Why annual memberships are going away

[woodygar]

for anyone following the thread i have been refunded for my annual membership also

thanks Ronny

[openledger]

Transaction confirmed
#ccdc591a9de8a6df243756eb39c81f7bbced379e@4573808
TRANSFER   
From   openledger
To   warmach20
Amount   4,000 BTS
Memo   refund annual member
Fee   2.79652 BTS

Here you go. ofcourse you can have refund when you have upgraded to LT, just need to get direct mail and info and perhaps even a couple of reminders, and its done. all the best

I have no interest in you paying twice

[openledger]

i upgraded to from Annual to lifetime membership 2 months ago as i got told i would be refunded by Ronny. That hasn't happened as it appears to be no one is responsible for things that go wrong with software ??

I am sorry woodygar if I missed any mail or info to me where you told me you had upgraded and now eexpected to have the annual membership cost back. I may have even seen it and forgotten again, if so I apologize. I dont have a problem paying you the cost of your annual, just let know which account you upgraded and the amount you need refunded and I will tkae care of it. fact is that the annual matter has been finally solved, an i will be happy to gt your cost reduced and this all out of the way for us to look forward.

send me info in pm or in e-mail ronny@ccedk.com

Rgds

Ronny

[abit]

Pinging @theoretical @bytemaster

Lets page @ccedk aswell since they received 80% of the upgrade fee

IMO Ronny will only listen to CNX..

[xeroc]

I was the one who got an annual membership then upgraded to lifetime.  Looks like I should have waited and gotten it for free...

i upgraded to from Annual to lifetime membership 2 months ago as i got told i would be refunded by Ronny. That hasn't happened as it appears to be no one is responsible for things that go wrong with software ?? 

Pinging @theoretical @bytemaster

Lets page @ccedk aswell since they received 80% of the upgrade fee

[abit]

I was the one who got an annual membership then upgraded to lifetime.  Looks like I should have waited and gotten it for free...

i upgraded to from Annual to lifetime membership 2 months ago as i got told i would be refunded by Ronny. That hasn't happened as it appears to be no one is responsible for things that go wrong with software ?? 

Pinging @theoretical @bytemaster

[woodygar]

i upgraded to from Annual to lifetime membership 2 months ago as i got told i would be refunded by Ronny. That hasn't happened as it appears to be no one is responsible for things that go wrong with software ?? 

[warmach]

Unless you actually referred annual members...those referrers get screwed.

Most of the 31 annual members were either registered by OpenLedger or existed at genesis.  There are exactly four actual referrals of annual memberships, by three people.  If the community thinks reimbursing them is important, it would be possible to set up a worker to pay them manually (or make arrangements with an existing worker to do this).  One of those four annual memberships upgraded to LTM on its own, so their referrer has already been paid.  The remaining two referrers (two of the three accounts were referred by the same referrer) are:

1.2.97634 (referred annual member in block #3028579)
1.2.32176 (referred annual members 1.2.97382, 1.2.101152 who upgraded in blocks #1391978, #3255854)

I was the one who got an annual membership then upgraded to lifetime.  Looks like I should have waited and gotten it for free... 

[merivercap]

Hey thanks for the post in addressing this issue @theoretical .  I understand some features are not worth keeping if the cost is prohibitive.  However there are a couple things I would like to note:

1. Coming from the marketing standpoint, I think annual membership is very important.  Using current membership numbers skews  the ratio in favor of LTMs because most of the people who even know about memberships are long-time community members and HODLRs. (BTW great to hear there are that many strong Bitshares supporters!)  Anyways the ratio of annual to lifetime members will be much different for new users.   The current referral program is hardly being used for growth because we don't have many businesses using our ecosystem yet.  We at Bitcash plan to take advantage of the referral program and annual memberships.

2.  Secondly and most importantly I've followed the Github issues and the code seems to behave as designed and documented  last year before the big upgrade and after.  There was some confusion about the referrer/registrar split because most people, myself included, didn't understand that the registrar would be able to decide the split and that may not have been clear during the big announcement in May/June of last year.   However the mechanics make sense and everything seems to be behaving as expected.  Note: Wouldn't genesis accounts just have to upgrade using a registrar that set's the referral percentage to 100%. 

If you can clarify if there are any additional issues I'm missing other than the confusion from the referrer/registrar split that would be great @theoretical.  Thank you. 

[BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode]

 

Out of all the membership levels annual only accounted for 0.4%.

If any kind of other levels are to be introduced they cannot be based on the same premise as the original membership was designed for, which was based on fee structures primarily.

[cube]

Unless you actually referred annual members...those referrers get screwed.

