i wish that cohost had explicitly ran on a PBS funding drive model
cohost plus basically became that, i guess, but it was always officially for premium features that never showed up. it felt dishonest to me. if you're gonna ask for money in exchange for something that i know you won't follow through on, i'm not gonna give you any. but if you say "hey can i have five bucks just to get something to eat" then like, yeah, of course you can? but i'm not going to infer the former from the latter
i don't have any thoughts about artist alley beyond "i wish that was done a year earlier", because honestly i only looked at it once or twice and then kinda forgot it was there. i don't know how others used it.