HomeNotesUnity update. Some details. (UPDATED)
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Unity update. Some details. (UPDATED)

As many of your know Unity update is imminent. There's a whole bunch of changes, but for now, I'd like to tell you about memberships.

We'll have 3 levels - Starter, Advanced and Premium. New levels are designed to fight posts spam, voting fraud and profanity. Take a look at the picture, it says it all.

As you can see, one would have to either pay a one time fee of $5 or order any commercial license to have the right to POST something publicly at Unity. Basically, we're doing profile verification through the only effective method - payment. So long to multiple fake profiles.

UPDATE:


Following some of your comments/arguments we decided to come up with the following price schedule:

1 month Premium - $20
3 months Premium - $50
12 months Premium - $120

Thus, there's still an option to have it for $10/month.

Extended membership is to stay at $5/lifetime level.

Prime will now include 5 years of Premium, instead of 3 as well as some new goodies, which are to be announced later.

Plussed by

 
 
 
 

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mydatery
Now this is the perfect idea of how to deal with many of the issues that we've been complaining about here on Unity.

And I get to be the first to post.
Zarcon
So how does this coincide with "Membership Levels" here at Unity? Such as Standard, Contributor, Expert, etc.
Just want to make sure that I understand this concept, but definitely think its a good idea to control a bunch of issues as stated by Mydatery.

Chris
Andrew Boon
We'll have just:

Starter
Advanced
Premium
Moderator
Premium

Only Premium members would have the right to post in "Market", with even one post they would also be marked as "Traders" (former Experts).
DosDawg
andrew on this post needing some clarification.


"We'll have just:

Starter
Advanced
Premium
Moderator
Premium"

Starter - understood
Advanced - understood
Premium - understood from the description above
Moderator - future listing on that i presume
Premium - you listed premium a 2nd time

just wonder about the second posting of premium, and you also mention "Traders" (former Experts)and some clarity would be great on this statement;
'Only Premium members would see more have the right to post in the "Market", with even one post, they would be marked as 'Traders'. can you spend a moment on that and let us know what exactly the rule is going to be on that.

Not many customers that i have helped who purchased the Prime license, would be interested in selling anything on the 'market' or even posting in the blogs or forums. most are only interested in getting their site up and running and keeping it there, with their focus on the purpose of their mission which lead them to purchase the premium license from the onset.

so just looking for some clarity on some of the topics you presented here.

Great answers and glad to see you are having the time to spend a few moments with us on here.

Regards,
DosDawg
Andrew Boon
Oops, my mistake, I meant to say "Admin" at the end of the list.

With Traders - it's easy - there's no such account status as Trader, but if you have at least one listing in Market, you'd be displayed as Trader in member browsing as well as under your current account status. One would have to be a Premium member to be able to post in Market.
DosDawg
wow, this certainly will deal with many of the issues, but at the same time, will this run off perspective clients for the dolphin software?


certainly excited to see exactly how this model will work?

where does one get their agent from?

so the price range, would this be only offered on a month to month basis, or is there a difference in an annual price vs a monthly price on the premium offer.

will the affiliate system award members for referals to purchase the premium package?

will see more those who participate in the forums by offering community support be awarded from any point system or level system?


indeed, --> moving to the future


Regards,
DosDawg
Andrew Boon
Free members would still be able to buy and comemnt in Market, so as customers they won't be limited.

Agents will be chosen by member through their Member Account. Agents are BoonEx employees that work personally with their customers.

We don't plan to sell yearly subscriptions at this stage.

Affiliate system will eventually be tied to Premium membership purchases as well.

Members that participate in support and earn points will be rewarded through ranking listings and may capitalize on see more that as Traders. POint-based rankings will mean a lot more now.

All good Qs, thanks.
DosDawg
Andrew,
thanks for the response. and most definitely acceptable.

Can you or do you have an outline of what an agents responsibility would be?

