It’s not easy being Singletrack. Please help.

The thing I don’t get is at 2 quid for digital is still not cheap enough?

Now I get your saying I only want that 2 quid to pay for the forum but surely not everyone thinks that.

If mark said right forum only membership is a fiver a month and I can guarantee that your 5 quid will only go on web development would you pay?

It’s like me asking for all my N.I to go on the NHS. Nice idea but impossible to do.

We all know the forums a bit glitchy but it’s not exactly unusable as this thread proves.

I just tried but it looks like I’ve got to set up some special account to handle the rewards that mentions cards, Bitcoin, wallets and wants a bunch more info than I am comfortable giving without a lot more investigation

It shouldn’t be necessary if you keep the BAT on your local computer. From there it can just be transferred to whatever sites you specify.

It’s only if you want to keep the BAT for yourself you have to set up a wallet.

It will require that you set up a payment of some small amount in your account.

Unless I’ve completely misunderstood something I don’t think that’s correct.

We all know the forums a bit glitchy but it’s not exactly unusable as this thread proves.

I suspect if a ‘forum only’ subscription was set up to pay for expanding the current development team (which does an excellent job IMO despite the constant criticism) and rebuilding the whole website from scratch they might be a bit shocked at how much it would be. Web development doesn’t come cheap. Maybe they could setup a crowdfunder to build a new website and then we’d see just how many forum-only people would contribute?

Besides, Mark has already said (many times!) he’s not interested in running a forum business. I have no idea why people can’t just accept that at face value. 🤷‍♂️

Ok I have re-subscribed as digital.  I dont subscribe to any cycling these days, even Cycling UK which I do feel really bad about. To be fair spending £’000s on bikes and not contributing to my primary source of info doesn’t sit right with me.

I stopped ages ago (10 years?) because I only really used the old classifieds and forum.  I never got round to reading the mag beyond Chipp’s writing and struggled with the tiny print. Anyway the classifieds were destroyed and the forum became at times unusable.  Feedback seemed pointless at the time.

The “new” classifieds seems better now there is again some user history and now some housekeeping seems to be done regularly. The clunkiness of the forum and terrible change implementation was very frustrating. So I guess these are the two things I will still judge the subscription moving forward. I haven’t seen any of the articles because  of the paywall, but look forward to reading a few.   

I’ve done a pretty exhaustive job of explaining things

As Solarider said, no, you really haven’t. You’ve said a lot but not actually conveyed much.

rebuilding the whole website from scratch they might be a bit shocked at how much it would be. Web development doesn’t come cheap. Maybe they could setup a crowdfunder to build a new website and then we’d see just how many forum-only people would contribute?

But nobody proposed that. Forum software specifically was mentioned but nobody said anything about rebuilding the whole lot.

Besides, Mark has already said (many times!) he’s not interested in running a forum business. I have no idea why people can’t just accept that at face value. 🤷‍♂️

Because as people, including subscribers, have repeatedly said they are only here for the forum. It’s an asset and could be a good revenue source if it stopped getting treated like a liability.

The thing I don’t get is at 2 quid for digital is still not cheap enough?

It’s not a question of cost as opposed to value.

I’d say the potential forum subscribers would want to see their money (or at least a decent proportion) going towards sorting the long-standing issues that are repeatedly mentioned.

Anyway, seeing as the lynch mob are out with their pitch torches I suspect this will be the last I say on the matter. It was nice whilst it lasted.

Well, looks like Brave have done an update:

https://brave.com/rewards-changes/

There’s an important lesson about minimising faff there. No faff and people will do it. The slightest bit of faff, especially if people aren’t sure what they are getting into, and they won’t.

I’ll look into it a bit more anyway.

Anyway, seeing as the lynch mob are out with their pitch torches I suspect this will be the last I say on the matter. It was nice whilst it lasted.

Wait.. I thought you were bringing pitch torches.. Now I’m confused. Did I miss the memo?

Anyway, seeing as the lynch mob are out with their pitch torches

The irony of complaining about a service you use for free and calling the people who pay for it a lynch mob is clearly lost on you.

I suspect this will be the last I say on the matter.

👋

Lovely community .

Really? Are you just wanting me to say something so you can ban me for “abuse” again?

As Solarider says, enjoy the echo chamber.

EDIT: Kept for context, struck for misunderstanding

What are pitch torches anyway?

Is that to me? My comment was a joke. Sorry if it came across otherwise. You wont get banned for abuse unless you are abusive, which so far as I can see you have not been.

Is that to me? My comment was a joke. Sorry if it came across otherwise. You wont get banned for abuse unless you are abusive, which so far as I can see you have not been.

