Nice updates to the nav bar, job posting format, and the messaging/UX for job posters.

Can we get the ~ removed too? Seems like many people dislike it and I haven't found anyone that supports it: #13487

Also, really excited to see sats disbursed to the community, wanted to clarify my thoughts on the Web of Trust approach a bit more.

Quick background for new users... The Web of Trust is the key that allows us to give back sats to users.

By assigning each user a reputation score that starts at 0, grows when they share content that the community appreciates, and drops when they are inactive or share content the community doesn't like, we can use it as a good proxy for the reputation and influence of a particular user, and as a tool to reward them financially for their efforts.

Without the Web of Trust, we're forced to rely on either upvotes or sats to determine valuable contributors, and both those metrics are easy for bots to game.

If we design the Web of Trust right, it should imitate the way one's trust might shift over time within a local community.

Members of your community will learn to trust you when you help them, and learn to avoid you when you hurt them or are wasting their time. You'll also lose some level of trust if you skip town for a couple years and later decide to return.

Now, for the first time we can use Lightning payments to financially reward Stacker News users with actual Stacker News revenue in proportion to their trust/reputation/influence in this community.

When thinking about how to reward users, my bias is towards using the Web of Trust exclusively to reward users as they prove to be long-term, valuable contributors to Stacker News, rather than instantly rewarding users for viral stories to stack some quick sats.

First, I think most posts that end up on the top of the page are already big stories outside of Stacker News, and are already well known and widely shared across the internet. Not sure it makes sense to specifically reward these posts.

I feel that the strength of the Stacker News community comes from sharing content that isn't already being shared everywhere, and that people consistently posting thoughtful, valuable ideas should be rewarded instead.

Secondly, since the two options above both rely on a Web of Trust, the difference is just in how quickly the sats are distributed. My bias is towards a longer reward period than a shorter one.

In Option 1, let's say a new user finds a great story and receives upvotes from trusted users. As a reward, maybe they get 1% of Stacker News revenue that day, or 10,000 sats for example.

In Option 2, that same new user (who starts off with zero reputation) won't get the 1% of revenue, but will see their reputation sharply rise (since users with high reputations signalled their approval of the content).

As a result, the user in Option 2 will begin receiving a consistent stream of payments from Stacker News in proportion to their reputation. Let's say that's 100 sats/day, with a 200 day linear decay if they never return back to Stacker News.

In both cases, the new user earns 10,000 sats for their contribution, but in Option 1, that user gets all their income up front and has no incentive to continue engaging with the community until they find another juicy headline story.

In Option 2, that new user gets their money over time, and can actually change the value of their daily payouts by continuing to engage.

They now have a reputation to take care of, and their 100 sats/day could become 200, 300, 400 or more if they choose to keep contributing valuable content. If not, those earnings would decay down to 90, 80, 70, or fewer sats/day.

The difference I see between the two approaches is that the second one distributes money over longer periods of time, and does a better job of incentivizing consistent contributions from long-term users.