Matthew, apparrently you haven't been reading closely, or have missed the salient points of what we've been saying.
It's only going to be Pay-to-post to sell knives. It's only going to be Pay-for-features (other-than-communication in your words) for certain features, like private messaging and such. Otherwise posting is still free. I fail to see just what you have a problem with.
As for your other points, banner advertising is not covering our costs, period. When even Yahoo cannot survive on what they are making on Banner Ads, then it's pretty much accepted that they are not successful as a revenue model. Furthermore, when dealers are able to sell here for free, they have no incentive to use other advertising media. Thus, we are discontinuing free selling for dealers.
There is a trade off in anything you do. If all we wanted was volume, then USENET would do just fine for knife discussion. BladeForums.com is a much more attractive, easier to use format. That is why BladeForums.com get's over 1000 posts per day, and rec.knives get's an order of magnitude less. If we have to charge a fee to continue with such an attractive, feature rich, easy to use service, then that's what we have to do.
Put it another way - you can go to McDonalds, and get a Combo Meal for $4.00. You'll get a burger, fries and a drink. If you want to supersize (and get bigger portions), it will cost you a little extra.
Sure, you could go out and buy the potatoes, ground beef, make your own soda, but what you pay for is the convenience. End of Sermon.
Another example - the Wall Street Journal - if you want the information it has, you have to pay a price for it. Otherwise, if you are content to get your news from
Joe.Mama@angiedaddy.com, you are free to use USENET. Again, it's a tradeoff - you can either compare apples to apples, or apples to oranges.
Kevin