It was, yes. That wasn’t the way it came across but these things happen. Apology accepted and one sent back, there seems to be a bit of a mixed mood in here so I took it the wrong way, sorry.

The slightest bit of faff, especially if people aren’t sure what they are getting into, and they won’t

Well in my case i was only using it for additional benefit for STW and as i have already upped my subscription there was no point in setting up another payment system to do exactly what I was already doing.  However if it ever got to the stage where I could use it for micropayments for all the paywalled news sites then it would be very interesting indeed.  I already have a number of subscriptions but don’t want to have to subscribe to them all

As Solarider says, enjoy the echo chamber.

There isn’t an echo chamber. You are both posting whatever you like here, and getting responses from other posters… including one of the owners of the site and mag. What more do you want? You even have free access to post here whatever you want as many times as you want, the same as supportive people paying to be involved. How free, open and equal is that?

Anyway… clipping this from the original news item… it’s a polite request for people to become full members, which can be ignored if you wish, it’s your free choice… you’re not being locked out, shut down, or silenced… just responded to by others…

Over 6,000 mountain bikers have joined us for their mountain bike news, reviews and random points of view. The more of you that join us as full members, the less we need to look to our advertising revenue to pay our bills. But also, the more of you join us the more powerful Singletrack becomes within the bike industry and the more good work we can do.

However if it ever got to the stage where I could use it for micropayments for all the paywalled news sites then it would be very interesting indeed.

Not sure about paywalled sites, but I know non-paywalled providers (like The Guardian for example) are verified creators on Brave so they get their cut based on how much you visit.

I generally don’t like using my credit card to make donations so Brave works for me, in that I don’t have to feel guilty when the Guardian pop up asking for donations appears.

As far as I can tell, with this latest update, Brave will allocate BAT in a “creator support only” mode. It will just send BAT relative to however much you’ve accumulated on a particular site.

Prior to this update, if you didn’t have an wallet linked you could still allocate BAT however you wanted. Now, if you want to allocate extra BAT to STW, you would have to set up a wallet. Saying that, there should be no need to provide any personal details and certainly no credit card details (although I’ve not checked yet).

TLDR; If you just download the browser, use that to browse STW, and don’t do anything else other than activate Rewards, then STW will get some BAT based on how often you visit and how many ads you see.

Mark’s wife was up all night making those pitch torches.

I’ve used one to redo my roof.

What are pitch torches anyway?

It’s a tactical thing.

What are pitch torches anyway?

Pitch burns. You can use it for fuel on/in a torch.

people pay their subscription out of loyalty and community more than because of the value that they place on ‘the mag’ (your content in its broadest sense).

I think this is a really important point. If more subscribers is the solution then the offer needs to be appealing to a wider range of people than those on the forum. If part of your customer based pays out of a sense of loyalty it suggests the basic offer isn’t value for money but they are happy to pay anyway.

Pitch burns. You can use it for fuel on/in a torch.

Wasn’t he in Dead or Alive?

RIP

Wasn’t he in Dead or Alive?

I got very confused and thought it was the beach volleyball variety you were talking about.

@brucewee you’re really selling this. I’m going to give it a go and report back. Would be good to know what the monetary difference is between ads and BAT revenue.

Hello, I would like to take the opportunity to say a huge thank you to all the wonderful people who have subscribed, upped their subsciption amount or donated on the back of this post. You are all wonderful people, thank you for your kind guestures of support. On behalf of myself and the rest of the Singletrack team thank you for helping us keep doing what we love.

We did that for a year 3 years ago. Analysis showed it netted us no additional new members when run as an A/B test against the hard paywall.

It worked on me. Not immediately but I converted my free membership to a digital one on the back of the experience.

I cancelled my STW subscription back in 2020 as I did not feel welcome any more on the forum. I could see the damage being caused by Covid lockdowns and I made a few posts on the Covid thread showing some strong data driven evidence that our chosen cure (lockdown) was far worse than the disease itself. A massive and panic driven over-reaction. And so it has proved with our economy now in tatters, inflation running rampant, a £400 billion lockdown caused debt, a children’s mental health crisis, our NHS in utter chaos, our public sector on strike, and UK excess deaths currently way off the charts for reasons that remain unexplained apparently. A ruinous, destructive strategy based solely on dodgy modelling, not on real world data. Pushed by self-serving people with vested interests who would rather censor dissenting voices than admit they were wrong. So Sweden was right after all. Yet still no-one on here wants to acknowledge this.

