Re: Should welfare be behind a paywall?

[jRuutu 2,336]

Some weeks ago I speculated about the possibility of hiding welfare behind a paywall. The idea or thought was that to claim welfare you would have to pay for it with real money. The money would be then used to run the site more smoothly. (At times bots have attacked the site and spammed various threads all over the place).  I also speculated about a "season pass", which would allow any user to double the rewards they get from normal donations, for example with the season pass the user would get 10 uncapped TPE, or 2M for the player store instead of just 5 uncapped TPE or 1M for the player store.

 

The feedback was for the most part supportive and friendly. However, today it all changed when a good sir, eagle_3450, released their commentary on the whole concept. Like a shark when they smell even the tiniest amount of blood in the water, eagle_3450 swam in and tore the whole concept into pieces. Each word as sharp as the teeth in the shark's mouth. Each sentence as powerful and majestic as the beast itself.

 

I will now attempt to respond to the good sir, eagle_3450, and to their criticism, which could be described as harsh but fair.

 

"First: VHL not having many donations is my fault just for existing I guess."

We all must look into the mirror and ask ourselves: "Am I doing enough? Am I being the best possible person I could be?". That goes to VHL and everything else. I think it is as clear as day here that eagle_3450 is feeling guilty for not doing as much as they could. While it is incorrect to say the lack of donations is 100% the fault of eagle_3450, but it is not 100% correct to say the lack of donations is not the fault of eagle_3450.  

 

"Second: You want to lock the way that I get TPE behind a pay wall, that I can't pay for because I need to use my money for other things. "

This selfish attitude is what is preventing VHL from growing and reaching the heights we all know the league could reach. You could speculate whether VHL is doing enough to make donating as attractive as many other things outside of VHL. Perhaps a season pass would be a decent place to start to make donating more attractive to more and more users.

 

"Third: You want to make the VHL basically P2W and give people the ability to speak in BOG meetings for only $30 when they shouldn't be able to at all. "

 

In my opinion, BOG meetings and any other league meeting need to have a voice coming from the regular users of VHL. And what better voice than someone who cares about the league enough to pay some cash to represent the good people of VHL in these inner circles?

 

"Fourth: Bots claiming welfare is not an issue, since the programming and runtime required for it to actually make it into the VHL would be too tedious for someone to create when they could just target an easier site. "

And what better place to practice creating bots and training them than a place like VHL? We can not close our eyes to the bots and pretend they are not out there when they are among us already!

 

"Fifth: Why do I have a responsibility to donate, not everyone is able to, not everyone has the money to, it makes no sense to lock TPE earning behind a paywall for the people without much a]money or time. "

 

Spoken like a man watching two people fight, one is clearly getting the upper hand, but instead of stepping in, the man is standing there with his phone in their hand and filming it into TikTok; "someone please go help the other person. Not me though, I must film this to TikTok". At some point VHL needs to make hard decisions, it is better to start preparing yourself now and not later.

 

"Sixth: This is literally the worst change that could ever happen for me, and all forums have bots, it wont change much. "

 

Good sir, eagle_3450, I sincerely hope you take a good and hard look at yourself in the mirror this evening and ask yourself: "Am I doing enough for VHL, am I being the best possible VHL user right now?"

 

550 without the quotes