I personally have found this topic very interesting because the mere mention of charging users to participate caused a large percent of the community to immediately recoil in horror.
And yet, I would guess most already pay for some kind of online service.
The original post is by a new user. None of us know anything about this user. This user may run a Discourse forum (I’m guessing) or several. This user may already have a viable forum which generates income (or several)
The title of the post is ‘Can money be the only moderator of a forum?’. It’s a simple premise. From my point of view the work load on moderators was (at least in part) what was being asked about. Many participants in this community may struggle with the exact same problem. How do I keep trolls and spammers from overloading my moderation staff and keep from running off my legitimate users?
Discourse seems to partialy address this with the trust system.
Can gamification or (dare I say it) charging money (possibly a very small amount) help?