I have no problem with people paying for a good service.
My concern was purely that for a lot of communities already struggling for engagement, putting up a paywall would totally cripple contribution and kill the forum - can you just imagine the dearth of new posts and what it would do to SEO and how that would then seal its fate?
I am delighted that there is an example where this model does work, but can imagine it will remain pretty unique.
This is not quite the same thing.
I am able to comment in the Financial Times because I’m a subscriber but I don’t subscribe to comment, I’m there for the news.
This is basically what Youtube or some other social media platforms do. Mostly by sharing a portion of ad revenue, but also sharing “Youtube premium” subscription revenue (you can argue they “value” views and not quality of the content. There is supposed to be some correlation somewhere)
Asking people to pay to have the privilege of creating content does seem off-putting. You would then need to have a great forum where people accept to pay a subscription, and this could fund the system. It differs a little from your base idea of “moderating” with money on the posting side. Well, the subscription quite does that. X (ex-twitter) also pretty much uses something like this since a little while (people paying have their tweets shown more!)
In the crypto world, this does exist since 10+ years, tho. STEEMIT, for example (Quotes source = CoinMarketCap) :
Steem is a community-focused blockchain that creates an instant earning opportunity for the network’s users. The protocol is designed to provide an earning opportunity for customers based on their value to the network. It is designed to provide users with a platform where they can post curated content online, and get paid in cryptocurrency.
Many traditional social media companies have made lots of money through the content produced by their users. However, what sets Steem apart is the support it offers to its users by rewarding them for their valuable input to the platform.
Steemit is the first app that was built on the Steem blockchain, and it launched on July 4, 2016. The protocol aims to provide value for its community of users in the following ways:
To provide thoughtfully chosen news and commentaries.
Creating an opportunity to earn.
Cryptocurrencies make a lot of sense for such small amounts exchanges and not needing KYC, btw. A form of this was discussed here a while ago (a conversation @satonotdead participated to): Cryptocurrency tip system
Your idea about post “visibility/ranking” is pretty much how Steemit works: It is based on “likes/upvotes”, which makes posters earn, but doesn’t cost upvoters anything.
Our model is loosely pay-to-post. ie you have to be a paid member to contribute, it’s not per post, it’s an annual fee.
It’s great. And to me the only way I want to run a community as I’m kind of done with a free for all community space.
We divide the money we earn to pay our employees and invest back into keeping the community running To me it just doesn’t make sense to have a reward system that isn’t guaranteed and holds too much risk of not working out. Paying people as employees or freelancers feels like the safest and most respectable way to operate.
I was thinking about a tip system integrated into Discourse (XMR, real crypto) and a reward system for the top cheered (leaderboard). It needs to be automated through their secure key system and I will get into it soon or later
It needs to run a Monero node and/or connect to a host node for deriving the key addresses and secrets for each user (giving them a personal integrated wallet).
Then I think a poller, a ledger table, and a plugin exposing a tip button in the post menu, a wallet page, and settings can make it done.
Honestly, I don’t know how specifically it can be integrated because I’m not a developer, but I know that the Monero community could give support if I really set out to do it. For now, I’m in the preliminary steps, where I hope to have initial support from what I’m personally starting, and we will continue in our community.
There are a few open-source projects that reach something close, not integrated in Discourse, but you can check this out if you want:
To me it just doesn’t make sense to have a reward system that isn’t guaranteed and holds too much risk of not working out. Paying people as employees or freelancers feels like the safest and most respectable way to operate.