Cal

As a new community we need to identify and stamp out bad actors immediately and thoroughly (spammers, selfservers, ads disguised as posts, brigading, illegal content, racism, you get the idea).
We can’t control if they create their own instances, but we can isolate them.

Total user karma is useless to gauge the quality of the poster.
Upvotes and downvotes are good in the moment, in the thread, for the community to promote good posts and bury bad ones.

That’s a good thing about Fediverse. Anyone can create their own instance and recreate the board/community/magazine there. Nobody needs to be under the thumb of some sore mod.
We just need a well maintained core and installer so anyone, anywhere can get an instance going.

That’s how I understand it anyway, please correct me if I’m wrong.

Travel light. Be early. Be polite. Bring a box of chocolates for the crew. Say please and thank you.

As long as capitalism rules the world it’s inevitable that free or mostly alturistic projects will fail. Unless you have a wealthy benefactor or find other sources of income.

The original Flattr was a good idea, but the non-success and shutdown shows that people are absolutely not interested in donating without getting something in return.

The original Reddit gold, although flawed, was a good way to support a platform and show appreciation to a certain contributor.
Maybe a similar system can be implemented where the owners and maintainers get a small cut each time a “gold” is bought and given? But then the question becomes, who will administer that…

Crypto/token-based incentives in any form will likely fail because of value speculation.

Perhaps voluntary paid subscription is the right way to go? Get a nice acknowlegement on your profile, and the ability to double upvote a limited number of posts and users? Perhaps access to advanced (own)user statistics? Customizable interface? Templates? Basically cosmetic DLC with a couple of perks.