No, you HAVE missed the point, being a subscriber is NOT an open invite to enter all comepetitions, it DOESN'T give you any more privileges than anyone else, it DOESN'T give you any more "right" to enter a competition than non-subscribers. I know because I'm a subscriber as well, for most competitions all you have to do with register with this site, big whoop, I'd estimate that 90% of the competition winners do nothing more than that, they add nothing to the "value" (whatever the hell that is) of this place and they walk away with a price sometimes worth thousands of pounds. Am I annoyed by that? You bet I am, but that's the way it works, by law the magazine isn't allowed to restrict competitions to subscribers only and the manufacturers wouldn't like it either. I get that. I don't like it but I get it.
Now, take Facebook. I'm sure you're about to say "ah yes but those same people will simply click "like" so they can enter the competition and add nothing else". Yes they will but you know what? "like"s propagate. If someone signs up here they're the only person that knows about it, yeah they'll get a weekly email but a spam filter can get rid of that, they can sign up and not have any effect on the popularity of the magazine at all. That's a bad thing. But a Facebook like? Ah, that's different, you click "like" on WHFs Facebook page and you can't hide that, everyone you're friends with will see it and maybe some of them will "like" WHF as well and all their friends will see it and some of them will "like" it as well. Maybe most of them are only doing it to win a TV but maybe, just maybe a handful of those will look at the page, head over here, sign up and join the forum, start contributing and hell, maybe even start buying the magazine.
And that's a good thing. As far as I'm concerned EVERY competition should be run through Facebook, it makes far more sense.