I used to think that the majority of mountain bikers were the ‘live and let live’ type, but this forum has changed and now it seems full of agenda driven, sanctimonious sorts who bully, shout down, gang up on and name-call anyone who does not fit into the left leaning ‘echo chamber’ it has become. Some riding mates of mine have cancelled their subs too for the same reasons and I no longer buy the print version of Singletrack as a result. I still have a look on here from time to time but sadly I can see that it is still as bigoted as ever with media-fed ideological beliefs and half-truths trumping actual real world data. Alternative opinions are still seemingly not welcome or tolerated from people who have clearly swallowed the corporate and media pushed Net-Zero, Zero-Covid cool-aid.

So STW I would say it’s your own daft fault that you are not making so much money these days because instead of sticking to the basics and making an enjoyable, informative mountain bike magazine/online platform, you now seek to virtue signal and to push your own political leanings onto your readers. Why do companies feel they have to do this? I suspect this approach has alienated a lot of your previous users. But hey ho, stick to your guns if it makes you feel good. You’ll still feel smug no doubt when STW has folded and you’re all picking parcels like a human-robotoid in your local gender-neutral Amazon warehouse. As the WEF likes to say, you will own nothing but be happy.

But I do not need to be educated or have my opinion changed thank you. I do not come to a mountain bike website to have climate change/covid ideology rammed down my throat. None of you are experts in climate change or diversity or Ukraine or whatever other thing you are told is currently flavour of the month. Christ, I get enough of that sort of propaganda from the news. I just want to read about bikes and routes and riders and riding – that’s it, simple!

Until that happens, then I, and I suspect many others, will simply stay away or we will spend our money elsewhere. Perhaps somewhere that provides fun content without the do-gooding lecture although these places are becoming harder to find. I guess you don’t want to hear this inconvenient truth, but there it is, right there in your face.

So sorry about that (from your far-right, anti-vax, conspiracy theorist, biological sex is real, Covid denier, climate denier, racist, misogynistic, ex reader)!

‘Inconvenient Truth’

House!

.

* Off-Topic *

And so it has proved with our economy now in tatters, inflation running rampant, a £400 billion lockdown caused debt, a children’s mental health crisis, our NHS in utter chaos, our public sector on strike, and UK excess deaths currently way off the charts for reasons that remain unexplained apparently. A ruinous, destructive strategy based solely on dodgy modelling, not on real world data. Pushed by self-serving people with vested interests who would rather censor dissenting voices than admit they were wrong.

It’s called a Tory government for over a decade, if you’d been on the forum regularly you would know this.

* /Off-Topic *

A massive and panic driven over-reaction. And so it has proved with our economy now in tatters, inflation running rampant, a £400 billion lockdown caused debt, a children’s mental health crisis, our NHS in utter chaos, our public sector on strike, and UK excess deaths currently way off the charts for reasons that remain unexplained apparently. A ruinous, destructive strategy based solely on dodgy modelling, not on real world data. Pushed by self-serving people with vested interests who would rather censor dissenting voices than admit they were wrong. So Sweden was right after all. Yet still no-one on here wants to acknowledge this.

Yes of course, it’s STW pushing it’s evil political manifesto. 🙄

Well that escalated in a direction I didn’t foresee!

I hope Angus rob him/her/them is OK? And if he’s needing something to read may I suggest

https://www.thesun.co.uk/author/jeremy-clarkson/

Your first day (back) on the forum…a strong first post there angus_rob. What was your previous forum name then?

you now seek to virtue signal and to push your own political leanings onto your readers. Why do companies feel they have to do this

Just trying to think where the ST staff have directly done this? 🤔

Hmm. I don’t agree with the prevailing forum views on some political topics either. It is easy enough to either not read them or not get involved in the debate while still valuing the rest of the forum which has the great virtue of being both wide ranging and having many members who know what they are talking about.

There are even threads in bike riding sometimes. Though I need to be quiet about the fact my riding these days is almost entirely local utility riding and a bit of touring.

My 90s Kona hardtail sits unloved in the garage ashamed of its 26″ wheels and 3*9 drivetrain.

@irc Start loving your Kona, I’m still 3 x 9, 26” and find there are many on here the same. It doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy the other content on here, it’s an entertaining, mostly supportive place and I hope it continues!

@angusrob what was your previous login?

I’m going for nicolastur, alexsal or humzayous

On the upside, STW just needs to work out where to pick up its COVID cheques from the World Economic Forum, and that’s its money problems worked out!

My 90s Kona hardtail sits unloved in the garage ashamed of its 26″ wheels and 3*9 drivetrain.

Yeah, that’s a terrible shame. You should probably pay me £20 to take it away. I’ll give half to the server fund, obvs

I have to say, a few more Angi on the forum and I’d be tempted to pay. Like an inverse Bill Hicks!

Tried to do the switch thing, but Im guessing it does not handle the case where my renewal is in 2 days time. As its trying to take less than £0.30 which is less than is allowed (from the error message).