Gary,

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>Well, I'm not saying anyone would pay for PUTM. Then, I suppose I am questioning whether the logic of paying for membership is valid, period. The better the experience, the more people would use the UT. The more people using the UT would, I assume, generate better advertising revenue.
>

Websites that depend on the advertising model have really been struggling. There is a big move toward subscription based web-sites...if you can't get advertisers to pay, you gotta get someone else to. Granted, I don't look forward (or intend) to having paid memberships at a bunch of websites.

>>Are you saying that you would donate money to the UT if full-functionality was given to everyone for free?
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>Now this is a different kettle of fish.

hehe...I've never heard that phrase. I will use it at the next opportunity.

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>When I thought it through, whilst there are a lot of excellent members here, there has always been a poor "signal to noise ratio" (in my personal opinion), and an awfull lot of "politics", sniping and backbiting. So, when push came to shove, I thought do I really want to pay for this?
>

Overall, I have felt that most of the time people are pretty professional around here. I've seen a lot worse elsewhere; maybe I wasn't looking in the right places :)

Take care,