[monknomo]

ejecting jerks is something forums did better than social media, even if the definition of jerk varied widely and was forum-specific. I can't imagine a forum doing something like promoting the user with the most interacted with posts; they'd probably lock the thread and consider banning

[Terr_]

The undercurrent here for me is barriers to entry and monopolies and network-effects, ex:

Con: You had to search to find a community.

Pro: There were lots of independent communities that had competition in case one was badly moderated.

[monknomo]

well said, I think that is a significant portion of what I see as the problem. That and moderation/curation scaling very poorly

[someonebaggy]

And if you did that now you'd probably have no forum left because everyone has been trained to generate engagement.

[CuriousSkeptic]

Has it been tried?

I mean, it is a common moderation goal, in physical meetings, to make sure the silent ones gets heard.

Could be interesting to try a social network approach om those terms: promotion inversely correlated with engagement.