Discussion Details
| Title: | Re: 16.894: Abolishing Fund Drive |
| Submitter: | Claire Bowern |
| Description: | I have a suggestion regarding the fee for access. I don't know if it
would be economically viable but it would be testable and modelable based on previous years' usage. Linguistlist could still be free to access, but people posting would have to pay on a sliding scale to post to the list, say from $1 for a question to $5 for a dissertation announcement to $20 for a call for papers to more for publishers' book announcements. This would probably reduce the posts to the list - it would probably reduce repeat conference announcements, for example, and questions where the information is readily obtainable through a quick google search. Posting could still be free in certain circumstances but it would be an alternative user-pays model and would not result in a closed list. I tested this on linguistlist data for the last 3 months. I counted (well, got my computer to estimate) the number of posts in different categories, and made up a sliding scale. If Jan-March were taken as a typical quarter, this scale would raise almost $65,000. (Of course, this isn't typical, as (for example) most of the adjunct jobs are advertised this quarter, but anyone with more inclination for number crunching could come up with a better estimate. I don't know how much transaction fees would cut into this, too) Category Posts Rate Amount dissertations 45 $5 225 discussion 37 $1 37 conferences 80 $15 1200 software 5 $15 75 jobs 150 $30 4500 support 21 $25 525 journal tocs 75 $25 1875 book announcements 200 $25 5000 questions 90 $2 180 summaries 20 $1 20 reviews 60 $15 900 media 25 $1 25 fyi 50 $1 50 conference calls 280 $5 1400 total $16,012 x4 $64,048 - Claire -------------- Dr Claire Bowern Linguistics, Rice University Houston TX |
| Date Posted: | 04-Apr-2005 |
| Linguistic Field(s): | General Linguistics |
| LL Issue: | 16.1019 |
| Posted: | 04-Apr-2005 |
