Paid Forum Post Answers

[anthony1s]

Hello. I guess I should introduce myself first. I've been watching Linus on Youtube for a number of years now. I haven't had a reason to check out this forum until now. I have an idea that I'd like to share and discuss. After hearing about Steam's community paid mods, I knew I had to finally post this.

How would you guys like to earn money for helping people via forums? Helping out in forums and other means has been something I've been passionate about for the last 7 years. It really grows communities by spreading knowledge and ideas. Forums are the best places for help, because chances are someone has already had your problem and it's documented and solved in a forum somewhere already. Or documentation can be easily searched for online and a solution found to many problems. What I am passionate about, and I'm sure many of you are too, is being the person to research the problem's solution and provide help to the poster. I know I can't be the only person who's spent 16 hours a day helping people with their problems before. Helping people brings me so much gratification, but I just wish I was able to make a living and support myself by doing it. And forums are even used by highly paid employees for help. The deployment engineers at my job rely on Microsoft forums for help and they even help out in the forums too.

What I'm envisioning is having the Linus Tech Tips forums incentivize it's members for helping out by paying them. And if this catches on at other forums, we might be able to make a living by being the helpful and dedicated community members that we already are.

Some loose concerns and thoughts (I have my own answers to these and will post them later)

What is the best payment method?.

How do we decide which helpful response is the one that deserves to be paid?

Where would the money to pay us come from? 
 

[Poster]

I'm not at all interested in this idea.  I don't see the upside to this from the community or LMG.  It doesn't make sense to implement on any level.

[Theguywhobea]

Maybe a user - user tip system could be feasible but I couldn't possibly see paid help working at all. Forums don't really seem like an appropriate place to pay people for advice or help, since effectively all the replies with help or advice are "at your own risk".

[anthony1s]

I'm not at all interested in this idea.  I don't see the upside to this from the community or LMG.  It doesn't make sense to implement on any level.

Why? This comment is useless without an explanation.

[techguru]

this is a stupid idea

[Poster]

Why? This comment is useless without an explanation.

I'm sorry you feel that way.

[givingtnt]

Hello. I guess I should introduce myself first. I've been watching Linus on Youtube for a number of years now. I haven't had a reason to check out this forum until now. I have an idea that I'd like to share and discuss. After hearing about Steam's community paid mods, I knew I had to finally post this.

How would you guys like to earn money for helping people via forums? Helping out in forums and other means has been something I've been passionate about for the last 7 years. It really grows communities by spreading knowledge and ideas. Forums are the best places for help, because chances are someone has already had your problem and it's documented and solved in a forum somewhere already. Or documentation can be easily searched for online and a solution found to many problems. What I am passionate about, and I'm sure many of you are too, is being the person to research the problem's solution and provide help to the poster. I know I can't be the only person who's spent 16 hours a day helping people with their problems before. Helping people brings me so much gratification, but I just wish I was able to make a living and support myself by doing it. And forums are even used by highly paid employees for help. The deployment engineers at my job rely on Microsoft forums for help and they even help out in the forums too.

What I'm envisioning is having the Linus Tech Tips forums incentivize it's members for helping out by paying them. And if this catches on at other forums, we might be able to make a living by being the helpful and dedicated community members that we already are.

Some loose concerns and thoughts (I have my own answers to these and will post them later)

What is the best payment method?.

How do we decide which helpful response is the one that deserves to be paid?

Where would the money to pay us come from? 

 

a forum is not a place to make money. well, not for the end users. we are here to help people, not to get payed.  that is not what forums are for.

you can be sure that the day I will recieve a penny for a advice I will give on any forum. I will make sure to leave it forever.

 

 

 

also. who on earth would want to pay for something on the internet they can acess for free anyway ? that would be the dumbest thing ever.

[watts300]

History has shown that forum support is best delivered by people that want to be there motivated by good will.

 

Motivating people to help others with cash as an incentive would cast doubt on what those employees are posting.  i.e, "Is he saying to do that because he's getting paid per post/like or because he has to?"

[Comessy]

Wait, so your telling us that LMG should pay us?

 

Actually some of us are paying them

[Jaybird]

The is essential a no go situation. The things people like around here are not exactly the right answers. It's typically the funny first post to a thread that gets all the likes.

[blackadder]

I spend a lot of time answering post and learning form them, thats compensation enough for me. I would like a donation button that wasn't a monthly thing. Like a tip jar i guess.

[mr moose]

History has shown that forum support is best delivered by people that want to be there motivated by good will.

 

Motivating people to help others with cash as an incentive would cast doubt on what those employees are posting.  i.e, "Is he saying to do that because he's getting paid per post/like or because he has to?"