Ok one other fleeting question, and this one has been tossed about. What will be done about moderation, or is it the precept that if you have a paying membership tone, then the necessity for moderation would cease?

good news on the affiliate system being tied in.

Great news on the ranking listings. what exactly is a trader, as i dont recall see more seeing that term posted already?

Keep the thrust forward Andrew, this is all great news and the direction is positive. This should start to set a tone that will be reveled by many others. We all know the software is certainly exacerbated the social networking development community.

Regards,
DosDawg
mallorca
I like that idea. But 10 or 20$ will be more effective for that goal and for lifetime rights.....???
Anyway, up to you and let us hope it helps as it should do.
mydatery
I would think the lifetime price was set so low as to not offend those who can't afford to pay alot. We have some great members here who spend a ton of their time and resources contributing to dolphin via support but don't necessarily have the extra cash to layout.

By setting it so low Boonex is able to not offend those individuals but still deter the spammers/fake profiles and thus alleviate many of the issues that Unity currently faces.
Andrew Boon
What mydatery said.

The $5 payment is not a revenue stream, it's a spamgate. Enough money to cover our expenses if we should go and delete the account and enough hassle for spammers to prevent them from setting up 20 accounts and unleash their crappy gunfire.
jordan
I like the /Lifetime Price! Will upgrade to that as soon as it's offered.
Andrew Boon
You won't have to. All current members are planned to become "Advanced" straight away. We'll weed out the bad ones step by step.
mydatery
How long do you think it might be Andrew before we can purchase the monthly one? It has enough benefits to it to make it well worth the $20 a month fee.
tomakali
will there be any moderation for expertzzz quality too?
say, lots of traders are selling themes. but very few of them are in Good quality. so why the Junk?
if there would be any rating system which can de-list any product which is not upto the customers expectations/quality set by boonex by voting, that would create a bar in terms of quality
what would be the cost of hiring an Agent?
DosDawg
tomakali,
i would say that moderation of the 'market' as Andrew has coined the phrase of what we would be dealing with for purchase of modules and add-ons, the fact that the author would have to spend $20.00/month to list the product, i would think this would be quite the deterrent to avoid somebody passing off stolen mods and or non-functional add-ons. also, i think where it hasn't been specified as of yet, is that we will still be maintaining the product verification, whereas an author would submit see more and have to await approval of the module or add-on being approved before it actually goes on the market.

and your inquiry of the rating system, both from a product standpoint and the support level from the author after-sale will be rated, and presumably this will control other factions that many have dealt with on expertzzz.

Regards,
DosDawg
mastermindsro
$20 too much for too little.. $10 will be the fair price.. If you guys want reasons I'm ready to give you some..
1. Expertzzz is almost sleeping right now, there are not many people that make extensions/templates there.. so a $20 membership will at least halve the developers - which means about 20 people.. is that good?
2. What if you want to publish something for free? Will you pay $20 just to post something for free?
Ok so no more free stuff..
3. That 10% will be payed by Boonex? Or we just see more have to support it as a part of the game? That is an annoying condition and I will probably make prices 10% higher just to cover that! Is that a good thing?
deano92964
I agree with this. I quite often don't take in enough to make up the cost of listing it.

The $20 monthly fee is to high.
mydatery
Okay, your concerned with the 10% discount to the Premium members. The Premium members will not be a high number as it's a monthly fee. Think about it.

