I like this idea. But it must be discussed though before I'll make such a significant change to the current system.
Anybody knows about possible drawbacks?

At Gameknot.com, where only chess is played, there are 12400 players, of which I estimate 10% are members. This 10% appears to apply at IYT also.

I see one obvious drawback. Say a member is in a game with a non-member at the time the non-members 3 months expire, this means the game is terminated. If I was the member playing the game I would feel I'm being denied the opportunity to complete a game based on a policy directed at non-members. I still say limitation on the number of games played as a non-member is the best incentive to become a paying member.

<I see one obvious drawback. Say a member is in a game with a non-member at the time the non-members 3 months expire, this means the game is terminated. If I was the member playing the game I would feel I'm being denied the opportunity to complete a game based on a policy directed at non-members. I still say limitation on the number of games played as a non-member is the best incentive to become a paying member.>>>>

a response with a possible solution: After 3 months, the account is put on "to be deleted" status. the games in progress can bew finished, but nothing else can be done unless a membership is purchased.

if after 3 months games are deleted, they could be concidered a forefit since it is their inaction of not becoming a member in a timely fasion that caused the game to end. That way members would not feel they missed out on an oppertunity.

I am totally against the idea of deleting pawns as has been suggested. A site such as this needs a certain amount of players to keep the tournaments and games fresh and exciting. Non paying pawns accomplish this, if you discourage people from coming to your site then the pool of new players disapates.
I am a member of the 65thsquare club. I spend, as do others lots of time promoting chess. Within our club we sponser and organize tournaments and play them out on sites such as BrainKing, ItsYourTurn, GameKnot and others. For every new member we bring from our club to BrainKing we bring a potential paying member. If a structure is established such that has been proposed I will drop my paying membership here. Chessworld for example was a site that offered a certain amount of chess for free to attract paying members. They cut the free stuff down to the point where you could not even play chess, so now I don't spend money nor play at their site anymore.
What it boils down to is a matter of economics. Sometimes you have to give away some free bic pens in order to sell them by the dozen. I feel there are enough benefits to paying members that it is worth it to me to have the membership. Others who may not be quite the chess enthusiast may not consider a value here. Just depends on what you want out of your chess games.

If I can't organize and invite members from my chess club to play at a site, I simply find a site where I can. Though this is a great site, it is of course not the only one in the world of chess.

Regards

Una

Some observations on tony and una's points made (i hasten to add that i play here and virtually nowhere else and will continue to do so)

nobody wants to discourage people from coming to the site, and tony is not suggesting we try to.

the economics of this site appear to be such that fencer is struggling with both time and money resources to keep the site going in a smooth fashion at all times.

we therefore need the site to generate more money to support its operation, and one major way to do this would be to encourage non-paying members to become paying members, and certainly not to discourage them! the incentives to become paying members rather than non-paying need to be looked at, it appears to me that we are giving away an awful lot of bics to sell a very few and as a result the service being provided sometimes suffers.

tony's suggestion is one way to increase the incentives for pawns to upgrade. three months is a long time and pawns would get to play all games for free during that time. as una says, there are plenty of other sites which offer free games, so they are free to play wherever they want. if however the site gets so full of non-paying members that it struggles to provide a correct service to paying members, then that is not right, and that will discourage everybody!

it may be that fencer could consider some of the other facets of the site which could be made available only to members once they have upgraded to paying membership, without excluding non-payers who want to play games. it is already possible to create tournaments for paying members only, fellowships are only available to members. maybe 20 games is too many for non-payers, after all, they are getting to play for nothing - but then as una says, they enhance the site for all users so nobody wants to exclude non-payers at all.

at the end of the day i don't know what causes the problems with the site, fencer must do - is it just a question of money? how much money are we talking about? does the rate of increase in membership mean that fencer will get enough money to achieve his new server aims in 6 months? a year? 10 years?? be nice to know what you think about it fencer, you know what the problems are better than we do.

I still say limiting number of games on the go will do the trick, less games = less moves.