Proposed Vacation Abuse Solution

We're thinking about ways to combat vacation abuse (people going on vacation to postpone losing games).

I tend to believe that it is NEW users who are most abusing vacation. And frankly, 40 days is just too much for most people anyway. Maybe we should roll back to 30 days? 

Here is one thought I have:

When you signup you get 5 days of vacation time. If you become a premium member, then you have verified that you care about your reputation, and therefore you then get your full vacation time immediately. If you stay a free member, you get an extra vacation day for every 10 days you are active on the site. That way, after 1 year of being on the site you have your 40 days. 

Thoughts?

seems like a good idea, but what about people who signup like one or two months before their vacation?

Erik,

Your plan sounds reasonable enough.

You are basing it on the premise that recent, non-subscribed members are the heaviest (ab)users of vacation. Do the system statistics corroborate that?

I would suggest that you distribute vacation days based on the number of games completed, as opposed to the number of active days. In other words the more games a member finishes, the less likely they are to abuse the vacation feature.

Rob

 of course paid members should  get some extra privileges, but if that  effects the 'in game' privileges, people with free membership would play only against other free members

40 days/year of vacation time is about right for my circumstances. As far as swiching from a lump-sum grant of 40 vacation days to an accrual model I think that's a reasonable idea... that's how it works at most businesses anyway.

I know I've seen something like this suggested before, must have been a genius ahead of his time.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/run-out 

haha erik, .. oops sorry

[Edited to add, i was chuckling at something  said on the link posted by Loomis, and certainly not at this thread] 

Erik's plan sounds good to me.  I didn't like it when I was unable to take vacation without moving in all my games (& I play very few games - must have been far more difficult for those playing lots of concurrent games).  But the idea of gaining more vacation days as you prove yourself to be committed to the site is a good one.

30 days might be enough but as the site's still in its first year I'd suggest sticking with 40 for now & see how it goes before changing the number of days.

I'd disagree with Rob's suggestion that number of vacation days should be based on number of games completed - simply because I have very little time to play so I only play a few games at once (I've been a member since August but have still only played 28 games - I know some have played hundereds in that time). 

Listen RetGuvvie98, spare me the moral preaching about life not being free, ok? Regardless of the fact that I find that to be irrelevant to the discussion at hand, some users simply cannot afford to be payed memebers (highschoolers is just one example). That doesn't make them "freeloaders" or bad people... this site's popularity was built on it being a free service, and if it was to charge money for membership right from the start it wouldn't have 1/4 of the membership it has now.

And I'm not saying this in any way to belittle the amazing job Eric and the rest of the staff did on here, I personally am planning on becoming a payed member soon enough in order to enjoy some of the features reserved for payed members of the site, but I think that substracting even more features from unpayed users is un-necessary, and the current format is very well thought out. You get just the right amout of functionality to play games.. and all the premium features are perfectly selected so that if you're really into the site you'll gladly join up. If you think you can just force membership down people's throats, with that whole "pay up or f*** off" attitude of yours, you've got a lot to learn.

Besides, there are many other ways of earning money from popular sites such as this, Google text ads come to mind... easily integrated and not intrusive. Personally I think this site is not taking advantage of it's ad-revenue potential... all I see is just one big banner advertising creation of some "pirate characters" ?! You can easily add non intrusive google-ads to most pages of the site to make heaps of money. (hint to Eric... I know this is off-topic, but seriously, there are almost NO ads on the site what so ever! Seems like a waste..)

someone british, there was no need for language like that regardles of your feelings in your post

If you think you can just force membership down people's throats, with that whole "pay up or f*** off" attitude of yours, you've got a lot to learn.

Altered so as not be offend 

I meant no offence, but sometimes you have to use strong language to make your point. I think that one short sentence summed up RetGuvvie98's whole attitude perfectly. Come now.. we're all adults here after all.

P.S - Ok, I edited it out for the more gentle souls among us.

well, this topic has taken a left turn :)

i personally don't agree with RetGuvvie98. i understand some people can't or won't pay (i think the can't is a small number though). what does surprise me is that more people DON'T pay when they are spending hours and hours per day on the site. seems kinda odd.

anyway, we will be adding more and more ads to the site over time. making money just isn't top priority - building the best online experience is. we'll start putting bunches of ads up for non-paying members soon enough (though no popups - popups are just evil).