[talkingtab]

I personally believe it is worth exploring the idea of a different email realm for communities. The concept is pretty simple. Don't accept email from gmail, microsoft, hotmail or any other non-community member. Community members don't spam, don't send email in bulk and have reputation.

It is funded by pay-per-transgression. If you are a community member and someone receives unwanted email your reputation suffers. If you are gmail, et al you have to pay for each email sent & received.

Someone once wrote (let me know if you know the source) that users are not the customer, because they don't pay. It is advertisers who are the real email customers. This has resulted in a business model where users are prey animals. This is upside down and probably cannot be fixed without a hard fork.

I don't mean this is a good idea, or implementation. But I think it is a good direction.