# Building Community Through Compensated Contributions **URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/building-community-through-compensated-contributions/392686 **Category:** Community Building **Created:** [January 2, 2026, 10:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/building-community-through-compensated-contributions/392686 "2026-01-02T22:52:04Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Showing post:** 63
### Author: ![Ed\_S](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/ed_s/32/134015_2.png) [@Ed\_S](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ed_S) #### Post date: [January 17, 2026, 10:15pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/building-community-through-compensated-contributions/392686/63 "2026-01-17T22:15:06Z")
The thing about gamification is that it steers users towards maximising some metrics: they will change their posting behaviour according to the rewards. Anecdote: I recall with G+ I found I changed my posting style when I started to get more than 10 likes on a post (I’m not famous!) - I would feel better when I made posts which got more likes, I would feel worse when I got fewer than 10 likes. I changed my style, posted about different things. I was no longer acting according to my interests, or trying to communicate anything particular, I was trying to make popular posts. And with no reward other than likes. This will suit some people and some communities, but not me. Yes, there is an official plugin > [@Discourse Gamification](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-gamification/225916): > > discourse2Summary Discourse Gamification adds customizable scoring (karma, kudos, points) and leaderboards to your instance.open_bookInstall Guide This plugin is bundled with Discourse core. There is no need to install the plugin separately.test_tubeDemo [Leaderboard](https://meta.discourse.org/leaderboard/1)Features While Discourse ships, out of the box, with gamification features (badges, trust levels) some communities want to take it to another level. That’s where [GitHub - discourse/discou…](https://github.com/discourse/discourse-gamification) --- _[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/building-community-through-compensated-contributions/392686)._