I don’t want to be negative, but I raised a few possible issues on another thread so posting them here too..
I think a lot of us come here for a sense of community. Putting a paywall on that is going to make the community smaller.
Is there a reason the subscription model has been applied to both the main site and the forums? To me, they are like two separate entities. I rarely use the main site, but I use the forums every day. To be paying for features that sound more like they’ll be on the main site, just so I can access forums, is possibly not something I’m interested in.
We have a lot of younger teenage members of the community, who may not be able to purchase subscriptions. I started using NB as a 13 year old and it’s a hobby that’s stuck with me for life! But my parents would never have paid for a subscription to a baby name website for me.
[name_m]The[/name_m] forums also get a decent amount of traffic from what are essentially temporary users who are here to name a baby and then leave (at least until they have another one!). I’m not sure I would be willing to pay for a subscription just to post? I’d go to somewhere like r/namenerds or another forum (although none are as open-minded as this one so that would be a shame!). I think it’s going to make the forums a lot less active. I think the community here is one of the most amazing things about the site, and I worry this change is going to impact that.
[name_m]The[/name_m] community is one of the best ways to get new name ideas and share them with others. I’d rather have an active community, as it is now, than be paying for features to do the same thing. I don’t feel like I need a tool to give me new name ideas when the community here is already so good at that. It takes away the community aspect, which I think is a big reason so many of us stick around
There are also still ongoing issues with customisation, for example the profile picture issue which we haven’t had an update on since [name_f]October[/name_f] last year. To pay for the site, I’d want features like this back at the very least