Fuck the "thought" part. experiment. This is something I used to give the guys at Reddit a ration of shit about, back when there were guys at Reddit to give a ration of shit. they never beta test anything. Y'all are nimble and I know you're fucking with the code as we speak. SO: STEP 1 Build your metric into the code. Say every share you get is a point, every badge you get is ten points, and every time you post an article is five points and every time you post a comment is one point. Or even better - every share you get is a blue, every badge a red, every article a yellow and every comment a green and keep track of those values, individually and cumulatively. Now give every account on here a thousand "whatevers." Don't make it visible to the users, don't let us interact with it at all. Run it for a month. Run it for two. See what kind of users are making what kind of points/colors, and what the economics actually look like. Report back for science. STEP 2 Take your invisible back-end and make it visible. Let us see what our "point spread is." Allow us to opt in or opt out, but don't take away your invisible metrics. Let it run for a month, let it run for two. Report back for science. STEP 3 have this conversation again. ___________________________________ I'm not against monetizing. I'm not against this idea, either, but I'm flush this year and I'm one of the 800lb gorillas of the site so it's kind of like GM arguing in favor of tax benefits for auto manufacturers. I can certainly see the controversy. At the same time, I'd point out that SomethingAwful has a much simpler system: if you want to participate, you pay $10. If you act like a douche, you forfeit your $10. This simple system has allowed SA to thrive through the downfall of Digg, the winnowing of 4chan and the mediocritization of Reddit, all the while giving their adventurers a home base for their foreign adventures (SRS, the genos, etc). While it's not my kind of community, it's definitely a strong and thriving community. I say test it and report back. There's plenty to be learned, I reckon, without upsetting anybody.