At the current time, the site is underfunded. Understandably, economies on both sides of the pond and around the world are putting the crunch on folk's pockets, so the staff has a decision to make. Our choices are to leave the system as it is, relying on people to freely donate any amount that they feel they can; implement a partial 'pay to play' fee that, once paid, allows the user access to certain forums (to be decided - likely the most used ones, of course) that the user can both read and post on; or the full 'pay to play' - full access to the forums once a mandatory fee has been paid. The fee hasn't been set yet. We're still figuring the number of active members versus what the site needs to comfortably operate from year to year.
Of course, the downside to all of this is that a 'pay to play' will undoubtably ostracize forum lurkers and folks that are just browsing through. But on the other hand, without appropriate funding, the forum won't be here at all!
Tell us what you think!!