Could/should contributions and volunteering be incentivised?
Incentivise (US incentivize): 'motivate or encourage (someone) to do something; provide with an incentive.'
Could or should RYM have more an incentive system to encourage contributions (adding releases, artists, images), participation in the mod queues, etc.?
My reasoning is that people love a carrot, and are naturally drawn to reward systems, big or small.
For example, on reddit, there is karma. Youtube videos have likes/views. UltimateGuitar has a ranking for tab submissions and 'IQ'. MusicBrainz keeps leaderboards on editors and voters, both overall and weekly.
Beyond such basic systems, some platforms have more advanced incentive systems (reddit has a paid contributor program; Youtube allows for monetisation; etc.). This is not the focus/scope of my question, as it invites other complexities.
While not an incentive in itself, RYM records contributions at the bottom of user's profiles. Otherwise, there is no particular incentive for contributing to RYM that I am aware of, besides perhaps the self-altruism of users as an internal incentive.
Anyway, here is a list I came across that recognises some of the great contributors to RYM: