Slantz' rules allow BJ to be used for no charge and even have duplicate memberships. I don't have a problem with people who use it based on his rule and don't pay for premier membership as long as they don't expect much and I am always surprised when I see non-premier members ask for changes. I think the vast majority of basic members do respect this.

Someone has to pay for the servers, growing support demands and programming costs; it's a tough act to balance attracting people and then giving them enough extra features to motivate some to pay. For those that are motivated by features, I think the differences between basic and premier membership are not clear enough and have caused some of the upset. I think he will be working on making the differences more apparent. Some folks are simply motivated by the less tangible value of the community interaction. Here at TE we only have the community aspect but the site is supported by our retail purchases. I can't imagine that Susan hosts this forum solely out of the goodness of her heart and, obviously, the software that runs this forum is a licensed cookie-cutter application so there are little to no custom programming costs. Basic members can support BJ in a small way simply by making purchases using sponsor links which are becoming more available. For those who then want to complain that there shouldn't be a lot of advertisements, I think slantz is adding them in a tasteful way and either he brings on sponsors or the fees will be higher. Basically, it just comes down to playing within the slantz's rules not imposing your own rules on someone else's play.

Regarding the forum, posts that are red are the current day's active posts and are always at the top of the forum. If they are grayed out, the post hasn't had any activity since midnight the night before. The forum does not track an individual's activity - such as whether you, the user, read a post. It's not difficult just a different way of running a forum.