Paid Forum Post Answers

[KirbyTech]

No you should not expect to be paid for helping others on this forum. Forums are a community sharing knowledge not members trying to make money.

[anthony1s]

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

How is my idea making me money?

Also, this idea is well implemented on GitHub already.

[givingtnt]

How is my idea making me money?

Also, this idea is well implemented on GitHub already.

thats far from being the same thing. these are courses to learn software developement. to get jobs.  you are on a tech forum, as you may not allredy know, 

where you learn about a lot of different stuff. information that is avalable here can be found somewhere else. there is no point to pay for it.

[anthony1s]

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

#1 this would be prevented in code.

#2 this is a valid concern

#3 just because you don't expect to be paid doesn't mean you shouldn't be nor should anyone else be.

[KirbyTech]

How is my idea making me money?

Also, this idea is well implemented on GitHub already.

Your idea is crazy, impractical and not many on this forum I think will want to and I am almost certain Linus would not. The money as to come from somewhere, people will not pay to have their questions answered by others who may or may no have a clue what they are talking about. Too many issues to list, simply a bad idea.

[anthony1s]

thats far from being the same thing. these are courses to learn software developement. to get jobs.  you are on a tech forum, as you may not allredy know, 

where you learn about a lot of different stuff. information that is avalable here can be found somewhere else. there is no point to pay for it.

Then why do forums exist if the information can be found somewhere else? Why are they successful?

[givingtnt]

#1 this would be prevented in code.

#2 this is a valid concern

#3 just because you don't expect to be paid doesn't mean you shouldn't be nor should anyone else be.

#1 do you know any coding language and how hard that would be ?

#2 please answer with something more valuable, since you seem to be 100% this is the best thing ever 

#3 its not about expecting something or not, its about the value of the ''product'' given. answers, things you can get ANYWHERE ELSE for FREE

 

[techguru]

#1 this would be prevented in code.

#2 this is a valid concern

#3 just because you don't expect to be paid doesn't mean you shouldn't be nor should anyone else be.

how are you gonna prevent someone from giving wrong answers to someone  in code..????

duh?

yes..if you expect to be paid for something..get a job where its given....

[givingtnt]

Then why do forums exist if the information can be found somewhere else? Why are they successful?

thats not the point. as you can see forum are more than sucessfull without a payment system.

[KirbyTech]

how are you gonna prevent someone from giving wrong answers to someone  in code..????

duh?

yes..if you expect to be paid for something..get a job where its given....

Maybe he means hire google to build a huge and great AI... we have a random with a bad idea and maybe a bit of crazy. We'll figure that out in time.

[givingtnt]

Maybe he means hire google to build a huge and great AI... we have a random with a bad idea and maybe a bit of crazy. We'll figure that out in time.

lol. that would still be hard as hell, and never 100% accurate. its just plain impossible at the moment.

 

there are too many variables to take in mind with AI's  way too much to make this happen

[KirbyTech]

lol. that would still be hard as hell, and never 100% accurate. its just plain impossible at the moment.

That is why I included the last part. I was pretty much mocking OP thinking it could be done in code well.

[NannerBeans]

If forum members get paid for having the best answer then that means to post a question, you would have to pay as well since that is the only way you would get money for paying the people who help. This would essentially drive the traffic to this site to zero. 

[givingtnt]

If forum members get paid for having the best answer then that means to post an answer, you would have to pay as well since that is the only way you would get money for paying the people who help. This would essentially drive the traffic to this site to zero. 

yeah. and there are a lot of problems with this.

-what if the best answer changes ? do both people get payed ?

-what if people create fake accounts ?

what about dealing with transactions ?

would ltt pay for answers, or the op ?

if op pays, how do you know he will pay ?

what if there is no answers ?

see ? lots of info missing here.

[anthony1s]

#1 do you know any coding language and how hard that would be ?

#2 please answer with something more valuable, since you seem to be 100% this is the best thing ever 

#3 its not about expecting something or not, its about the value of the ''product'' given. answers, things you can get ANYWHERE ELSE for FREE

 

#1 Irrelevant to the fact, but yes. It would is possible and is proven possible already

#2 Answer what? I said that you pointed out a valid concern

#3 People do not have time to research and find their own answers. This is demonstrated by the success of forums.

I am not here to discuss if you guys like this idea or not. I created this post to discuss the implementation of it.

Whether you like it or not, profiting from the community will be more popular in the future. I am mostly trying to start a valuable discussion on decentralizing and incentivizing it for us as the community. Instead of seeing more stuff like Steam talking a 70% cut from community created mods.

[watts300]

Volunteers at the soup kitchen down town are contributing a lot more value to society than any one could on a tech forum (no offense guys, forums are great, but it's true) and they're not getting paid.

