I just realized I need to add a section about number of words rewarded per month. I will post it once I do.
Also, I know I am missing details about how shares are divided up. If anyone has an article which clarifies that and is more accurate, please pm me and I will link to it
I think I have a solution to determine a pay structure. We should go with a meritocracy based around a badge system. These badges would act as rank and determine how much each writer gets paid.
This way you would have granularity, merit, reward for quality, and reward for work. This badge system could also apply to programmers, musicians, or anything else. In order to get a basic level badge an individual would have to pass an exam. This exam should cost some coins and this would prevent spammers. The exam process would make it easier for Fuzzybear or whomever to review works. Perhaps eventually let random community members or even pay individuals to review them. The initial badge would declare that the individual meets the minimum qualification to be recognized as a writer, a programmer, or whatever.
Then over time reward with different higher level badges. These different badges will act as rank and as long as the writer continues to write their pay grade will be a bit higher based on the quality of their previous work as recognized by their badge. There should be different sorts of badges passed around throughout the community which recognize different kinds of competency.
Integrity for example is very valuable no matter if you're a writer, programmer or anything else and a lot of us would rather see the rewards go to community members with proven integrity. This would act similar to ebay or amazon where people maintain a good reputation and can get business but scammers and cheats don't. The better the reputation and integrity of the artist, developer, etc, the greater the portion of shares they should get.
This would allow for the community to reward qualities not just of the work itself, but of the author or developer themselves and factor that into how much they get paid. For instance if Fin Shaggy is known to be a man of honor and integrity then he eventually will receive a badge and that badge will allow him to be recognized for that in pay rank. If Fin Shaggy is also known to be very competent at writing then he could get a badge for that and be recognized for that and get the $50 per share rate but the next person who does not have that badge or who isn't known as being a very competent writer, they'll have to focus more on earning the badge than on just pumping out low quality content. This will force them to actually care about the quality of their work for the badge.
The badge should be difficult to revoke if it's an integrity badge. If it's a competency badge then it should be permanent for writers because if a writer proves they can produce a good piece of art work or software that should be enough. The next step would be to create ranks which are even higher than badges which I'll call medals. Give the medals out to the truly exceptional people.
This way established writers with good reputations for producing quality work will have badges, medals, and other qualifications and these should determine the worth of their shares. This way it's not marketing, it's not word count, it's not equally distributed like communism, it's merit and competency and these badges could stay with the developer no matter what coin they use in the future. If Ethicoin, Devcoin, Bitcoin, Litecoin or Futurecoin becomes popular these badges will still have established the merit and rank and would persist throughout all of that.
This way I'll immediately know which among you are talented at whatever, which among you are knowledgeable or skilled, and which among you are honorable.
I love your badge/rank idea! It's actually how a lot of writers (well, most jobs) already get paid. As you write more (or work more) you get promotions that increase your available job breadth and your pay for doing the work. Kind of like going from a cook at McDonald's to a manager to a district manager. As you prove your ability you keep getting promoted.
