I think there are plenty of paid for models. In professional circles most material has been withdrawn from the Internet because the professional providers require a paid service to fund the cost of maintaining their service. I don’t think this is unreasonable. Material produced at a cost is naturally entitled to be copyright as well. Lets face it many people use all sorts of sources for their research which is then included in copyright material. Whether paid forum work is another matter especially in what is essentially an “amateur” environment is another question. I can also see your concern about the way data is collected from a very specific and freely available source. That is a matter for Timothy and Peter to comment on.
From memory, PPL/IR’s case for the subscription was that some of the members do external work which needs expenses to be paid, so they have to raise funds for that. That is of course entirely correct. And for sure some people there have done great work.
But the case for a paid forum is much more difficult to make. A really big site (the like of which – in GA – is possible only in the USA) can raise enough money this way to have a salaried moderator(s) who is not a pilot so just sits silently behind the scenes, and occassionally chucks somebody out, and that would deal with the objection voiced loudly by some who used to be here that a participating mod is simply plain wrong etc etc etc – but as I have just said there is no alternative in Europe. Well, not if you want a site where people don’t beat others up. If beating up is allowed then it is easier; you just appoint several pilots, in different time zones, to have covert mod privileges (a Delete button mainly) to remove illegal material in good time.
One has to pay for hosting and related admin however. EuroGA’s has been kindly donated by David. But in modern times you don’t need to charge that much to cover hosting, assuming you can get say 1000 people to pay. Whether they actually would I have no idea… The main issue AIUI is that you need a lot of bandwidth to withstand DOS attacks, not to support people using the site normally 
And almost any forum will get these. And the admin stuff can consume a lot of time…
Peter wrote:
the Ts & Cs prohibited the transfer of forum information outside. Not just confidential information but anything.
I can’t vouch for what the rules said when you were a member of PPL/IR, but right now the restriction is that information that is public anyway may be transferred outside freely. Other information can be transferred outside with the permission of the author or administrator.
That is not as restrictive as it may sound as most actual facts discussed on any web forum are taken from public sources.
PayPal donation button?
The supercub.org model is quite effective. It is an open forum with only if I recall a members’ only section, but the information is open. You have voluntary subscription tiers from $25 for just goodwill, $50 you get two nice calendars (pure SuperCub ‘porn’ and PC), and more merchandise (caps, t-shirts, etc) at higher tiers. I believe the active community is slightly larger than euroga.org, and has a hard core SuperCub/Cruiser, Champion/Citabria, Maule, C-170/180/185 membership. Total PA-11/12/16/18 production is in several 10,000 (30,000+?) plus all the clones.
Frequent posters tend to be Alaskan/USAF veterans. There is a heavy dose of guns and ammo (a Super Cub in Alaska earns its keep with hunting and fishing guides) but no politics, very well moderated…like euroga.org. Retiring to Alaska or Montana/Idaho/Montana seems to be what a lot of airline folk chose to do. The bloke who produces the great Ohio Bush Plane videos is a frequent poster.
Steve Johnson who runs it publishes site data from time to time. They have quite a few fly-ins (skis or floats) and a big fly in at New Holstein around Oshkosh.
It is the only other flying forum I visit and they have a nice ipad app.
I don’t consider PPL/IR to be a paid forum.
Members pay for a membership organisation which brings many benefits. One of those is the forum, but when I am “selling” PPL/IR membership, it is a long way down the list of why people should pay.
Although the PPLIR forum is useful and has excellent signal/noise, I’d be surprised if members paid for it rather than to modestly support the world-class work done by a very few people there, notably with respect to representing GA IR holders (present and future) in discussions with EASA, encouraging people to get and use the rating etc. There is little doubt that the new routes to the IR are a direct result of that work, for example. Unlike other organisations, PPLIR’s advocacy is based on a very high level of technicity (incl. legal and regulatory) and understanding of the issues, to the point that the regulators have come to rely on that expertise, recognising that it exceeds their own.
I propose paying the moderators in beer during fly ins.
Timothy wrote:
I don’t consider PPL/IR to be a paid forum.
The same could be said about AOPA – although I think they have now closed their forum completely.
I think any forum is a good advertising ground and therefore hiding it behind a barrier is never a good idea, whilst rightly the other services should be members only service for which you pay. This is the model a particularly large members group of a certain car marque have adopted after finding that a members only forum (which they tried for a while) did more harm that good. In the same way, I suspect AOPA found almost no one bothered to post which was why it was a waste of space.
In other words why would you “close” a forum behind a door? (I guess by all means dont allow non members to post, or make it clear if you do that they are guests).
If the folk at PPL/IR can get regulators to see the light on RNAV overlays they will have done everybody a world of good…except ADF avionic engineers.
