You like to associate with people who value what you value, right? For example, you get together with friends every weekend to cheer on your favorite team. Or to discuss a book in a book club. Or to listen to a band you all enjoy. Or to dine at a new restaurant. In other words, people who share the same values enjoy being together.

But how to find those people?

Honors (accessed via your Moderate dropdown) are a way to identify and reward the kinds of people you want in your community. You offer some karma to challenge people to contribute to your community. Have a passion for cooking desserts? Offer some karma to find the best recipe for crème brûlée. The author of the recipe who gets the most upvotes wins the karma. Want to find people who like to discuss theoretical mathematics? Offer some karma to people who will post a few papers to your community. Want to reward your moderators for spending the time to keep your community spam-free? Offer some karma to your mods for every 10 spam posts they moderate in modqueue.

For someone to participate in your honors program, they have to be subscribed to your community and they have to register for the specific honor you’re offering.

You can honor people in a competitive contest (e.g., first place for this, second place for that) or it can be based on just achieving a certain goal you think important (e.g., contributing a certain number of posts to your community).

It’s a great way to honor and motivate those who value what you value. It brings together “your kind of people.”