Noticed the annual fee is now 18.99. Last year I paid 14.99 .
...And worth every penny IMnsHO to RW advertisers, effectively repelling and filtering out would-be scammers, spammers and insincere "tire kickers".
Tire kickers and bottom feeders simply won't "pay to play". Scammers don't want to leave a "paper trail" behind by which to identify or trace them.
Spammers have so many "free" venues available to them that they won't "pay to play" either. Fine by me, on all accounts.
Unfortunately, RedWeek discussion forums are consistently quite lame, very fragmented and generally ill informed, with very few exceptions. Since no paid membership is required to post in RW forums, those forums also "enjoy" frequent shill appearances, waving their flag for assorted upfront fee parasite operations. There is also a lot of marginally coherent complaining about (belatedly regretted) developer-direct and obscure "club" purchases. Unlike on TUG, the shills on RW don't always get promptly run off with their tails between their legs.