We should think about the advertising model before its too late and it gets shoved onto us. I think each community should get its own advertiser and they get a stick post on each post which is limited to 300 chars and one url.
Its simple, non intrusive and we can make it a bidding. 80 % of the proceeds should go to the maintenance of the instance, 20 % should go to the moderators of the instance.
Would warner brothers want this for 100 $ on movies ? I think so …
Alternately, we can not have advertising, and just donate to our instances… Personally, I’d rather pay a few bucks a month. It’s very refreshing to have somewhere on the internet that isn’t full of marketing BS.
Really, this is going to come down to individual instance decisions, but at this stage, I’d definitely block any community that had advertising on every thread.