Pay real money to set bounties (another method, not replacing rep method) [duplicate]

Question

It may seem like a stupid thing, but could we please be able to pay real money to set a bounty.

For example, if I had only 1 rep, I want to be able have a bounty.

Here late the suggested prices in USD. Convert money here

• $0.49 for each 50 reputation
• $0.99 for each week
• $1.99 for a month
• $9.99 for a year

Every month, the bounty fee would come in. This would mean you would have to enable your account with a bounty fee button on your profile.

Answer 1

Ignoring any technical inconsistiences and moral issues (why I am I working for Stack Exchange for free?) I can see the following problems with the basic idea of being able to use money to purchase bounties:

• Whatever amount you charge will be a large and possibly unaffordable amount for some people while an inconsequential amount for others.

• Using your example $4.90 for placing a 500 bounty on a "do my work for me" question would be very attractive because it would amount to considerably less than what I charge and I could use Stack Overflow for cheap outsourcing.

• The community can't close a question with a bounty they can only downvote it and why will I care if I only had one reputation point to start with? I can always make a new account if/when I get a question ban and pay for the bounty using a different card / method.

• If a moderator deletes my question what happens when I call my credit card company and raise a dispute because Stack Exchange promised a week of advertising I didn't receive? Maybe they could make the refund automatic to save disputes but then moderators would still be wasting all their time evaluating / closing poor questions with a bounty.

This is also ignoring the several valid comments about it destroying the existing bounty system. You'll end up in a state where people who have donated many hours of time helping others can't use the bounty system effectively because it's full of paid bounties.

Answer 2

There are two flaws in your idea:

1. What's wrong with the current system? From what I've seen, the majority of bounties are awarded - and not just by default. They bring in good answers that typically answer the question fully. People are already willing to dedicate a substantial amount of their time to help strangers, in return for reputation points you can't use outside SE. They don't need an incentive to rush to answer questions with bounties on them.
2. This would be ineffective. At best, a person can earn $4.90 for answering a question with a bounty on it (as per your model), if the bounty is for +500 (if the person who receives the bounty gets the money, which you didn't necessarily imply). Is that really much of an incentive? It might take a user an hour to write a really good-quality, bounty-worthy answer, especially if they have to do a lot of research to find sources (as they would in such sites as Skeptics or History of Science and Mathematics). Currently, that's about half of U.S. minimum wage. There's essentially no incentive in your model.