Fediverse

I don't love the awards from Reddit, but I would like to see something like this (unpopular opinion, I know). Instances need funding.

I don't care about what the awards are themselves, I care about the way the funding works. I would love to see the funds split in a two tiered system.

Here is a general example of my idea. When a award is purchased it gets split into two pots. One pot is a general pot that gets disbursed to those running the instances based on whatever metrics and intervals agreed upon. The other part gets assigned to the reward itself. So in this example let's say an award costs one dollar. 90 cents would go to the pool to be split, the other 10 cents would be tied to the award. So if you award a post on an instance it goes specifically to that instance itself. Instances could even set a percent split with community moderators of the 10 cents. That way you could fund moderators (if that ever becomes needed)

You could even split part of the award reward with the commentor assigned to it... but that puts a weird feeling in my gut and I feel like it is a bad idea to monetize the content itself.

There is a lot you could do with this and a lot more would need to be fleshed out, so I am just thinking out loud.

Replace "rewards" with "emoji reacts" and "needs money to handle growing server requirements" with "appreciates your donations to help cover hosting costs" and I think you may be on to something.

I think donations by themselves are fine. They don't need to have fancy stuff attached to them.

THANKS FOR THE GOLD KIND STRANGER.

I think it's interesting to look into but it might be abusable. The payment system will be so complicated on top of the legal issues that one would need to deal with.

Upvotes are fine for now.

I'm not opposed to ways for people paying out of their own pocket to host to get some funds to help cover that, but I worry it'll never be well implemented.

I think a good first step would be a default and built in way for server admins to add a small donations banner listing the hosting costs of their instances. That also does have issues though, of course. The person hosting is definitely putting in the most money, but other moderators and admins are contributing labour too.

It's a tough subject, and many solutions would be rife with abuse. Shit sucks.

Here is an example of awards on Kbin.

I think the idea is fine but the label of "awards" kinda sucks. Reddit often had them misused (e.g. giving wholesome on non wholesome posts). I like how discord frames it's super reactions and think it would be a better system. Only the name, the way they should act should be largely the same, I don't want animated reactions like discord does.

On a serious note, I think the best implementation would be like a "trophy case"(like reddit) , where each instance can give any user an award for any reason that they can display in their user page. Doesn't get in the way of discussion, but gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment. (heh)

Unlike reddit, these award should be able to be turned off individually , since you don't want rogue instance admins to give you offensive "awards" for your user page.

You also shouldn't be able to see awards from defederated instances to prevent trolling.

I'll only feel good about awards if they're shitty

I think making likes and dislikes public is bad enough. You can probably guess how that applies to "gold".

I’d like the idea if they either can’t be purchased, or the purchase goes toward your Instance’s hosting fees

How about this: groups of instances hosts get together once a year and host a large fundraiser where they then distribute funds proportional to who needs them and then any left over funds go intk a bank where they wait until servers need further funding.

Everything would be open and logged for auditing just like how things are currently anyway.