

Some reasons why I left the ACM - qhoxie
http://blog.zenspider.com/2008/10/some-reasons-why-i-left-the-ac.html

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RobGR
I quit paying my $200 yearly fee because the magazines I was getting seemed to
be mainly full of "datamation" type psuedo-commercials, and what I call the
"web-3.0-is-the-new-web-2.0" articles.

Also, there was supposed to be some enormous library of online books you could
download or something, but somehow you were only supposed to get a few at a
time, and none of the stuff was worth reading. Maybe I didn't find the web
page with the good library ? But anyway, it sure wasn't worth 55 cents a day.

I would pay to be part of an organization or subscribe to a publication that
was a little more focused and less crap. Immagine the 2600 magazine, which
sells for $4.50, but with interesting articles written by mature people (hey,
like the people on HN !). I like 2600's policy of running ads only from
subscribers, it is similar to the ad-trasing network mentioned here on HN a
few weeks back.

A magazine such as that, but with higher quality and more interesting
articles, would be worth paying a lot for. If it was associated with some kind
of tech conference that met in different regions around the year, and I could
get a price break going to it, that would make it worth more. It seems like
that is kind of what the ACM used to be, and what it should aim to be again.

------
wheels
Agreed. There seems to be a lot of frustration with the ACM in general. It's
comforting knowing that I'm not a lone-raving-lunatic. I really think there's
an opportunity for someone to get an alternative organization going.

~~~
silencio
I can see where you are coming from..but between my ACM and IEEE CS _student_
memberships costing only like $50/year combined (give or take a few for the
variety of add-ons) and giving me access to MSDNAA (lots and lots of MS
software my school doesn't even come close to providing), Safari Books Online,
Books24x7 and other resources, I can still see a reason why I still pay for
both.

The original writer does have a point about what's showing up in publications
like CACM, but there are alternatives for publication (i.e. arXiv) and an
organization would have to provide more than just that to be a significant
alternative to either one.

~~~
wheels
I too kept a membership as long as was a student. The fact that the ACM sent
dozens of spam messages after I was no longer a student and didn't want to pay
the $200 fee also burned me on them.

I'd still pay $50 a year. I'd even pay $20 a month for the months where I'm
doing research intensive stuff. I'd pay $2 for a paper probably. But given the
fact that I can find nearly every paper that I need elsewhere it's often hard
to justify $200 a year for an organization that I'm not terribly fond of.

Other major annoyance -- even if you get a paper _accepted_ at an ACM
conference, you have to pay the several hundred dollar registration fees.

I think if there were an alternative organization with backing from a handful
of notable computer scientists, that made membership more ubiquitous, built a
community around computing research and streamlined things like the peer
review process, it could be pretty powerful.

