Yes, fully agreed. This wouldn't create a barrier to entry; it would create a goddam seawall. Potential huge downside.My biggest concern is how this will affect new users.
Yes. 50 to start, or ten per month, etc. There are definitely ways to make it less of a barrier. As to your idea about doing it behind the scenes, I like it, but I also have to echo flagamuffin. Adding a money layer drives people away. And possibly fast. There's no guarantee that anything we can glean from that experiment could be applicable in a live test. People mostly like free shit. Free shit is either terrible or temporary or you're being set up to be sold down the river. Anyway it seems like there's not a lot of imagination here. Everyone wants a donation button, but nobody would donate regularly. NPR says something like 1% of regular listeners donate. I can't imagine it'd be much different here. There's value in some creative solution to the funding models that currently exist. I'm NOT saying mine is that solution, but at least it's outside the box, a jump off point for further ideas.
I have begged to donate :p I really like waffles.fm's fundraising. It's all extremely transparent and the only time it's in your face is when the site is in danger of shutting down because they're so behind on server costs. Sure, they're always in danger of shutting down, but the community has stepped up something like nine times now. -- The part of your post I least like is that these bank accounts might eliminate short posts that don't take thought. But not all short posts are like ":D" -- sometimes I just want to say "how does that work," or "what have you been doing," or get into a back-and-forth conversation with kleinbl00 about a fantasy book club. No thought required on any of that, but I'm not sure I should be 'penalized' so to speak. I don't want to have to think twice about putting one-line posts down, necessarily.Anyway it seems like there's not a lot of imagination here. Everyone wants a donation button, but nobody would donate regularly. NPR says something like 1% of regular listeners donate. I can't imagine it'd be much different here. There's value in some creative solution to the funding models that currently exist. I'm NOT saying mine is that solution, but at least it's outside the box, a jump off point for further ideas.
My feelings exactly. I'd like some of Klein's experimentation with some of Green's hippie NPR pipedreams. My better half donates all the little we can to every charity out there. Orphans, puppies, Popes. I blow what little funds I can hide on crap. If Hubski was growing too big for it's britches I'd gladly help to buy it a larger pair.