Forums / Maintenance / Suggest Ideas

Its a common joke that mods "do it for free" and all, but heres a thought:
What if us users donated to the mods through something like Patreon? There would be no donation rewards that the users would get (for obvious reaosn) and it would probably give mods incentive to be more active.
Think about it, say if 50 users donated 3 dollars a month and theres about 30 active mods it'd be about 5 dollars a month each mod would get.
Not enough? Well remember this number depends on how many users decide to donate and how much so it could be more or less (also of course its not gonna be that much all things considered)
Why do this then? It could be us users way of supporting the site and depending on how much money is donated it could really give mods more incentive.
"How would this money be divided up, theres more/less active mods than you think"
Split it up depending on how much a mod has been active that month.
"This will just give users more reason to try to be a mod for popularity and money reasons"
I'm pretty sure you could detect when a user is only trying to be a mod for X reason anyways.
So what do you guys think? Would you be willing to donate to the mods and for how much?

I'd be willing to donate to such a fund and not receive any of the money from it if it'd increase productivity and quality.

If such a system was set up, then it'd need a way to separate the "active" and "inactive" mods. Possibly a relative formula to mods overall – first pick those that are "active" (have done something in the past month, per say), and then grab the average and reward those who hit above average.

Making it a competition, in short.

That's a general idea of how it could work – plenty of things could be modified in that general formula.

Now, I'm wondering A) would this actually be funded, and B) is it actually legal?

oh my god
why would ANYONE donate? this is a site for fucking online jokes, plus it would literally be saying to the userbase "we think we are important enough that you should be giving us actual (yes, REAL) money to do a job that we volunteered for"
how did this idea even happen

Think about it, say if 50 users donated 3 dollars a month and theres about 30 active mods it’d be about 5 dollars a month each mod would get.

50 people are not going to donate. At most, it's maybe 5.

"I’m pretty sure you could detect when a user is only trying to be a mod for X reason anyways."
not really no
also
i'm struggling to imagine anyone on kym (or any other website) would want to give any form of monetary compensation to moderators for their work

Is our main userbase even old enough to buy stuff online?

If people can barely stand ads on this site then why would they even donate directly

I don't mind gifts, but a patreon that cuts a donation up is honestly so impersonal it wouldn't make me feel any better about the work I do here.

If you have to compete with your fellow mods over money for being a memesite mod, you are moderating for the wrong reasons and shouldn't be a mod at all.

Would you be willing to donate to the mods and for how much?

No. Why would I want to give someone money to be more active on a meme website? I wouldn't get anything out of it. It also raises potential bias and corruption issues.

I don't think it would be a good idea.
 
First, I suspect some types of moderators are more active than others. Outside of the spare spam thread and subsequent banning of the spammer, I don't do much with my moderator powers at all. And even that happens maybe 3 times a week. There are so many moderators that lurk the forums and have user powers, it's more of a challenge to find a spammer than it is to actually ban them. And even that is something a moderately well-trained monkey could do. It's literally clicking two buttons once you have the OP of a spam thread.

But entry moderators honestly have to do more in deadpooling, removing actual spam, following up with suggestions to improve entries, and then handling the actual research.

…and moderator dealing with tagging does more in 5 minutes than I do in a week. I am not exaggerating.
 
Second, it's hard to define what is "active." One mod might do a ton of things, but another mod may be active but not do nearly as much, because they simply don't have to. It wouldn't be fair to give the same compensation, but at the same time, it'll be extremely hard to parse out who should receive what chunk of money based on activity. Or even if there was a very active forum moderator, the contribution to the site on the whole would be negligible. The forum serves a small part of the community and a very small part of the views.
 
Third, out of the moderators that are already moderators, you'll possibly end up with moderators doing more than they really need to either to receive compensation or to feel like they should "earn" compensation. Yes, it's good that we have a variety of mods that focus on forums/users/entries/media/comments. But we don't need to add any more priority to the volunteer work from money. I think helping for the sake of helping is just fine. Besides, if you do good work as a moderator, there's something of a chance that you could submit entry work as part of a resume for an actual job if it's related to online documentation or something.

amazon gift cards accepted

Blubber, this is a serious thread. SI is a serious sub-forum. Even Epyc was taught this.

You can actually make jokes in most any thread, but you’ll have to make a post that is on-topic and contributes to the original focus more than trying to be liked.

SI is a serious board, and the vast majority of suggestions (including this one) are made by well-meaning users. Take it seriously.

Rivers already trying to get more donations

i'd be the first to start a money fraud if this system appeared

just a warning

Nobody is taking this seriously, and it doesn't look like anything is going to come out of this.

also locking to prevent any charity fraud from twisty

Locking