Guest Level Accounts

[james]

Title:
Guest Level Accounts

Area:
accounts

Summary:
Creating a cheaper, minimal-perk account which still supports DW.

Description:
I've heard interest from folks who would like to be able to support DW and participate in conversations on communities and journals here, but without having to maintain an entire "presence" here, but with more benefits than just a free-level account. Specifically, the ability to track comments and have replies to comments mailed to them.

$35 a year can be a lot for someone who sees themselves as just commenting on other journals, but a minimal amount of paid-account would enable them to comment and keep copies of their comments via email, and keep track of conversations. But even a $15 a year account could be bare bones, and yet let them interact with others on DW.

I have no idea of how the coding works, so I don't know if it's an easy thing to do, or hard, or if being emailed copies of comments is a high-burden sort of benefit.

Poll #7080 Guest Level Accounts

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 57

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
17 (29.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
5 (8.8%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
14 (24.6%)

(I have no opinion)
19 (33.3%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (3.5%)

Comments

[erik]

If they're daunted by the OpenID interface and put off by the cost of a paid membership, why don't you give them a code to create a free account?

[justhuman]

Oh - those get offered all the time.

But it comes down to people being used to the paid account features on LJ and a free account not offering them enough of the features they are used to. A bigger obstacle in my LJ flist are that a lot of users have perm accounts. Perm accounts were once an investment on LJ, but not necessarily hard to come by. Prior to that, virtually all of them were content to pay for advanced account features, but the cost was ultimately less.