I vehemently oppose a financial barrier to entry (1 & 3).

I grew up poor. Sixty percent of the US is blue-collar, and fifteen percent are in poverty. Not to mention the rest of the world. How many people in Ghana would we be excluding, because $1 in the US is like $100 there? A financial barrier literally says, only people with money and the people they like can participate. Even $1 is out of reach of a great many people, for practical or ideological reasons.

There are services where financial membership is appropriate, but I don't think an intelligent, insightful community like hubski is one of them.

If the goal is solely money, I really think we'd get more from a donate button than a fee. If you require a fee, a lot of people who would donate $100 will just pay the $1 fee and figure that takes care of their support. I don't have evidence of that, but it's a pretty strong hunch.

If the goal is to improve the community, there are filters we could implement to do that. I don't think filtering for rich people is one of those.