It’s actually not about fairness. It is more an acceleration of what we’ll be doing anyway
The costs are not a problem. I spend more on one evening’s entertainment more than a few times a month. The stuff we would do, we’d do anyway. None of the ideas listed above are new. They’re just being accelerated (promotion) or made front and centre (charity initiatives)…
Unless we say absolutely nothing about it., donating to charity is also promotion, Cynical, I know, but that’s the way it is.
Whatever we do, we’ve got to keep the final outcome in mind. If this venture is successful, we become a more populated site, and while that seems like a win-win, the reality is that the addition of a single poster can change things considerably. We all know this. We all know Barry 
Between us, I think bletch and I can handle the influx of new members we hope we’ll generate, on a moderator level at least. The question is whether the rest of the site is prepared. I’d bet that we are, if the recent JS/TedMaul mini-blowup is anything to go by. Almost uniformly, the site spoke with a single voice. If anyone was asked to deduce what the overal collective intent of the site was, it was that “we want to keep them both”. And we did.
Promotion is a double-edged sword. Even if we achieve ultimate and unbridled success, we’re potentially creating problems for ourselves, both here and elsewhere. The bigger you are, the more people line up to take a shot.
The Donate button is not a panacea. It’s a potential catalyst for change. I have every confidence that we have the core to accommodate that change, but I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t mention the risks associated with it.