You'll probably find that the vast majority of the 8000 couldn't give a hoot about a forum, new or otherwise. Not sure that means it should just be binned off though.

There also seems to be a bit of a contradiction to me, of asking everybody on the forum to be an FRA member, but yet wanting to encourage potential new fellrunners to visit the forum... if they can't access all the info then what incentive is there for them to even consider looking at the forum?

The "two-tier" option of needing to be an FRA member to access the full forum is an option... but i'm not sure this is going to be much incentive to new runners to either join the FRA or the forum.

Not to mention people like Molehill who are great contributors, yet for a variety of valid reasons (be they personal, political, whatever) chose not to be an FRA member.