure that comes with that, that has made CGTalk as great as it is. Any registration fee keeps the forum from being as open, and completely takes that aspect of CGTalk away.
Hey, I’d pay it, gladly. But I believe that a registration fee would do this place far more harm than good. Hopefully adding a donation page will be enough to keep this place going as is. Beyond that though, what kind of exposure are the Ballistic Publishing books even getting? They have a few listed resellers - Gnomon School of Visual Effects, Motion Media, BreakPoint Books, Dosch Design, etc. That’s hardly any real mainstream exposure. It seems to me that in order for Ballistic Publishing to help keep this place alive (and really, they’re pretty much dead without CGTalk, since that’s where the majority of their material comes from) while still serving as a profitable venture for the people behind it, they’d need quite a bit more exposure. Imagine how the sales would improve if the books started showing up in Barnes and Noble, or something of the sort. (Nothing against the Ballistic Publishing guys; I’m sure that it’s a very complicated process to secure publishing deals with resellers) It’s hard to base your sales largely off such a small niche.