Metafilter has paid moderators that are very assertive at keeping the community values alive and breathing. They have a sub-forum just for in-house chatter ... basically a chatty-peoples-court that is off the front page and entirely about the community. And they let each sub-forum moderate differently. That has let their ask.metafilter to flourish because they don't allow nearly as much hootenanny there while some of the other subforums allow more shall we say vivid replies. Charge a nominal cash fee to join would stop some signal-less chatter. It would also prove to your advertisers that the community made up of people that have ducats+bank accounts and spends them online on things they find important. Speaking of advertising ... I use adblock ... so if there were some small ads aimed at us that I could block ... I wouldn't mind. And it would be neat if we could become a co-op and offer health insurance and other weird ways to leverage OUR POWERS!