Well, you read that right. Isn’t that like, an oxymoron? Well, If you still think so, then I guess its time to take a hard look at it. The web 2.0 community scene has been in the throes of a significant debate on the decision by Jason Calacanis, he of weblogs fame, to reward top posters at Netscape ! This is part of his efforts as a General Manager at AOL handling the netscape.com transition to a user-driven content generated site, much like the popular Digg & Reddit. Just in case you were not aware, sites like these have a transparent (?) voting mechanism where the links most voted are shifted to the home page and others get buried deep under. Both these sites enjoy a very strong community, more so with the nouveau tech savvy people to whom sites like slashdot are relics of the past ! Jason’s decision has indeed sparked a strong debate on if, and how, top contributors in a community are to be recognized. Is monetary compensation a just solution, considering all such sites make money off the back of these users that bring in traffic. Or would attaching a $ tag to top posters defeat the very purpose of the community? Jason spars with Digg’s co-founder Kevin Rose and the story is currently the hot point of discussion.

While Kevin of Digg goes on to say that they will have some sort of recognition system for top posters, however, he makes it point blank clear that $$$ won’t be involved. And this line of argument has clearly helped Jason in showing how Kevin isn’t sharing the $$$ that he is making off the adverts ! Mediashift has a very good coverage of the entire issue; worth more than a read !

 Having been associated with a community that, I like to believe, is a strong one, this debate holds a lot of meaning and direction. In fact, for everyone that is involved in creating and nurturing online communities, this indeed is an excellent point that has been raised. Why are top posters at community driven sites, top? Did they always have money as a motivating factor at the back of their mind. Or are they any less motivated to contribute once they realize the community also makes $$$ for someone. Can, and do, top posters draw motivation that monies raised by site promoters are almost always used (ofcourse, in part) to develop the community even more? Or do top posters keep site-hopping in the face of blatant commercialization of communities? Would the offer of money push away not just top posters, but the larger audience? Lotta questions. Sure would be mighty interesting to see where this all leads. Any takers? No, I wont pay for a discussion ;)