I hear what you are saying Glenn, but I expect if you run the numbers it wouldnt add up, sure you would pay, and others, but enough to build and maintain it? It's possible, but I don't know if its realistic, I expect a lot of the better looking sites are like that because there is someone on the admin bench with an interest and the skillset to make it that way. I'm not trying to be negative, it's just a gift I have
As an example, Facebook, was written by someone talented as a bit of a joke website, but he had the talents to throw at it.
I also still think that if you were to look at a money making entity, then you'd need to expand beyond delicas and brethren, lets say you register
www.jdmmag.ca or something, get something half decent on there and then find it gets a lot of interest then you could look at either paying someone to customise it or maybe be lucky enough to have a web developer join with an interest.
From my perspect, I run a couple of forums even simpler than this one, they may be dated but a) no one cares much because they just like having the facility, and b) it means for me maintenance is low. If I wrote something clever, well if I could, and then it screws up, I simply dont have the time to troubleshoot and rewrite or restore broken databases. I let the volunteers at phpbb do all the monkey work of developing the software and checking for explouts, and I just use it, once in a while an exploit is missed and I have to mess around fixing stuff myself, but I dont need to be doing that all the time.
So it's swings and roundabouts. FWIW, if you did make a joomla
www.jdmmag.ca its very easy to give lots of people the ability to publish their own articles to it, or have them so they have to be approved etc.