Metafilter does this the last I checked (it's been a while) and they seem to be one of those rare communities that have managed to maintain the quality of discussion over a long stretch of time.

Metafilter is a general community, not for a particular topic, like HN. Still, I think the model would work here too.

While MF's quality of discussion is much better than most other site (yahoo answers cough cough), you can still find snarky answers.

Agreed. Ask MetaFilter has been worth every penny of the $5 dollars I spent on it.

One could perhaps create a meta site that filters content based on HN-names that pay for membership at the meta level.

I think there would be a significant increase in the site quality immediately, but I think it would be somewhat short-term. I don't think that fee can guarantee that the site will retain quality for the duration of that membership.

I would be curious to see if spammer accounts still get set up. I wonder if they think it's worth $5 to go on a short-lived spam-rampage (... spampage?) Nevertheless, I would be willing to pay it.

I don't think a membership fee is a good way to solve the problem, because I don't think the problem has anything to do with fees. I think the problem is that our community is too popular, and the curious outsiders are starting to outnumber the insiders. Since the outsiders are more likely to have day jobs than the insiders, having a fee would probably increase the ratio of outsiders to insiders.

I think proggit is doing more to keep the HN community focused than charging a fee would, as it scoops up some of the people who are bored at their day jobs and curious enough to read about hacking but not to actually hack. :)

I would. But I think quality would decline slightly - mostly because of less good submissions but no decline in "spam"/bad submissions.

It wouldn't stop the borderline spammers (yes itworld I mean you ;)) for whom $5 would be worth it.

I don't think there's any reason to believe that someone who is willing to spend $5 would inherently have a more worthwhile opinion than anyone else.

I would pay up eventually, but I'd put it off until I really had to make a comment.

In the same way, I read HN for months before I finally registered.

Why? As a stop gap against irrelevant posting?

Guess what, those people have money too. What would happen if this was implemented? It would make it harder for new members to join and establish long time members as incumbents, probably setting things up such that 'unwanted' members would be blocked from the site. That last step is a very short distance from putting in place ways to make it harder against unwanted users.

The way to keep the community going is exactly with that: the community. A fostering of general ideas and a careful watch on discussions should be applied, not more barriers to entry!

Better spam algorithms and community spirit, not exclusive sites!

I would certainly be willing to pay taking into consideration the current context. But it would scare away a lot of users. If most users leave hacker news and then it becomes less active I may not want to pay any more.

No, it's not needed here. Metafilter predates the digg/reddit style of user moderation. Anyone there can post directly to the front page, and only mods can remove posts. And I think there's only like 3 mods.

No way. You may raise the low bar a wee bit, but you'd drive away the outside makers, who are only here very tentatively in the first place.

I disagree, I think most people who comment here would do it regardless. And you're not driving anyone away because lurking is still easy and free.

I still wouldn't do it though, if only because I don't see anything to suggest that this place is any worse than it was last year when I started reading it.

Sure, "most people" probably would. They're not the ones I'm talking about. The people I'm referring to generally look on "membership" with scorn, and react by ... leaving. I know I would.

Random idea: what if the money went to help fund an open source project of some description?

Would that sway some of the no votes into yes?

Why would I pay for a user generated link aggregator?! The content and people here are great, but it is all original content or content linked from other sites. Makes no sense to pay for. Are they having trouble paying for hosting the site? ;)

Fee wouldn't be for the content, but for the participation.

Maybe, but only if I could filter out content by source domain (ahem techcrunch).

That's one of the problems when you start accepting money. Everyone expects something in return when they give you money, and it is impossible to please everyone, so you always have a certain percentage of paid users that feel shortchanged.

Yes, if it will keep the quality and sanity same

Yes, though hopefully with murdochs pay to link scheme there will be less links to mainstream media :)

irony

Edit: That's a little mean. Sorry, couldn't help myself.

No harm done. I get the point.