Kevin... Some of what you say makes sense, some doesn't. You have a lot of fantastic skills. Compared to you and many of the others who frequent these hallowed halls I am an unshod babe in the woods with little to offer those who, at a moments notice, could leap out of an airplane into any environment on earth and survive with naught but a knife, or bare hands if you had to!
At the same time, in my limited and very narrow life, I just happen to have been using, writing, researching, and reporting on computer communications and conferencing systems since 1980! I may not always understand the rationalle behind some of the economics, but I sure as hell know the sociology. What appeal the usenet has or does not have is a value judgement. It doesn't have "chat" built in, but its easy enough to click over to an IRC window or use Yahoo or AOL IM for that. I'm not sure what you mean by "immediate threading". My usnet reader software does much better sub-threading and thread-following than we see here, though in my opinion, flatter is simpler. I turn off the more sophisticated sub-threading capabilities of my reader because its easier (for me) to read messages in simple time sequence.
What the usenet has is <i>user volume</i>. I thought that was what advertisers wanted? Until the advent of web browsers, all publically available on-line services were for-pay. None of them ever had the volume required to attract advertisers. Then someone hit upon an interesting idea... What if you give your service away for free? You get not hundreds or a few thousand users, but tens of thousands, and that is a market advertisers will pay for! So what happened?
Why isn't BFC paying for itself through its advertising? Why would not advertising plus the subscriptions of people who actually expect to earn money from this market place (the makers and sellers) be enough to cover your expenses and then some? If you have to charge everyone to cover your requirements, then you have a real dilema, because 80% or more of the people who participate (and buy knives from those advertising and posting here) will leave. This is not a threat, it is an observation derived from 20 years of experience with these services! If 80% or more leave, then who will the advertisers be left advertising to? With whom will knife makers be chatting up in friendly ways on the forums? I'll tell you who, other knife makers and sellers only, because they will be the only ones left.
Sure you'll keep (for a while) the real die-hard collectors who buy a knife or more every month, but the vast majority of people here, like me, buy a few knives a year. It takes a lot of us to add up to enough people to be a reasonably sized market that will attract advertisers and knife makers.
If you're going to keep this market place attractive to me and those like me, you've got to give us free access. Make your money by taking a cut from the guy I buy a knife from whose work I saw here in this market! That makes sense. Charging me to get into the market doesn't make sense, because I'll just take my business to other existing free markets (and there are others besides the usenet too). What will happen is that all the sellers will eventually migrate to those markets too because most of the buyers have gone there, at first, mostly to talk which is 99% of what people do here. That is why you can't have an Ebay on the usenet, because other-than-communications services are intrinsic to what Ebay does. That is not the case for BFC. For you, the other-than-communications services are an adjunct, not your central function.
Believe me I feel the pain of your dilema. I'm sure you grew this enterprise in the full expectation that advertising plus fees for direct marketing (sellers) would be all that was needed, and the market would be open to all comers with everybody happy because the buyer doesn't have to pay anything unless he actually buys, and the seller, while he has to pay to be in the market knows that he is going to be surrounded by large volumes of people who all want to buy knives or they wouldn't be here. I guess the magic trick is to find a level of service (your hosting, hardware, software, etc) whose cost is actually covered by those expecting to make money from the enterprise. I'd be happy to help you find that happy medium if I can be of service.
My hat's off to you, and I do wish you luck which ever way you decide to go.