Fact is, the Lemmy ecosystem needs money to handle the growing server reqirements as more people migrate as well as the development cost of new features (I know Lemmy is OSS but the devs should still get some compensation for their effort).

Seeing how much some reddit users love awards so much that they cant stop giving money to Reddit to award posts protesting the api change, this could be a great way for users to voluntary support the ecosystem. It can be easily ignored by users not caring about them (clients could even add an option to hide them), but users liking the feature can go wild and this time the money goes to volunteers keeping this alive instead of greedy admins, power mods and investors.

Though there would be some big organization questions attached: attached:

Which server handles the payment? A centralized one, the one where the post was made or the one where the user giving the award account was created.
How will the money be shared between the Devs and the individual instances in a way that is fair but cant be abused easily.

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[–] ZILtoid1991@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

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

[–] Kichae@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] hitagi@ani.social 5 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] ttmrichter@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

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

[–] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I hadn't thought of this trophy case idea. I like it. I still don't want awards that are in any way desirable. Like, I don't know I was reading Calvin and Hobbes this morning maybe a "noodle incident" type award. If you have a memorable post like the not pooping dude maybe an admin or mod puts that in your trophy case? I don't completely wake up for another hour but I like this train of thought you've put me on

Edit: starting to wake up something about beans

[–] Aradina@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] Ignacio@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Here is an example of awards on Kbin.

[–] DarkenLM@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The KBin awards are akin to Stack Overflow's award system, which I don't mind, it's a small fun system on the side. Reddit's award system, on the other hand, can go back to the hell pit whence it came.

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[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 3 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I'm still just not sure how I feel about Kbin

Also allowing people to see who downvoted (sorry, "Reduced") them can't be a good idea as the site grows and attracts more trolls/unsavoury individuals.

[–] sethw@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (27 children)

I don't understand your argument, wouldnt transparency in voting EXPOSE trolls? Pretty sure they've already caught some shenanigans that wouldn't have been so obvious without this functionality. So many instances (and even subreddits) just hide the downvote button, with the transparency if you dont like it dont downvote maybe install an extension that always hides the downvote button for just you.

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[–] garyyo@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

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

[–] Mac@mander.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] NENathaniel@lemmy.film 3 points 1 year ago

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

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