[Ruan Chun Xian]

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say though I get the gist.

I'll tell you what I told another user who PMed us about this:

The way we look at things is that there are more than one way that we can provide you with help. The purpose of this forum is to create a community of IB students where you interact with other IB students and help each other, and the downloads are just one part of that help. This isn't a download site, it's a forum. It would had been much easier for us to just set up a site where you come and download everything you need and never speak to anyone, but we didn't. We wanted to give IB students a chance to meet and talk to each other.

I totally understand that from your point of view it seems unfair that the downloads are restricted, but we also hope that you can also see things from our point of view. There are people who come here just for the download the files, leave and never come back. That totally defeats the point of the forum - creating a community. Also, we put a lot of work into this forum; the essays and notes that are available for download also took a lot of time and work. We don't think it's too much to ask that you give a little something back for what you get. After all, it won't hurt you to participate in the community and talk to others.

Plenty of our users have been promoted to VIP before they reached the 50 posts mark for being helpful, contributing things such as sample essays and files etc. :) You don't have to wait until you get to 50 posts to be added to VIP. That's just the easy way.

------------

EDIT: 29/2/2008

If you come here 4 hours before your deadline expecting to find (and get) samples to help you do the IAs that you most probably had weeks to work on, we would like to emphasise that this is not the point of this forum! We exist to help you survive your entire two years, not to help you with last minute panic. Procrastination is a big enough problem with students already (heck, even we, being done with IB, are guilty of it!), we are not about to encourage it.

I don't want to sound patronising, I just want to emphasise that this isn't a place where we do the work for you. We are here to give you advice, support, help but ultimately in the end it's your diploma, you have to put in the effort and work - not come to us at the last minute expect to get help. You should get plenty of time to work on each of your IA and if you want help, by all means ask for it before the night before the deadline.

[Graeme]

Not all our VIP members have a large post count. To give some examples, users such as baecusman, Max, Sarah, and basilmasri21 all have a low post count but are VIP due to their contribution of files to the site.

[Ruan Chun Xian]

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Its obvious not much people benefit the site (they ultimately stop posting) when they become vips or have posted significantly enough times. These flourishing dishonest users pretend they are benefiting the website when their only objective to to actually have access to download files.

Actually I don't think so.

winter was a member who we added to VIP when she only had around 20 something posts. She still posted a lot after she was added to VIP. She just doesn't post regularly now because I suspect she's a bit busy with exam prep. Her exams are in less than 2 weeks.

I can give you a list of members who was VIPed at <20 posts but still continued to post after they are VIPed: beli16, cixelsyD, Dooga etc.

No I am not so naive as to think that no one stops posting after they are VIPed. Of course there will be people who take advantage of the situation. But if they are VIPed early, the amount of contribution they have made to the site are significant enough for them to deserve their VIP status.

Those who VIPed themselves by making 50 posts I think are those who value the community here enough to stay on after they are VIPed, because to be honest 50 posts is a lot (though to me...it looks like a ridiculously small number :P ) and if you care enough to stick around to post that many posts, I think you'll stick around longer. Again, this is generalisation and not everyone is like this. But I do believe that those who are outnumber those who aren't.

Actually, just to so you understand the situation a bit more, we started this forum with the requirement to download is that a user must have at least 1 post (laughable). Then we increased it to 5 --> this caused mass spamming. Then we increased it to 10. Still mass spamming but easier to stop. Then we actually discussed this with our users here. So we have considered a lot before making it so that only VIP users can download.

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lastly, if you guys think iam not worthy because of my nebulous avatar ill change it .

Sorry, this makes me laugh. :rofl:
Dude, we're not entirely without a sense of humour. We're not IBO. :D
Not that I'm saying the IBO doesn't have a sense of humour or anything... :ninja:

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Dont delete the post please consider this post as an arguement between ratiocinating moderators and non-vip users

This won't be deleted but it might be moved to About though.