The average member who agrees to pay that is going to be a developer (like you) or a host (like DD) and not so much looking to purchase a ton of mods. It's more of a professional courtesy, Boonex is just making it easier for you to identify who is a professional like yourself.
mastermindsro
I know what you mean mydatery.. but we all must remember to encourage the new talents in any domain, that's why I always think that there may be your talented designers that don't have anything to start with (yes there are still poor people in the world), I can pay anytime $20 but I hate the idea - that's why I've better make my own website to sell my templates ($9 the host + $4 a .com domain) rather than pay $20 every month and get a -10% on every sell..
emcct
So basically, if a user has a Dolphin licence on his account, he don't have to pay extra in order to post on the forum?
killerhaai
Well so far I understand now, I think its a fair system. And yes its a way to remove the spammers from unite. So in base I'am agree with Andrew.
bigal0228
One Idea I have been thinking about... What about having the ability to select from a pre-defined list of areas of expertise when setting up your profile. Such as "Linux, PHP, CSS, etc." and when someone posts a question they could select from a list of the most appropriate areas which would match them with a list of "Experts" in the area of their question. Paying subscribers would have this option. Their post would automatically be sent to those experts who meet their criteria. see more Might help in getting more questions answered. On the other side, the Experts who answer on a regular basis could be provided some form of incentives such as higher ranking, higher membership level, etc. Just a thought.
Medfordite
I completely disagree with the PAY TO POST.

I understand the whole SPAM/MULTIPLE user thing and I understand the whole community bias against apparently ignorant users. But making people Pay for the right to post????

Has Boonex ever considered a company point of view? Let me spell it out for you:

XYZ Services is doing very well with a local matchmaking service and wants to expand it to be online After researching the likes of Tufat's OSDate, and Dolphin, they decide to install Dolphin. see more

During the install process, they run into an issue. So, they see that Boonex's ABN number is long distance as they are in the USA of course. So, rather than try to call them, they resort to the blogs, forums etc on Unity and discover their issue is unique.

XYZ Services then attempts to post a question for help and is told they have to pay to have the privilege of posting questions. Sure, it is only $5USD for the lifetime of their usage of Dolphin. Oh yeah, top that off with removing the branding from Dolphin so as to not give away their "Trade secret" for success online to competitors.

While the whole lifetime posting privilege may look great on paper, I can already see a mass exodus of genuine members from here including the Spammers that you have.

I have watched Boonex degrade for a long time and I guess once this comes into effect, I will be locked out because I will NEVER pay for the privilege to post or answer someone's call for help!

UGH!
CALTRADE
Do you know of other social networking software companies that charge less? If so, could you post their names? Most of the ones I have looked at give you a "two week" evaluation period - or something like that, before you have to pay. If Boonex has "a mass exodus" of members it is hard to think that those members were all that serious in the first place.
ronklein3
You didn't read all the information. It says Advanced membership is free with the purchase of any license. So that is one thing you missed.

And if you read through the postings you would have seen a response from unoboonex stating that: "All current members are planned to become "Advanced" straight away. We'll weed out the bad ones step by step."

So it looks like most of us would not have to even pay that $5 to post anyway.

And if you are creating a site that you are see more going to use, then I don't think you are not going to purchase a license to remove Boonex's name, unless you work for Boonex, and then you don't need to pay for a license.
mrpowless
I thought a while about this, well for a minute... The idea is a great one. I see replies all the time comparing dolphin to other systems and there is no other like it. The other apps are simple toys, dolphin is a complex system that can be easily upgraded, modified if you know how. When i figured out how its written, I thought it best to help people who just plain do not have the means.

I have seen many people come here and go from complete n00b to a scripting/coding person in a matter of months. see more Some sites blew my mind after teaching a few people how its put together. This is a real way of life for me and as one of the many systems that I am involved in, I like Dolphin the best. I do not mind at all paying for being part of an exclusive set of like minded people who want to build real robust sites.

GJ you guys keep up the great work. I am definitely in agreement with this system to keep out spammers and other people who just cause problems.
CALTRADE
Nice articulate post from one of the "Godfathers" of Unity. Keep up the good work Mrpowless.
mallorca
On Premium you link to Buy Prime. Can you offer a Prime choice for Members like me who already have the license, but like too let's say "upgrade" to the full Prime benefits, without having then a useless license bought?
I mean a possibility for existing customers to buy Prime without license and install?
Nighto2007
Great news unoboonex and this step will remove the spammer from boonex unity , good job but there are important note .. I and some people in boonex unity can't pay by paypal so this will case big problem for us because it is not logical send 5$ by bank so please please allow the payments by moneybookers.com .. I want stay comment, vote, use forum and contact with boonex team ... I wish allow my request

thank you
Rawaf
SkyForum
Nightto2007 makes a valid point.

