It's possible that a condition of a paid model is that the merchant (YC or whomever for example) could require an interview, resume, GitHub profile/code samples, etc. I'm not suggesting anything NEAR what a job interview process is like (that's insane enough as it is, we don't need any more of that!), but just something to reasonably verify that the person has some relevant qualifications. Then the publisher/merchant/etc. (again, YC for example) could add "tags" or "badges" to a person's profile showing they're a paid user, and badges for the skills they've "reasonably" verified for that user.

This wouldn't be anything near an ironclad guarantee (what is anymore, with anything?), but would provide people a relatively fair amount of confidence that the person WANTED to be part of the discussion bad enough not only to pay to get in, but to pay for the privilege of, and go through the (relatively easy) work to, prove their credibility in certain subjects.

I'm not at all envisioning anything requiring people to divulge their real life identities to the public (only the publisher for verification/billing reasons), force them through hours and days and weeks of endless interviews like job hunting, or limiting what they can and can't say or respond to. It's just an idea intended to show people, along with every comment, that the person is *REASONABLY* qualified in certain areas of expertise.

So, let's say for example I were to comment on an Ask HN thread about how to pitch to VC's. Without this kind of system, how might you know if I have any idea what the hell I'm talking about? (Because personally on that topic, I'm clueless and therefore not at all qualified to give people input.) This allows the reader to see the person doesn't have verified qualifications for getting investment capital. Doesn't mean their comment is invalid or bad, but allows the reader a chance to "take it with a grain of salt".

On the other hand, if I were to comment on writing code in say, Ruby, Go, etc. and I'd been verified as having at least some degree of experience with those, the reader can have a better degree of confidence that what I was saying wasn't total bullshit.

Just a few thoughts on how this kind of thing could be useful for some folks. :-)