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.
  • Margot RobbieEnglish
    4•1 year ago

    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.

    • @HeyThisIsntTheYMCAEnglish
      4•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