[Soy]

haha i say why not. im starting to enjoy this community now. at first glance i was going to just download the file and go, but then i realized that there was a post count criteria and i plan on sticking around on this forum, hopefully it will benefit me in the long run and this forum can really be built up to something that will ultimately help every ib student in need.

[~Lc~]

Rob stop spamming and go do some coursework or another :P

OP: we had a purely download site, if I recall correctly bandwidth went crazy and Deus had to pay extra money that month because of it. Why in the world would someone want to pay a large sum of money to benifit people he doesn't know? the forum is much more practical because the help is not coming from one way: i.e us admins! there's been a large deal of contribution! which was what we were aiming for in the first place!
You seem to be speaking with a bias to me, the bias of wanting to access downloads! so really you're not sounding so convincing right now.

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The point in creating a website is to share information, not to restrict information until people prove their honesty. Iam sorry if iam somehow being rude.

no the point is to keep the help going and not let the website die! if we have a whole bunch of notes with no activity on here it's going to be a dead forum and then in the near future no one will approach it because it looks dead so people will assume there isn't any good documents on there! so yea... that's my side of the argument :P

[icecoldstar]

you know about www.informe.com?
i have a personal forum at their place, and the features are extremely limited, but they are free.
just wondering, do you admins and mods know each other in real life???

[Ruan Chun Xian]

~Lc~, on Oct 27 2007, 01:15 PM, said:

Rob stop spamming and go do some coursework or another :P

OP: we had a purely download site, if I recall correctly bandwidth went crazy and Deus had to pay extra money that month because of it. Why in the world would someone want to pay a large sum of money to benifit people he doesn't know? the forum is much more practical because the help is not coming from one way: i.e us admins! there's been a large deal of contribution! which was what we were aiming for in the first place!
You seem to be speaking with a bias to me, the bias of wanting to access downloads! so really you're not sounding so convincing right now.
no the point is to keep the help going and not let the website die! if we have a whole bunch of notes with no activity on here it's going to be a dead forum and then in the near future no one will approach it because it looks dead so people will assume there isn't any good documents on there! so yea... that's my side of the argument :P

Well said, Lc. :)

Quote

The point in creating a website is to share information, not to restrict information until people prove their honesty. Iam sorry if iam somehow being rude.

Oh which reminds me, we're not restricting information. There's plenty of info and help to be gotten around. You just get a little more (and trust me, little is a huge understatement) after you've been nice and good after a while. How long that 'a while' is, it's up to you. ;)

icecoldstar, on Oct 27 2007, 01:20 PM, said:

you know about www.informe.com?
i have a personal forum at their place, and the features are extremely limited, but they are free.

I think that is the big con. :D

icecoldstar, on Oct 27 2007, 01:20 PM, said:

just wondering, do you admins and mods know each other in real life???

:no:
I'd love to though. And the other two can meet each other more easily than they can meet me so <_<
:D

[benthis1no]

how much should we post and how much file should we upload to be a VIP member huh ???

[Ruan Chun Xian]

It depends on what you post and what files you contribute. It's about quality not quantity :D . Also, if you want to become VIP by merit (i.e. not pay) you'll have to put up with the fact that it will take a while for you to become VIP. The point of having the VIP by merit system is to create a community of people who will stck to the forum, so it's not something that you get in a day or two. We have to see that you're in some way committed to the community. Because anyone can just "contribute" loads of stuff in a couple of days to get VIP and never say another word again, which kind of defeats the whole point. So if you want the VIP status fast, paying for a subscription will get you there faster.

Oh while I'm at it, past papers don't hold a lot of weight as contribution file. They're available all over the internet. :) (But the papers you posted were very much appreciated :) )

[__inthemaking]

Just to add in my own two cents :P , I first joined this forum looking for help on my world lit 1 paper. Even after I got my 50 posts and became a VIP member, I continued to post and well..I'm still here now haha. You get kind of attached to this forum whether you like it or not :lol: .

