As I scroll through the global feed, I end up seeing content from a lot of the same people (“The Picard Maneuver” is a user I recognize often and appreciate their content).
Would it be worthwhile to have some kind of “Top of Lemmy” or “Top of the Fediverse” awards where the Fediverse could honor users that made an impact over the prior year?
Personally I'd rather it wasn't a thing. Regardless of how insignificant and "just for fun" such things are we inevitably get into a situation where people are only doing things to be awarded. It corrupts the incentives of participating in discussion. The same problem would exist if we had karma on Lemmy.
I’m don’t post very often, so it’s hard for me to put myself into the shoes of someone who does post good comments frequently. I admire those people, but maybe that’s not the point. Maybe the point is to enjoy their work and try to meet it with posts of my own.
Of course that's an option. But that was always an option. Why not allow another unobtrusive avenue to help fund things?
It's one of the very very few form of monetization that is at worst annoying, and could be hidden if needed by user settings.
I hadn’t even thought of this as something that could generate donations, but that it would be just for fun. Very interesting idea.
Maybe there’s some opportunity to make something like this into a celebration kind of like AGDQ where people can donate and then donations get sent out to instances or something. (I don’t know, I’m not clever about that kind of stuff.)
IMO, rather than putting top posters on a pedestal, we should focus our energies on rising to their ranks. More (thoughtful) participation is better for everyone, even the top posters. I'm sure they get tired of coming up with content for all of us.
Yeah, I feel challenged by your comment and want to be someone who posts more often. I enjoy commenting and having discussions, but OC hasn’t been my forte. The Fediverse seems like a much less caustic place than Reddit.