Well if someone cannot donate and cannot be seen contributing in any way, there’s very few ways to validate they’re a contributing member in the comm

Change online "comm" to real life "community" and that becomes pretty problematic (we should not be relating levels of contribution to levels of rights and power/say).

I'm genuinely not trying to give you a hard time, and I understand that the two are not the same, and that running an online community has its unique challenges (anonymity, trolls, sock accounts, vote manipulation, and on and on), but I also think it's really important to keep the framing of things in mind because it can be so fucking easy to default, even without wanting or meaning to, to the hierarchal constructs we are familiar and surrounded with.

I've never run any community or organisation online or irl, not even modded a community (was only appointed as one on my previous shitjustworks account as a backup), so I don't claim to fully understand the challenges you face in implementing this, or have a magic solution to offer, but I think these points are fundamental and worth highlighting, so I am.

As for the tagging, just to clarify, because I think I misunderstood what a tag or flair is, are they the same? I assumed a flair was the emoji looking things, and those it makes sense that only you can add, in my mind a tag would be like some of the apps have, where you can tag a user as say "troll" rather than blocking, but is that not a thing that is happening here? (sorry, I'm only just waking and baking lol)

Initial plan is that every subscriber should be allowed to vote, but only subscribers who fund a lot can open new votes for mandates.

I feel like this puts the poorest people in the community who may not be able to afford to donate as much or at all at a significant disadvantage and creates an unnecessary hierarchy (as well as, like you say, room for manipulation, someone who can afford to donate more having more power is icky), as do the different tiers for level of donation.

I can understand why you want to limit voting to people who are an active part of the community (though again, there becomes a hierarchy, like what about people who mostly lurk and only comment rarely? Do we start questioning why someone doesn't participate as much as others? Neurodiversity and other health issues can play a huge part, as can poor education and access to information so someone might not feel confident enough to be very active, but are they then lesser members of the community? What about people who don't have regular access to a device or reliable internet?), and I agree that there should be some way to tell who is a member in good faith and who isn't, but I really don't think that basing it on monetary value and stakeholders (which feels far too close in concept to shareholders), or ranking users in general is the way to go.

In any case, I think the fact that you want to make the instance's running more communal is fantastic, and I think the idea itself is good, but parts of it might still need a little more cooking lol

As for the tags, can we as users tag other users? Will they see the tag, or that we tagged them? Will you, as a sysadmin?

It's a nice thought, but sadly we will never get to find out..

It's one of the reasons they maintain a poverty class, and invest in providing free (or heavily subsidised) education, housing, meals, and healthcare for soldiers (not to mention the massive and imperialist propaganda machine) - can't feed the meat grinder if no one is desperate to enlist just to survive.

Well, not anymore!

Hey now, mansplaining does have its uses..

Mostly people are interested in what might benefit their lives. Not the thousands of hours it took to get there.

Nor in anything that might benefit the lives of people they see themselves completely detached from or even superior to, even if in reality they are either much more alike than they ever would or could admit, and or could end up in the other person's shoes in a heartbeat.

The bigger a threat to the status quo a group or movement becomes, the bigger the lies those who benefit from that status quo need to tell themselves to justify their opposition to progress.

It’s very specific to south korea.

The hand gesture might be, but the aggressive reaction to anything that even implies feminism, absolutely isn't