> This is not true at all. There are web forums that are not "web-scale" and don't spend all day fighting bot spam. The solution is real simple: it costs 10 bux

> This is not true at all. There are web forums that are not "web-scale" and don't spend all day fighting bot spam. The solution is real simple: it costs 10 bux to register an account, if you're a nuisance your account is banned and you pay 10bux to get back on. That doesn't work at all unless your service is already pretty popular. Who would pay $5 to access a new, empty forum? You mention "you need to bootstrap a community first," but that's basically an admission that this solution doesn't solve the problem at all, because you have to solve the problem in some other way to use this solution. 10bux was a solution limited to a very specific time.