I think that the "amount of tokens overall" list would be, perhaps, more negative than positive. At least, in light of the fact that without that list, there would still be a lot of other positive things. I do not think it would add enough to overcome the downsides in my mind. Sometimes people can be unhappily competitive.

I agree with Kysle that it probably wouldn't be good to give out tokens for providing personal information. As Ticia says, right now there's a lot of trust within the Album system, and I could see someone saying "oh hey, I'll give a copy of my facebook pic 'cause I have it online anyway" and getting access, and it's not a big deal to them, whereas the trust we have now is because it sort of is a big deal. I could foresee a lot of people joining the album that I don't even know and I don't see around in chat much, just because - perhaps I'm too concerned and it's not really a risk, but if it does happen I would consider asking for my own pictures to be removed.

I think Revan's "with no input from any mods whatsoever" is an interesting point. The way it is presented, people can become ops from contributing without contributing positively. I totally believe that Sam would take care of any problems quickly but I wonder (because I really don't know how much work or how easy it would be to do an automated system) if it would be less work to have people purchase the option to become ops and get reviewed (and refunded if not approved) in advance, thus eliminating (mostly) the need to retroactively solve problems (problems that could, possibly, be major). Okay, that's a long sentence. Anyway, even if it is more work, Sam's always put a lot of effort into the site so I'm not sure that should even be the biggest concern.

I would actually feel much more comfortable if the token system were implemented without the ability to purchase ops - and that might have little weight coming from me, but I'd be willing to give up my own ops in a second to see this happen. I have always felt that one thing that made Rinkworks truly great was Sam's direct involvement in the forum and chat and the fact that people who were moderating chat basically knew what Sam's vision for the site was and how he would want chat to proceed. I realize the token system isn't directly removing Sam's influence from the equation but the automation of ops basically helps lead to this. I do think that people who are going to contribute to the site in order to get tokens would be contributing positively - at least at first. Down the road I'd be scared of Rinkworks becoming just another site though. Most sites have stuff like number of posts under someone's name and rankings of stuff and whatever, and moderators distanced a bit from who is running the site - and a lot of problems crop up that Rinkworks has never really experienced. I know that some people perceive me as one of the "elite" so, again, maybe this has little weight coming from me. But I know that there was a time where I was not one of that group. Sometimes it bothered me, but usually not - because I realized that this meant that this site had a real community, one I might be able to join one day.