You are entirely welcome annamill. I wish The Well wasn't such an expensive proposition, because it is a very nice forum, from the looks of it.

So I go over to the Mother Jones website, to check what their current subscription rate is, and low and behold, the special introductory offer currently running is a measley $10! I find it hard to believe that people posting here couldn't cough up $10/year.

Also, for anyone who cares--at the discussion board at Mother Jones, guests can contribute without registering, but they cannot start a thread without registering. I know someone mentioned that idea somewhere else in the guest threads in the last few days, but I can't remember where. Anyway, yes there are many ways of running a message forum on a website. I wish more folks would weigh in on the would you pay question. I tend to think you get a much better quality forum if you have pay something for it, even if it is minimal.