donor status question

This is more or less a question for John, but mabye someone else can help me out on this. I was under the impression that buying a t-shirt(or in my case, sweatshirt and calander), or other caudata items, was a qualification of donor status(as well as making a donation). I don't mind not being considered a donor, but I would like to have the option of having an avatar again. Can that even be changed in the new forum without having donor status, is it independent for all users?

Purchase of items from the caudata.org store has never, to my knowledge, been a way to obtain donor status. The store is meant to be a way for members to have fun and buy some cool newt themed apparrel/accessories. I think with the way the Cafe Press store works you would have to buy a huge amount of stuff to allow John (caudata.org) to make any profit. Donation of funds directly to Caudata.org is the only way to obtain donor status and an avatar.

Imagine if the stuff you bought was a gift for PBS or National Public Radio, you would be making a donation of over a hundred dollars for the same.

This question was answered by John previously:
http://www.caudata.org/forum/showthread.php?t=33678
I don't think this has changed.

Regarding avatars, things are currently set to only allow this for donors. See:
http://www.caudata.org/index.php?page=donations
I think avatars may add a significant amount of bandwidth to the forum, so that may be the reason for the limitation.

I knew I remebered asking that, but i couldn't remember if I asked it to myself late one night or posted it. Thanks for the clearification

I will add a note to the top of the store to indicate that it's not a donation. I will make one exception though and I feel a bit stupid I didn't do this before - I will give all the photo donors for the 2007 calendar a 12 month donor status right now (or right after I finish typing this up).

The last thing I want is to mislead people. What has been said is not quite right though - there is a profit from the store. To put this in more perspective, since February 1st 2007 there has been $16.00 cleared profit (not kidding). If all the sales since that time clear the allowed "returns" period by Cafepress, it will hit $43.00 since Feb 1st. The 2007 Calendar made as much the store sales for every other item ever up to January 2007. I believe the calendar profited just over $100 (consider that there's $4 profit per calendar).

This is a note to moderators who had a winning photo in the calendar (and several of you did). Your current status is superior to donor status. However if you ever cease to be a moderator for any reason you can claim the 12 month donor status right after that - your moderator status is superior or equal to donor. I can add the donors status to you right now but then it would tick away. Let me know if you want to do it differently.

There you go Jeff. Thanks for precipitating this and I apologise for not thinking of it sooner (the calendar photo winners I mean).