Pretty much this,  LMG has sponsorship from intel, corsair etc in the form of ads,  any advice givin on these forums could easily be seen as shilling,  we already have too many issues with shilling on these forums.

[anthony1s]

History has shown that forum support is best delivered by people that want to be there motivated by good will.

 

Motivating people to help others with cash as an incentive would cast doubt on what those employees are posting.  i.e, "Is he saying to do that because he's getting paid per post/like or because he has to?

My idea is that only the best answer would be what gets paid. There would be no "is he saying to do that because he's getting paid per post/like or because he has to" No one would be obligated to say anything. No one would get paid per post. People would be incentivized to give better answers.

The question to think about is, how is the best answer decided? It needs to be decided in a decentralized manner, as in no minority has any influence over who is ultimately getting paid.

Obviously once this is decided, it can all be programmed and money sent out automatically with bitcoin or litecoin.

[Speedyv]

This would be 100x worse than posting for likes and so on.

[anthony1s]

a forum is not a place to make money. well, not for the end users. we are here to help people, not to get payed.  that is not what forums are for.

you can be sure that the day I will recieve a penny for a advice I will give on any forum. I will make sure to leave it forever.

 

 

 

also. who on earth would want to pay for something on the internet they can acess for free anyway ? that would be the dumbest thing ever.

Passion or not, you should get paid for your contributions. You are selling yourself short by believing anything otherwise.

[watts300]

The question to think about is, how is the best answer decided? It needs to be decided in a decentralized manner, as in no minority has any influence over who is ultimately getting paid.

 

That would end up as a mess. Bickering over who they think gave the best answer.. which one was chosen.. 

If a forum is going to be a company, then it should go all-out and have a staff and manager and all that other crap. 

[Poster]

My idea is that only the best answer would be what gets paid. There would be no "is he saying to do that because he's getting paid per post/like or because he has to" No one would be obligated to say anything. No one would get paid per post. People would be incentivized to give better answers.

The question to think about is, how is the best answer decided? It needs to be decided in a decentralized manner, as in no minority has any influence over who is ultimately getting paid.

Obviously once this is decided, it can all be programmed and money sent out automatically with bitcoin or litecoin.

I'm more interested in paying (through affiliate codes, monthly contributor) for their expertise and content creation (entertainment) than I ever would be for them to pay me to give my opinion on various topics.  Most forum questions are not objective based questions, they're subjective and therefore do not really comply with a "best answer" format.  This whole idea just doesn't make any sense to even consider implementing. 

[MblaZe7run]

The way that was structured almost seemed all to much like an advertisement at first. Almost immediately came down and said "Read the CoC." Being that you're new, you should do so anyways Welcome.

[anthony1s]

I'm more interested in paying (through affiliate codes, monthly contributor) for their expertise and content creation (entertainment) than I ever would be for them to pay me to give my opinion on various topics.  Most forum questions are not objective based questions, they're subjective and therefore do not really comply with a "best answer" format.  This whole idea just doesn't make any sense to even consider implementing. 

I think you are missing the "Where does the money come from" chain.

[givingtnt]

Passion or not, you should get paid for your contributions. You are selling yourself short by believing anything otherwise.

then I will die of hunger.

I will never accept a single penny for what I do here.

wether you allow me or not, I will find a way to give that money back.

[anthony1s]

The way that was structured almost seemed all to much like an advertisement at first. Almost immediately came down and said "Read the CoC." Being that you're new, you should do so anyways Welcome.

Haha, yea. I felt that it sounded the same as I was typing it. Was too lazy to think of a better way of wording it.

[givingtnt]

I think you are missing the "Where does the money come from" chain.

to me your a newcomer, who's trying to make money off nothing else than a random, undeveloped idea that would ruin a great forum.

give your idea some actual thoughs and then we can speak

[techguru]

this idea would turn into a bunch of people who have no idea what they are doing on a computer posting random answers just to get money...and those answers would be 95% of the time wrong...

 

also people would cheat the system and get there friends to post fake questions..and then answer them just to get money

 

Passion or not, you should get paid for your contributions. You are selling yourself short by believing anything otherwise....<---and no people don't deserve compensation for all the work they do..I do fansubbing 360 days a year (few days off)...and I don't expect to be paid for that either

[techguru]

this topic should be locked before we get a 15,000 post going on random crap that doesn't matter

[givingtnt]

this topic should be locked before we get a 15,000 post going on random crap that doesn't matter

NO !

this is exacly whats wrong with the forum.

there is no point to lock a topic just to prevent people from talking. there is litteraly NO POINT TO IT

if you think a subject doesen't matter to you then please just leave it alone, don'T try to ruin the thread.