I also think this is an excellent plan.
cipy
your definition for unlimited/lifetime might be a bit different than real life (unless lifetime is a short period of time, see my email :p)
tyke
On the surface i think this is a great idea, it will stop a lot of the rubbish on here that drives people away, including me. Bit confused with the difference between advanced and premium though, is premium more to do with members who sell things too. One thing though, i do think that being able to post in trac should be moved to advanced membership, not everybody who tests, are into selling mods in the market place and that would get more members testing to help out and reporting things they have see more found.
Just one point though if you are charging for access, and one that many will probably ask, or at least think, does that mean then that proper support will follow, or is that why its so cheap, because its really just a deterrent for the spammers and multi profile makers. I for one would pay more for advanced if proper support were offered from boonex staff.
Regards
Tyke
canuckid
Ok let me get this straight; Boonex now want US to PAY THEM to help their customers.
Personally, I don't think anybody would enjoy going out for dinner, paying for a meal, being shown where the kitchen and food is, having to prepare it themselves if they know how to cook or if they don’t quite now how to cook that particular meal, having to go out into the restaurant and beg the other patrons for help in the kitchen.. All the while the restaurant staff are out back learning how to write their see more names backwards on the window so we know who they all are.
canuckid
Ok let me get this straight; Boonex now want US to PAY THEM to help their customers.
Personally, I don't think anybody would enjoy going out for dinner, paying for a meal, being shown where the kitchen and food is, having to prepare it themselves if they know how to cook or if they don’t quite now how to cook that particular meal, having to go out into the restaurant and beg the other patrons for help in the kitchen. Oh, wait, before we can ask the other patrons we have to pay the restaurant for see more the ability to do that. Oh hey even better, the customers that could help us also have to pay the restaurant for the privilege of helping us.
Hmm, All the while the restaurant staff are out back learning how to write their names backwards on the window so that we know who they all are.
houstonlively
Premium Membership:

I have no objections to you guys making a few bucks, however:

10% discount on products... I'd have to buy $200 worth of products per month before I realized any benefit from the $20/mo membership. $2,400 worth of products in a year? Not likely.

Post/Sell products in Market... I have no intentions of selling anything. For me, and 99% of the membership of this site, post/sell privileges is a moot benefit.

Submit tickets to Boonex trac: Do you really think that those see more testing the D7 script, should have to pay $20 per month, for the privilege of reporting bugs in your script?

Priority flag in forum..... Huh? What's that?

Access Trident Blog.... OK. This I would pay for. Can you give us an update on the status of this project, including anticipated timeline and project objectives?

I do plan on purchasing the Prime deal, so I really don't have to worry about any of this. However.... you really need to split up the 'Premium' membership. Sellers represent a very small percentage of the community, and as such, should have their own membership level. You should also have a membership level between the current 'Advanced' and 'Premium', that excludes selling privileges. Ten bucks a month sounds like a nice round number for that.
tyke
Agree with that, boonex needs to take all the selling related stuff out of premium, lower the price to about $10, then make another membership level called "the business package" and shove all the selling privileges into that. Its only right that people who make money from boonex should give something back, but those who dont make money at all from selling,and that includes people who like to make free mods, shouldnt have to pay such a high price.or have to pay such a high price for helping see more in the trac either, i dont think that one was thought out too well myself.
houstonlively
tyke ... Uno doesn't always get things right the first time. Guys like us need to smack him around a little, until he gets it right.
houstonlively
It sure would be a lot easier, if he could just learn to smack himself around, when he messes up.
 
 
 
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