Maybe it's not the best idea, as a very newbie in this forum, to open the biggest can of worms right in the beginning. Anyhow I dare taking up the cudgels for the lurkers in my very first post in this forum.
The lurkers are deeply misunderstood in this forum IMHO, at least their contribution to the BEA's range of influence and perception.
If you calculate about 20 times as much lurkers being present in the forum as members (a very conservative estimation), you get about 2 Million persons reading the posts there.
This gives the BEA a much greater weight as if you BEA-members would have stayed amongst yourselves. I can understand, that the paying members request some benefits for their financial engagement.
So far, so good. But somehow this will keep you in a kind of parallel universe (the boob bubble

) as well.
I would suggest, that, instead of blaming the lurkers, perhaps you could open some kind of free accessible interfaces without the hurdles of becoming a member of the BEA immediately; I've noticed, that other potential members had the same problems in getting something like a trial-membership for free. See e.g.
(
https://forum.bearchive.com/index.php?topic=10007798.0 or
https://forum.bearchive.com/index.php?topic=10008826.0). Even when offering to contribute their own material.
Or perhaps you should make the opposite approach and close the forum for all non-members completely.
Then you can let yorself stew in your own grease! Without any lurkers (besides the members willingly lurking) around.
Corrupting a well known song's title: "No Lurker, no Cry".
BTW even if you are willing to subscribe to BEA as a paying member (which could be derived from the word "invite" [better: invitation?] in this post's title), the registration forms are more than confusing: the so called "Display Name" on the first page of the registration form (which should be displayed in the posts, due to my understanding and the description) is used for what? Whereas the "Username" which is due to the description "a private name, only you will see" is apparently used as the name in the posts. Annoying!
I'm almost regretting, having subscribed to this forum!
But maybe I've broken so many rules with my very first post, that I get banned immediately and forever
