As many of you know, the idea that somehow, someday Hubski will need to raise a little bit of money has been discussed several times in the last couple years. I threw an idea at mk today, and he fleshed it out a bit that we wanted to get community perspective on. Please bear in mind that is a purely hypothetical exercise. It's intended to generate discussion, and not to scare you into thinking you're going to be charged any time soon.
That said, here's the idea. You create a Hubski bank account of sorts, the amount "deposited" being completely up to you. Then, every time you comment or post, you are charged a fee (say, one or two cents), which goes to Hubski's coffers. Alternately, when you upvote or share, the same fee is transferred to the account of the user whose content you are appreciating. You would also have the ability to transfer credits to whomever you want without having to share or upvote. At the current comment rate, a penny per credit would pretty much offset the server costs, although one would expect the comment and post rate to drop were there a fee attached, even an insignificant one.
I think this does a couple things. First, it will keep out spammers and undesirables.
Second, it will probably limit useless comments (for example, the other day I got a million upvotes for whiting a smiley face), thus making an eternal September or a replay of the SRS debacle very unlikely.
Third (and this is the most interesting aspect, IMO), it would create an economy on the site based on social capital, as credits would be passed around, bought, sold, and given away based on appreciation from the members. The negative side, of course, is that this could represent an upward redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, so to speak, but it could also encourage development of ideas, since each comment would have a value. It is my conjecture that members who may not have much or any money, but who are valuable would be supported by the richer among us. I think there would be a mixture of shrewdness and benevolence that could give an interesting dynamic to the marketplace, and that it would be a cool internet experiment.
This was a quick brainstorm, so I'm sure many holes could be poked in it, but that's kinda the point here. Poke as many holes as you can think of. It's still free...for now :)