Increasing Gold Membership numbers?

[When Necessary]

How about a 'Lock Thread' button so all goldmembers can play God equally?

[PNSSHOGUN]

Samurai related titles or cosmetic options could be good, something fun and low effort. 

[Brian]

I have made some changes to those titles, especially the higher tiers. I may adjust them as I learn what the caste system involved. Just a bit of fun.\

Unfortunately Gold member takeup is still very slow and although I am looking at other things, I have to give more incentive to upgrade.
Private message storage limit for regular members is now down from 150 to 100 conversations. Gold members are allowed 500.
I think 100 conversations is more than enough for most people, and if people clean up their inbox they should be fine. But if anyone needs more, Gold membership is a vast increase.
I am going to fine tune a few other things. Upload limit/size is already much higher for Gold members. So the 3 meg per post limit is easily increased if people need it by taking Gold.

[Rivkin]

In the old times some forums would offer a physical "forum pin" for premier members to wear at sword shows etc..

[When Necessary]

8 minutes ago, Rivkin said:

In the old times some forums would offer a physical "forum pin" for premier members to wear at sword shows etc..

This is the pin the NBTHK used to give members. I always thought it looked extremely cheesy and never wore it, even at kantei-kai. 

[kissakai]

Not sure if this has been mentioned earlier but only gold members can offer items for sale but anyone can buy

 

[Brian]

That would be a bot mean to those who only want to sell an item or 2...and probably reduce the number of people selling, which is a bit drawcard here. It would be an obvious move to increase numbers, but I don't think I want to go that far. May have to limit the number of listings though. But need to figure out how to manage that in the software. Can't monitor it manually.
Need to do something though, as it is verrrry slow currently and we've gone backwards in terms of funds. But still ok.
Still considering options. No take ups on the month-to month option, so we have to look elsewhere.

No serious requests for increased upload sizes or resolution yet. Pm limits, we'll see if that has any effect.
A private mei/oshigata database is set up, but would take a looong time for people to populate it with mei that are shoshin, so it would be a long term thing. But probably worth doing. 
How to select the main smiths to start with is difficult, and then we can branch off to the other smiths.
Maybe separate military guys from the pre-WW2 smiths?