The NSS News is _the_ tangible benefit that most NSS members get. If I
stopped getting it on paper, I might just drop my membership, if I
wasn't in the ~ 10 percent of members who attend the convention and
get a registration discount equal to dues (and if I wasn't a life
member). Has the overhead in the society's budget (mainly the office)
decreased as the membership has dropped? The society has just appeased
its edifice complex by buying a big new "headquarters." While the cost
of the property will no doubt be paid for by donations for the
purpose, I suspect that overhead will increase when it ought to be
decreasing. Work expands to fill the space available.
Cutting the most visible member service is not the way to grow the
membership. I think board members are, perhaps naturally, prone to
overestimate how interested most members of the NSS are in intangible
services such as promoting cave conservation and, to a minor extent,
cave science. That so few regular members have opted to continue to
get the journal on paper is not an indication of interest in a paper
News. The journal is (too) specialized, and anyway, the membership
renewal form on the web _still_, almost two years after the change to
make the paper journal optional at extra cost, has no notice of that
and no way to pay that cost. (Talk about spectacular administrative
incompetence!) -- Mixon
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Don't be led astray into the paths of virtue.
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