It is a value. It means that the incentives of the user and the producer are aligned: to enjoy the time in a community, rather than have one try to extract money.

Aside from that, not everything needs to be a business, and even then, not everything needs to be profitable.

By that logic lets stop paying street sweepers and sanitation workers. See, their incenitives are mutually aligned with the interests of those who walk the streets, so there is no reason to "extract money".

Sure thing, but the article in question EXPLICITLY mentions "You should make a budget that supports having a good community, or you should find another line of work.", which means that one way or another funding is needed, unless you're comfortable with making someone read through kilobytes of drivel and spam in their free (or perhaps not so free) time.

I'm sure if you stopped paying the street sweepers, you'd find out that a lot of them don't care about sanitation, and the rest can't pick up the burden. That's why they get paid.

Even then, I'd rather have one of those motivated by cleanliness service my area. Just the same way, I'll choose a forum that's not monetized.

I don't see how that sentence means that funding is needed. Plenty of forums exist with community moderation. Whether the person doing the work is compensated in respect and social connections, or money, doesn't really make a difference to me.

Exactly. And what do people do when there are tasks that: a) most people don't care about and b) are fundamental to the well being of the community? They offer a reward for accomplishing those tasks.

Why would they service your area at all? Are you sure that your area has people that would go around keeping the streets clean 8 hours a day for nothing in return? Not choosing a forum just because it's monetized is an odd choice to be fair, considering that this conversation takes place on a website that's, well... monetized.

Read the article again and see the context that the sentence was used in. Yes, plenty of forums exist with community moderation, but if the goal is to make a forum a place that is not going to become a disaster, a motivated and well compensated employee is the only solution. Otherwise you're relying on someones occasional contribution to the well being of the community rather than have things go smoothly at all times.

>Is "absence of monetization" a value?

If capitalism is a value, then anti-capitalism is also a value. A lot of people believe the presence of capitalism on the web is fundamentally antithetical to what they see as its fundamentally anarchist/anti-establishment ethos.

Besides, the cost per month of running a small forum nowadays is less than what many people here spend on a single lunch. Not everyone is running a business or a startup.

Ah, the fundamentally anarchist/anti-establishment ethos of millions of computers connected to each other (making a coordinated and organized establishment of their own with hierarchical substructures).

>anti-capitalism is also a value

Say it with me: communism.

Say it with me: anti-capitalist philosophies besides communism exist.

Communism is such an overloaded word that baseline communism as defined by David Graeber is probably a better antonym to capitalism.