> Once you start paying people, the much larger audience of 'people that want money' starts posting and the good people get drowned out.
Yep. Seen this on a forum called Digitalpoint, back when they had revenue sharing for posts. In theory, that should have made people post higher quality content given the financial reward for doing so. In practice? It inspired thousands of people from third world countries to join and post uninspired gibberish for the chance to get their Adsense ID used in every thread they posted in. A site that already had problems with spammers registering and posting meaningless content for signature backlinks ended up getting flooded by people who saw it as a convenient get rich quick scheme.
Yep. Seen this on a forum called Digitalpoint, back when they had revenue sharing for posts. In theory, that should have made people post higher quality content given the financial reward for doing so. In practice? It inspired thousands of people from third world countries to join and post uninspired gibberish for the chance to get their Adsense ID used in every thread they posted in. A site that already had problems with spammers registering and posting meaningless content for signature backlinks ended up getting flooded by people who saw it as a convenient get rich quick scheme.