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Sometimes what would be easier to do in real life is more difficult to do online, because the functionality is different or missing. For example, the real-life equivalent of "karma" -- displays of admiration or friendship -- is public.
Assuming voluntary association, one way to "enforce a given behavior" is to only associate with people who agree to behave like that. So if you want to have a group that does X, you associate with people who give social status to people working on X (as opposed to e.g. people who talk a lot about X, but give low status to people actually working on X).
Online... I guess banning people for not expressing proper attitudes would be perceived by many as very problematic (even if that's what most of us more or less do in real life), so the realistic solution seems to be an invite-only club. Or a two-tiered system, where the outer forum is open to everyone, and only people with the desired behavior get an invitation to the inner forum.
You are glossing over the practice of giving social status. In real life, as you said, it is basically public displays of admiration (friendship is a bit different). So you are going to build a community with the inclusion criterion of being willing to publicly admire a particular set of people. Presumably if you stop admiring, you are no longer welcome in the community. That doesn't strike me as a way to build a healthy community -- there are obvious failure modes looming.