If your interested in suggestions for improvements, beyond 'premium membership' I have two:

How about a simple numbering system for each thread. First commenter is number one, second number two ... you get he idea. Being able to reference a comment and commenter by both name and location within the thread would make things easier. Particularly on longer threads.

Far easier to reference "Joeblow at #12" and pop up to find his comment and context at #12 than having to find the name and particular instance, Joeblow may have commented several times in the one thread, in a stack of fifty or a hundred comments. Using a comment number might replace some of the longer quotations, reduce bandwidth requirements, and slightly reduce costs.

Second, the present system of accessing a thread gives you pages (1,2,3) and (all) which is good except that going to the last page often ends up where you get one or two entries so you need to page back to get a feel for the flow of the comments. To avoid this annoyance I find myself just hitting 'all' and downloading the whole thread when all I really want to look at is the entries added since I last looked at the thread.

The issue here is that downloading the entire thread is a lot of bandwidth when all you really wanted was to see the additions made in the last 24 or 48 hours, typically less than a dozen entries.

What I'm suggesting is that thee needs to be a radio button for the last ten entries. Select an appropriate set number. Or some way of specifying additions made in the last day or two. Again, select an appropriate time period.

Both changes could lower the cost of operating the site and make the site more user friendly and quick to use.