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The grace period prevents abuse from people other than the bounty initiator.
But the initiator himself could be a bad actor who rejects pending criticisms for arbitrary reasons just to avoid paying.

Feature idea: pay people to criticize your idea.

You start a ‘criticism bounty’ of ten bucks, say, per pending criticism received by some deadline.

The amount should be arbitrarily customizable (while covering transaction costs). The user also indicates a ceiling for the maximum amount they are willing to spend.

There could then be a page for bounties at /bounties. And a page listing a user’s bounties at /:username/bounties.

When starting a bounty, the user indicates terms such as what kinds of criticism they want. This way, they avoid having to pay people pointing out typos, say.

Anyone can start a bounty on any idea. There can only be one bounty per idea at a time.

To ensure a criticism is worthy of the bounty, the initiator gets a grace period of 24 hours at the end to review pending criticisms. They may even award a bounty to problematic criticisms, at their discretion. Inaction automatically awards the bounty to all pending criticisms at the end of the grace period. If doing so would exceed the ceiling, more recent criticisms do not get the bounty.

People can speculate, but if there’s a grace period, they won’t know how many pending criticisms there will be in the end. So they may still get a payout.

Unlike #3424, however, having a set amount per pending criticism means there’s zero incentive for anyone to submit more criticisms, whereas divvying up the amount among pending criticisms means the incentive is reduced only gradually, and it’s up to people to decide for themselves whether contributions are still worth making.

Feature idea: pay people to criticize your idea.

You submit an idea with a ‘criticism bounty’ of ten bucks per pending criticism received, say.

The amount should be arbitrarily customizable (while covering transaction costs).

There could then be a page for bounties at /bounties. And a page listing a user’s bounties at /:username/bounties.

When starting a bounty, the user indicates terms such as what kinds of criticism they want. This way, they avoid having to pay people pointing out typos, say.

Anyone can start a bounty on any idea. There can only be one bounty per idea at a time.

Rather than set a fixed amount for each pending criticism (#3421), the ceiling could be divided among all pending criticisms equally.

The initiator of the bounty could choose a ceiling for the total they are willing to spend. They could additionally specify the amount per pending criticism.

For example, a user would indicate that they are willing to spend a total of $100 at $10 per criticism.

Rather than set a fixed amount for each pending criticism (#3421), the ceiling could be divided among all unproblematic criticisms equally.

There could be a grace period. For example, 24 hours after the bounty ends, no new criticisms can be posted on the bountied idea. That way, the bounty initiator has time to review pending criticisms.

That could result in amounts too small to cover transaction costs.

There could be a grace period. For example, 24 hours after the bounty ends, no new criticisms can be posted on the bountied idea. That way, the bounty initiator have time to review pending criticisms.

and others

If others can still participate during that time, it’s not really a grace period.

and others

If others can still participate, it’s not really a grace period.

Then all pending criticisms automatically receive equal payouts.

What happens if they neglect to review pending criticisms?

There could be a grace period. For example, 24 hours after the bounty ends, no new criticisms can be posted on the bountied idea. That way, the bounty initiator and others have time to review pending criticisms.

This idea introduces additional complexity and edge cases. For example, what happens if authorization fails? Need something simpler for an MVP version of this feature.

While this idea sounded promising at first, I now realize it just moves the deadline problem one level underneath the bountied idea.

What if every criticism on the bountied idea creates a separate authorization? The bounty initiator would add their card on file and then every time someone submits a criticism, the card is authorized for the per-criticism amount.

Would still be a hassle for users to track refunds.

Who wants that hassle?

There could still be a button to report abuse. People found to abuse deadlines could become ineligible for payouts and excluded from participating in future bounties.

Although there’s a risk for abuse, that’s a feature: it will lead to lively discussions among critics.

People who have submitted criticisms hope to get paid. They have an incentive to submit arbitrary counter-criticisms to others’ criticisms to increase their own share of the pie.

If they have submitted criticisms, they may get paid. So they have an incentive to submit arbitrary counter-criticisms to others’ criticisms.