How should we compensate forum moderators?

There's no need to compensate them when there's plenty of volunteers willing to do the work for free.

Also Reddit itself has a built in moderating system with the upvote/downvote system and the "new" section.

Mods highly overrate their contribution to reddit. The truth is the site will run fine whether they stay or get replaced and the mods know this.

I think it should be said that Reddit moderators might not be paid in money by Reddit, but they get a probably substantial amount of compensation in a different form of power/influence/opportunities.

Imagine if you're the moderator of a subreddit like /r/politics. You might not get a steady corporate paycheck, but you effectively get global political influence and power and probably more than a dozen serious offers by corporations, politicians, and likely even nation-states to not block/ban their spam of products/services/propaganda on that subreddit daily.

It’s more difficult than you would think.

Naive answer is a percentage of monthly advertising or subscription revenue, split amongst the moderators based on the proportion of the moderation work they have undertaken.

However, this creates a perverse incentive for moderators to perform unnecessary additional moderation work to bring in more compensation.

A quick look to see if there are relevant publications brings up the Journal of Online Trust and Safety, but there are probably others. I would prefer to look at academic handlings of industry pay to anecdotes and I presume others here would as well.

I wasn't aware that modwerators were compensated. I thought it was a service they provided to their communities.

I don't think we should

Two plates of rice daily, catwoman wife and tax discount!