The way I thought about it is more like how Workit functions for their steps challenges. The participants all put some amount in the pot and then it gets divvied up based how well people perform. It's a commitment device to be better than you might otherwise be.

I mainly brought it up because I think in the long run, the idea would be that rewards would be sustained without donations.  Also, the sybil fee of 30% can be considered quite high, but the justification would be "we're not greedy, this is a legitimate tax, and it goes back to the community"


SimpleStacker

Are Stacker News Rewards Too Salient or Are They Not Too Salient Enough?

Undisciplined

No, I hadn't thought of them that way, at least not in those terms. I suppose that is sort of how I was thinking about it, though.

The rewards pool has mostly come from donations, so it wasn't exactly balancing positive and negative externalities. There's also no particular reason those two things should balance.

Oof, you've wrinkled my brain a bit here.