Yes, losing even a handful would be bad. More than a handful is obviously worse. I think you might have misunderstood what I said.
I don't blame them and I think they are absolutely entitled to their feelings. That is why I created this discussion -- to solve the problem.
1. Where will people make these quality posts which would grant them entry into the private area if they have no access to the private area? Should we create a private stock area and a public stock area? How would a new user understand the hoops they would ened to jump through to get in?
2. Manually granting access to this private forum is not something I have time to administrate and since changing group permissions is an administrative function, I could not delegate it to moderators.
3. If the forum is private, I can't generate any ad revenue on that content which would typically be visited thousands of times per day by visitors to the site. I can't serve pages that cost me money and not collect some kind of revenue (even if its only a few bucks).
I care about keeping everyone happy. Smart people attract more visitors, you can't have one without the other.
I think there is a solution and we will get to it. I am hammering out a new idea to keep things affordable for early adopters with Spencer now.