Most of the 31 annual members were either registered by OpenLedger or existed at genesis.  There are exactly four actual referrals of annual memberships, by three people.  If the community thinks reimbursing them is important, it would be possible to set up a worker to pay them manually (or make arrangements with an existing worker to do this).  One of those four annual memberships upgraded to LTM on its own, so their referrer has already been paid.  The remaining two referrers (two of the three accounts were referred by the same referrer) are:

1.2.97634 (referred annual member in block #3028579)
1.2.32176 (referred annual members 1.2.97382, 1.2.101152 who upgraded in blocks #1391978, #3255854)

Not against getting rid of annual membership for the time being because i too believe it is not the most important inclusion. however i must say that drawing meaning from the data of the existing experiment is not as simple as you suggest. there are many other factors that come into play. most namely is the UI and UE.  most people who have joined us have done so at a time when the wallet was not at all user friendly...which i believe is one of the primary reasons most our marketing efforts have yet to have paid off. 

remember that any of these studies that showed the effectiveness, if done correctly, have been tested in environments when the final product was considered finished so this element would not bias results.  i personally do not know of which studies you are talking about though. 

if you want ill gladly look over them

I too, believe that annual membership should come back at a later date, perhaps when LTM becomes popular.

[fuzzy]

Unless you actually referred annual members...those referrers get screwed.

Most of the 31 annual members were either registered by OpenLedger or existed at genesis.  There are exactly four actual referrals of annual memberships, by three people.  If the community thinks reimbursing them is important, it would be possible to set up a worker to pay them manually (or make arrangements with an existing worker to do this).  One of those four annual memberships upgraded to LTM on its own, so their referrer has already been paid.  The remaining two referrers (two of the three accounts were referred by the same referrer) are:

1.2.97634 (referred annual member in block #3028579)
1.2.32176 (referred annual members 1.2.97382, 1.2.101152 who upgraded in blocks #1391978, #3255854)

Not against getting rid of annual membership for the time being because i too believe it is not the most important inclusion. however i must say that drawing meaning from the data of the existing experiment is not as simple as you suggest. there are many other factors that come into play. most namely is the UI and UE.  most people who have joined us have done so at a time when the wallet was not at all user friendly...which i believe is one of the primary reasons most our marketing efforts have yet to have paid off. 

remember that any of these studies that showed the effectiveness, if done correctly, have been tested in environments when the final product was considered finished so this element would not bias results.  i personally do not know of which studies you are talking about though. 

if you want ill gladly look over them

[hcf27]

The existing annual membership code must be retired [6].  The existing annual members should be given some non-broken replacement for the broken functionality they received.  By far the simplest, least expensive thing to do is simply give them a lifetime membership -- which is a non-broken thing we already have that is similar to (and actually strictly better than) what they were supposed to get.  So we're planning to upgrade every existing annual member to a lifetime member shortly after the next release.

  to that, I got an annual membership when I just started to really use BTS and it sucked big time not getting anything in return so I would be more than happy with a LTM.

[mint chocolate chip]

Unless you actually referred annual members...those referrers get screwed.

Most of the 31 annual members were either registered by OpenLedger or existed at genesis.  There are exactly four actual referrals of annual memberships, by three people.  If the community thinks reimbursing them is important, it would be possible to set up a worker to pay them manually (or make arrangements with an existing worker to do this).  One of those four annual memberships upgraded to LTM on its own, so their referrer has already been paid.  The remaining two referrers (two of the three accounts were referred by the same referrer) are:

1.2.97634 (referred annual member in block #3028579)
1.2.32176 (referred annual members 1.2.97382, 1.2.101152 who upgraded in blocks #1391978, #3255854)

Woohoo! I am the winner who is the loser by having referred 2 of the 3 annuals who get upgraded and will lose out on the 30% for the year and all future upgrade revenue.

Don't get me wrong...I agree with the getting rid of annual memberships, but do not like being the one who loses out.

Why would anyone have an annual membership at genesis...buddy buddy hook-up? The only free upgrades that were announced iirc were lifetime members for referring someone before the upgrade annoucement.

mint, I will send you $200 BitUSD for your trouble.   That should even things up a bit.

Fair deal...tyvm.

[bytemaster]

Unless you actually referred annual members...those referrers get screwed.

Most of the 31 annual members were either registered by OpenLedger or existed at genesis.  There are exactly four actual referrals of annual memberships, by three people.  If the community thinks reimbursing them is important, it would be possible to set up a worker to pay them manually (or make arrangements with an existing worker to do this).  One of those four annual memberships upgraded to LTM on its own, so their referrer has already been paid.  The remaining two referrers (two of the three accounts were referred by the same referrer) are:

1.2.97634 (referred annual member in block #3028579)
1.2.32176 (referred annual members 1.2.97382, 1.2.101152 who upgraded in blocks #1391978, #3255854)

Woohoo! I am the winner who is the loser by having referred 2 of the 3 annuals who get upgraded and will lose out on the 30% for the year and all future upgrade revenue.

Don't get me wrong...I agree with the getting rid of annual memberships, but do not like being the one who loses out.

Why would anyone have an annual membership at genesis...buddy buddy hook-up? The only free upgrades that were announced iirc were lifetime members for referring someone before the upgrade annoucement.

mint, I will send you $200 BitUSD for your trouble.   That should even things up a bit.