From this msg I thought it would be fun if for a donation say 100 dollars, a member could request another members name be changed. Their previous name put where "Member" or "Contributing Member" currently is. Limit it to once per year for the contributor to prevent craziness.
change your own subtitle? Sure, sounds like an interesting way to make money if Clutch or another admin wants to sort through that. (Probably too much of a pain to be worth it, but maybe.) change someone else's? Seems silly. If the other person wanted it, they could just change it themselves for that donation. If they don't like it, they would just sign up under a different handle (and/or stop posting)
Revenue generating idea? How about a penny for your thought. Every post costs one penny. Who can't afford a penny a post? Maybe the quality of the posts would improve.
somethingawful.com has been doing that for over 10 years .. and a few other things where you can affect another member profile temporarily -- like their avatar. They're on vbulletin, too. But I think they wrote a lot of mods for their scores of money-raising options, hence why they haven't upgraded in years. It's all automated and immediate. Then expires, or the "victim" can pay to change it back. Kinda clever, but their site is based upon socializing about nothing, so not as insecure as all us Lin fans. They also do a huge amount of temp-banning, including auto-temp-bans, to keep the inmates in line, who take things too seriously. btw: the "name change" doesn't change the user's name, but change "Member" or "Contributing Member" to something silly.
Something awful is where the GOONS live, it is a terrible place to compare this too, if you think the GARM is bad, try that site, pay the $10 a month for access and cringe. That is 4Chan with pictures. DD
Wasn't trying to compare. Just explaining their money-raising features. I actually think I started a thread about those feature in Feedback over 10 yrs ago. I think it's hilarious, but would probably vote against it here. Haven't been to somethingawful in awhile. But the General Bullsh1t forum (equivalent to Hangout) was great when I did lurk. It has some other really good forums. Their cooking and book reading forums are great -- hobbyist stuff. The cooking contest threads are very cool. Seems like a lot of non-GOONs there, definitely more women than on Sports sites. I don't have much experience there, but I always viewed it as our Hangout, broken out into a dozen or so forums. Never been to 4chan, but that seems like an overly-simplified comparison.