I believe you missed:
-
local queries? these can be semantically searched locally now too.
-
In a Q&A setup, you definitely can game it. This is outside of any “follower” system. I remember when we had a local Stack Exchange enterprise installation at my old firm, some people got very addicted to the points system. This wasn’t “social media” in the broader sense - you could argue it was basically a forum with a Q&A driven dynamic. I’m sure you could explore this further with Discourse and the current Q&A plugin, possibly with extension.
It would be interesting to know if the Discourse Follow plugin had any influence on a large forum …