XXXBEAR said:
Bear Greg-I post on both insider and growls. Thanks for really energizing the site with content, regular chat room conversations and insight on players, coaches and schemes. The site is definitely better for your efforts.
I can't comment on the quality of the content being provided as I haven't been a premium member at any point since the switch. However, even if you don't care about premium content, there's an argument to be made for financially contributing to the overhead costs of running a website like this. Server hosting is not free. People to provided content (I'm guessing) are not free.
The two big noticeable things that I've seen from a freeloader perspective are.
1. An invitation to come back was extended. Considering that I have been a critic of Greg's as a poster, that was a big gesture in my mind and definitely elevated my opinion of him. There have been a few PM's since I've been back to tone things down in certain areas and I've been happy to try to work with him to try to conform to what he expects is acceptable on the board.
2. The excessive sensitivity and abuses of the moderators has been reined in big-time. Gone are the petty bans because the moderator didn't like the opinion that was posted. That has led to a greater diversity of opinion.
That said, even allowing for the fact that the $1 deal is a great deal, I'll just never; be a premium subscriber to this website again. I currently maintain a premium subscription elsewhere that I only intended to be a brief one so I could laugh at shocky, but discovered a site that is more like what I would like a site to be. No clutter of okaydo clickbait threads. No fans whining about minority opinions being unacceptable. Almost every post is about Cal sports, which is what I'm most interested in posting about (my participation in the Off Topic board. notwithstanding, it's something I could easily do without if the board was remoived). Most importantly, I get to be myself, which I can't be on Golden Blogs and to some extent here.
tl;dr - I pay for a site where drunkoski is a valued contributor and shocky is laughed off.
But that's just my perspective. On the whole though, I think Greg is doing a good job with this site and if you like it, you should consider financially supporting it.