Hey there,
To answer your question, Premium Membership does, in fact, go to the company responsible for keeping the community online. Premium Membership has the dual benefit of buying a pile of perks that we're even now working to expand and improve, as well as supporting the solvency and longevity of the community.
This site is owned by a huge conglomerate, They also provide very little attention aside from keeping the software running. I appreciate your intentions, but I don´t believe your contribution would do more than line their already fat wallet. Years back when it was privately owned I´m sure it would have been a much appreciated help.
VerticalScope has a little north of 200 employees across around 1,600 communities. I
love the idea that we're a huge megalithic corporation, but honest-to-goodness, we're smaller by quite a bit than other platform-publishers of a comparable portfolio of sites. We do keep the software running, and I can double-check, but I'm pretty sure we've invested the most into developing forums over the past 10 years than any other single company out there short of Reddit, (if you count Reddit as a forum). Communities are incredibly important to us, it's why we have as many of them as we do, and it's why we've gone to great lengths to acquire and save many that would have otherwise been abandoned by founders or fallen obsolete to outdated tech. This isn't a story we've been very good at telling since we don't spend anything on marketing or self-promotion. But keeping these communities healthy and stable, and even growing, has been our big focus.
Premium Membership goes to support the site, the engineers who keep the software running and secure, the community managers who support the mods and admins who ensure the worst of the internet doesn't creep in and take hold, and the costs to keep the tech up. But, Premium Membership isn't meant to be an expression of civic duty like volunteering as a mod or flagging a spam post - it should present a value in the way of the benefits it provides, and cheaper by half than most premium membership programs out there. If it doesn't yet, don't buy it, there's no pressure to do so. But we're working on rolling out some extras that hopefully will add to the overall package deal.
Thanks for the answer...too bad it wouldn't go towards an actual human who uses/runs this forum. But oh well! It saves me $20 a year.
As one of the humans who helps to run this forum, yes, yes it does. ChatGPT and robotic AI overlords on the way notwithstanding, there's still a lot of human effort that goes into ensuring a forum community doesn't become garbage in short order!
Hopefully, this helps answer any questions! And hoping to have more on premium membership expansion in the near future to share with you guys.
Warm Regards,
Joe Pishgar
Chief Community Officer, VerticalScope