[gregrrr]

Why are you disallowing people to download informational papers etc, off of this website unless you have paid to become a vip member or spent enormous amounts of time on here posting stuff? If this website really was meant for the IB student then the admin would be able realize that time is a precious commodity during the IB and that its something which a lot of students dont have! I joined this site thinking wow this is great ill be able to quickly get myself some help for writing my history IA which is due in 2 days and which i wanted to go through and check the criteria in order to see whether i've done a decent enough job on it, but no....Apparently this website has become extremely money grubbing and does not comply with the 90% of the rest of the internet which is offering information for free,- why the hell would i spent hours on this website posting stuff in order to gain some imaginary little status which allows me subsequently to download a few pieces of information which other websites are also offering for free....Please enlighten me on your reason.- and before you answer please be honest and tell everyone that it is merely due to monetary reasons.

best regards Gregor

[Graeme]

gregrrr, on Mar 4 2009, 11:20 AM, said:

Why are you disallowing people to download informational papers etc, off of this website unless you have paid to become a vip member or spent enormous amounts of time on here posting stuff? If this website really was meant for the IB student then the admin would be able realize that time is a precious commodity during the IB and that its something which a lot of students dont have! I joined this site thinking wow this is great ill be able to quickly get myself some help for writing my history IA which is due in 2 days and which i wanted to go through and check the criteria in order to see whether i've done a decent enough job on it, but no....Apparently this website has become extremely money grubbing and does not comply with the 90% of the rest of the internet which is offering information for free,- why the hell would i spent hours on this website posting stuff in order to gain some imaginary little status which allows me subsequently to download a few pieces of information which other websites are also offering for free....Please enlighten me on your reason.- and before you answer please be honest and tell everyone that it is merely due to monetary reasons.

best regards Gregor

While I understand your frustration, I also believe that you are a case in point.

If you are looking for help for your IA which is due in 2 days, don't you think maybe you should have planned ahead a bit more?
There is no advertising on this site, which is how many other websites make their money. I will have you know that running a website costs money. Real money.
If this site were set up to allow anyone to download files without any requirement, then the site would not exist at all. It's a trade off. I don't understand why you would even bother to rant about this site when you so clearly suggested that you can find all this other information free elsewhere. No one is forcing you to use this website.

We provide a service here, but it costs money to run. The hosting costs money, the forum costs money, and bandwidth costs money. I'm sorry that you find this so outrageous. However, as I said before, no one is forcing you to use this website. I managed to complete the IB without it, as I'm sure most people would without a problem. :)

Take care,
Graeme

[deissi]

To supplement to Graeme's post:

Most experienced users (yes, the VIP kind) know I usually answer something mean to posts like these. This time, all I can say is

:--------------------------------------------D.

Have a nice life,
deissi

[Irene]

gregrrr, on Mar 4 2009, 06:20 AM, said:

Why are you disallowing people to download informational papers etc, off of this website unless you have paid to become a vip member or spent enormous amounts of time on here posting stuff?

Enormous amounts of time? Please. You just don't know how to manage your time.

gregrrr, on Mar 4 2009, 06:20 AM, said:

I joined this site thinking wow this is great ill be able to quickly get myself some help for writing my history IA which is due in 2 days

Quite selfish of you to think like that. The admin here do a wonderful job to keep the site running. And btw, this is a forum... meaning that most of the help comes from users (like you) who answer each other's questions and keep the site alive.

gregrrr, on Mar 4 2009, 06:20 AM, said:

Apparently this website has become extremely money grubbing

I haven't paid a cent for this site. You don't have to either if you don't want to - it's your choice.

gregrrr, on Mar 4 2009, 06:20 AM, said:

and does not comply with the 90% of the rest of the internet which is offering information for free

You're free to use that information as you please. :)

gregrrr, on Mar 4 2009, 06:20 AM, said:

why the hell would i spent hours on this website posting stuff in order to gain some imaginary little status which allows me subsequently to download a few pieces of information which other websites are also offering for free....

Quite bitter there. Methinks you are just jealous of my status. :proud:

But seriously though... this site has how many VIP members? They've all gone through so same process so why should you receive preferential treatment? No pain, no gain. You can't seriously expect other people to pay for bandwidth, etc just so YOU can get free files?