I'm a bit skeptikal that this is only about a shoutbox, after all a shout box is
FREE! I own the same type of vbulletin forum and it's as free for me as it is for the owners of this site. Furthermore I'm very skeptical because this thread was not created by staff from this site, mind you an admin should be asking these kind of questions. I don't like chatbox and/or shoutbox!!! NO NO NO bad idea in my oppinion!
I don't like having to pay for access because I find that it's hypocritical. In essence this site has so much content because of people opinions, that they gave this site for
FREE! Now you will charge the same people that contributed to the site? Or better yet, you make money from the people that contributed the site by asking for money to the people that join?
Forcing someone to do something is a very bad idea!
The only reason there's this much content is because people can find you easily with google. The only reason you can be seen with google is by having access (publicly, the site must be crawled by googles search engine!) to public areas. Thus if you restrict access to content, you shoot yourself in the foot.
Another reason why I'm against this is because it creates 2 tiers of people. The elite (the few people that can and/or want to pay for it) and the rest of the people that you don;t care about.
I love this site the way it is because of the way that it is. This seems like a business (when charging money) as opposed to something fun that's cool to follow up on.
Let people donate if they wish, but leave it @ that or better yet honor them in a thread of appreciation and mention it in a newsletter or something.