Of course no one wants to pay them… But they filter out the toxicity, and pay with their sanity, to make these spaces even enjoyable and usable for us normal people.
Of course no one wants to pay them… But they filter out the toxicity, and pay with their sanity, to make these spaces even enjoyable and usable for us normal people.
The risk is that you’ll end up with people who seek out mod roles for the money, spin up legions of alts (more than they do now) and do all kinds of bullshit to game the system. If there’s a flat payout, a top mod could inflate the team and double(+) dip to make sure they get the pie slice they want. If it’s activity-based, run a handful of bots to break the rules at a time of your choosing and get whack-a-mole points.
If only certain communities qualified for paid moderation (based on activity levels, for example), this could add an incentive to sabotage other related communities and drive traffic to the one a bad actor controls. If all communities qualify, maybe we get massive fragmentation as everybody decides to try and carve out a niche for their mini-job.
That’s just a start, lots of other ways it could go sideways or be manipulated. I think we’re better off with people who want to keep the spam to a dull roar and prevent heated discussions from getting too out of hand because they want to provide people with usable communities instead of dangling a couple dollars in front of them.