People are understanding you perfectly, and that’s why they disagree. I can’t justify the entire software economy, but it makes sense to lower costs as much as possible for simple public messages among peers. A “new user” should not have to pay for random people to give possibly wrong answers, and people shouldn’t have to pay to give right answers. If payment is involved, it’d be more reasonable to pay the latter for adding value to your forum, though I believe that earlier suggestion was a joke. Free online communication predated the web, and people only expect to pay for services or upgrades that aren’t already offered in a free tier elsewhere. Frankly, if I wasn’t aware of your activity and decent reputation on this forum, I would have perceived this inappropriate paywall as predatory, not just poor assumptions and finances, and it doesn’t help that the welcome post promotes your new Julia-based business instead of mentioning the other free forums or justifying a new paid one.
In very different and often private contexts, expert advice can be justified as a paid service. That could range from teaching beginners to highly technical consultations, but that has its own financing challenges. It’s also not feasible for every kind of question and is much more limited by scheduling, which is why free forums and LLMs exist.
A screenshot to save people some clicks to find out the current pricing and offers in addition to the limited discount mentioned here:
