it seems that the idea may be sound enough but the micro-payment requirement may have more to do with someone else having not tried it.
As I have outlined above, if a user could start out having to pay maybe 25 cents or a dollar that would immediately cure the spammer issue.
this also cures that problem
so the idea isn’t necessarily to make tons of money, it is mostly to keep spammers away and relieving the burden on the moderation staff by making users invest in the quality of the community?
It has always be my philosophy that the way to drive traffic is to provide something people want, even if it is trivial.
If somehow a website could offer benefit that users desired and were willing to invest in as well as pay for. Seems that just outright charging them at the door, you better start out with something they really want.
Something else you said earlier caught my attention:
I wonder how many sites use it and we just aren’t aware
This recent blog post indicates AMD (a large corp) uses it