 

Could they get paid? Sure. If they work at a restaurant.  But a soup kitchen isn't a restaurant, and the workers are volunteers.  Just like this forum and many others are manned by volunteers. 

[anthony1s]

That is why I included the last part. I was pretty much mocking OP thinking it could be done in code well.

it is already done in code. Search for distributed autonomous corporations. Then search for DAC Insurance. Search for anything related to this...

[Thronar]

Terrible idea when there's other forums that give the same or better information and help for free

 

also having some kind of "tip" feature comes with a lot of potential legal problems

[givingtnt]

it is already done in code. Search for distributed autonomous corporations. Then search for DAC Insurance. Search for anything related to this...

yeah but it takes a shit ton of hardware power to do it. and its completely useless for a forum. because we are volunteers 

[NannerBeans]

I am not here to discuss if you guys like this idea or not. I created this post to discuss the implementation of it.

Whether you like it or not, profiting from the community will be more popular in the future. I am mostly trying to start a valuable discussion on decentralizing and incentivizing it for us as the community. Instead of seeing more stuff like Steam talking a 70% cut from community created mods.

 

Very well. Let's discuss the implementation of it. If you have taken any economics class then you would know the demand curve or the marginal willingness to pay curve (same thing, different name) would be horizontal in this case because online forums is a big "market" where this single forum is only a tiny factor in the whole "market." Now since most forums are free, that makes the demand or marginal willingness to pay curve horizontal at a price of $0. If a single forum tries to offer the same product, meaning the same information, for anything above $0, the quantity supplied will be 0 because there is a cheaper substitute good for a lower price ($0). Therefore, the quantity that is supplied is 0 and there is no profit to be made. 

[anthony1s]

yeah. and there are a lot of problems with this.

-what if the best answer changes ? do both people get payed ?

-what if people create fake accounts ?

what about dealing with transactions ?

would ltt pay for answers, or the op ?

if op pays, how do you know he will pay ?

what if there is no answers ?

see ? lots of info missing here.

-what if the best answer changes ? do both people get payed ?

Best answer would not change. The best answer is chosen at the time from of the question being asked.

-what if people create fake accounts ?

Have people send an amount of Bitcoin or Litecoin to the forum's wallet to verify their account. Make it too expensive to create fake/spam accounts.

 

what about dealing with transactions ?

What about it, specifically?

would ltt pay for answers, or the op ?

Well, I'm not sure what's best. Another option would be to have subscriptions. Subscriptions services could be the income.

if op pays, how do you know he will pay ?

We can use multi-sig transactions. Were there are multiple private keys created for a bitcoin address. Say there are 3 private keys created... you would need 2 of the 3 to send the money.... So 1 private key goes to the forum, one goes to the OP, one is sent to the person who provides the best answer.

Person with the best answer then inputs the private key he was given into a payout field box on the forum... inputting this key will release the funds.

OP can also hold a key... if OP doesn't received and answer in a decided amount of time, then he can input his key and release the funds back to him.

 

what if there is no answers ?

If OP were to pay for an answer, they could take their money back via multi-sig I described above.

[anthony1s]

Very well. Let's discuss the implementation of it. If you have taken any economics class then you would know the demand curve or the marginal willingness to pay curve (same thing, different name) would be horizontal in this case because online forums is a big "market" where this single forum is only a tiny factor in the whole "market." Now since most forums are free, that makes the demand or marginal willingness to pay curve horizontal at a price of $0. If a single forum tries to offer the same product, meaning the same information, for anything above $0, the quantity supplied will be 0 because there is a cheaper substitute good for a lower price ($0). Therefore, the quantity that is supplied is 0 and there is no profit to be made. 

You are failing to see the value in different forums though. Tom's Hardware is well regarded as having the best answers and most intelligent community and their forums reflect that. More people will happen upon a better forum when their search results are ranked much higher because of the quality of answers they provide.

Also, paying for answers will attract answer-givers away from the popular free answer forums. Because answer-givers will be incentivized to more to the paying forums.

[NannerBeans]

You are failing to see the value in different forums though. Tom's Hardware is well regarded as having the best answers and most intelligent community and their forums reflect that. More people will happen upon a better forum when their search results are ranked much higher because of the quality of answers they provide.

Also, paying for answers will attract answer-givers away from the popular free answer forums. Because answer-givers will be incentivized to more to the paying forums.

That's not how it works. And also, 99% of the questions are like which part to buy and you can't get that many different right answers to that. The end product is still the same and they are still substitutes. And no, paying for answers has zero incentive to attract people. It is the opposite in fact. 99% of the people would see that it is paid and walk away no matter what other factors there are because they know that there are a bunch of other places where they won't have to pay. You should take an economics class. 

[ShadowCaptain]

The only way this would work would be a "donate" button or something

 

but I think its a bad idea overall

[mapegl]

God I hate that idea.

If that happens, I will leave the forum.