How would you prefer to donate on RPGWatch?

  • Recurring small monthly sum

  • Recurring medium monthly sum

  • Recurring large monthly sum

  • One-off small sum

  • One-off medium sum

  • One-off large sum

  • I would not donate

  • Other (please explain in comments) or staff member

Results are only viewable after voting.
For me a one-off medium sum would be a consideration. However when it is to enjoy a ad free site it doesn't feel as a donation to me, but more like a subscription. I guess it's down to symantics for that one, I understand running the site is costing money and nothing is free. I'll wait and see on what the final version of this investigation will be.
 
Arkadia7 said:
I am not saying that, if others happen to like the stand out reddish color tint, that it should be changed, just asking if there could be an option to be a supporter but with the normal (and boring) blue on blue colors already being used for other "titles".
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The way it works currently is that the entire donation process (including applying the profile tags) is automated, so any exemptions like that would have to be applied manually by either excluding the showing of this user tag for a specific user, or making it show with different styling. Both are technically possible to do with some custom coding in the relevant templates, but would have to be done by special request for individual users. To have something like this as a selectable option to tick off in user profiles would require custom coding a separate addon, which is probably not worth it as I don't expect this to be a very popular request. Though as I mentioned earlier, I wouldn't mind changing all the user tags to be colourful and not as bland as they are by default. If that was done, the Supporter banner wouldn't really stand out any more. I'll put this on the to-do to consider later on.

Redglyph said:
I'm not sure the same connotation exists in English, where 'donor' has the double meaning - so does 'donator', which is obsolete.
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I think it does, because it is very rarely used with monetary donation systems on websites. "Supporters" is how accounts with donations are normally referred to, not donors. Maybe that's due to American influence, but that's the way it is.

Also, "donors" wouldn't really work in our case, because Supporter status is not only applied to members who donate, but also to any who contribute to RPGWatch in other ways; like being on staff or helping out in other ways.

Stingray said:
Maybe the same background color as other tags, but a font that's a different color and/or bolded?
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I actually tried that, it didn't look good. Honestly though, when it comes to styling, there will never be a consensus on anything. That's why we have both the dark and light global styles as well. It's impossible to please everyone with any single colour choice anywhere; at best the majority will either like it or be ok with it, but there will always be a minority that won't for one reason or another.

booboo said:
Can one just use a credit card directly, or must it go via Paypal?
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You should be able to use either a credit or a debit card (let me know if not) in addition to a PayPal account. It all goes via PayPal though, as PayPal is the payment processor.

Zloth said:
{I guess we could do an anonymous donation by creating a second account and donating with that, too.}
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I'll be adding the option to make anonymous donations shortly, without any need to make a second account. However, anonymous donations will not be tied to forum accounts and consequently won't come with any perks like ad-free access and so on. For anything like that, there has to be an account that it is attributed to. So anonymous donations would normally be made by people who are not members of our forums and who have no intention of becoming members.

Of course, if you're already blocking ads and actually DON'T want any supporter recognition or perks on the forums, then it really makes no difference if you donate anonymously.

sakichop said:
Also making the tag optional will be problematic because then everyone will have to hide their supporter tag or risk being tagged as braggadocios and get put into the out group or worse yet another made up group. While we are at it we should get rid of join date and how many messages people have as they may intimidate some posters.
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Funny you should mention that, because yes, I've seen the same kind of heated arguments over post counts and join dates displayed in posts as well, on several forums over the years. Some people were just as strongly opposed to the "elitism" of members with old join dates, or those with a high post count, and asserted that this must not be visible in any of the posts. 🤷‍♂️

And heaven forbid us showing any reaction scores or like count totals below avatars, might as well slit my wrists now.

Zloth said:
If we do remove them all, be sure to make a bigger deal about the donations. If it wasn't for all the 'supporter' tags showing up everywhere, I wouldn't have known it was happening!
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And then having to deal with inevitable complaints that I'm begging for donations all the time. Welcome to the wonderful world of site admins. :boogie:

Kos said:
Having a bundle with Vaelith's hindsights and Rpgwatch is a steal but yes the badge .. I wouldn't mind the option to remove it
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Thanks for your donation, @Kos !
 
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I think transparency is the way to go here. There should definitely be tiers, and they should be clearly labeled. Everyone should know where they stand.

The people who donated more, or signed up for recurring donations, should have a "Master" tag. (Or, in my case, "Grandmaster".)

The more mundane donors should still be recognized. They could be tagged as "Soldiers" because they make up the bulk of the donations and are the backbone of this site. They can be broken down into sub-tiers based on their level of support. i.e. "Veteran", "Rookie", etc.

Any non-donors should be tagged as "Serfs" or "Plebs" to acknowledge their level of contribution to this society. I think that's only fair.

Also, certain individuals should have unique tags that indicate their responsibilities. @Taluntain is the obvious choice for Master of Coin, and I'm nominating @SirJames for Court Jester.

Additional unique tags can be assigned when appropriate.
 
Taluntain said:
The way it works currently is that the entire donation process (including applying the profile tags) is automated, so any exemptions like that would have to be applied manually by either excluding the showing of this user tag for a specific user, or making it show with different styling. Both are technically possible to do with some custom coding in the relevant templates, but would have to be done by special request for individual users. To have something like this as a selectable option to tick off in user profiles would require custom coding a separate addon, which is probably not worth it as I don't expect this to be a very popular request. Though as I mentioned earlier, I wouldn't mind changing all the user tags to be colourful and not as bland as they are by default. If that was done, the Supporter banner wouldn't really stand out any more. I'll put this on the to-do to consider later on.
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Ok, thanks for answering and considering it.

I will wait to donate then until there is an option to either hide the supporter tag, or perhaps better, tone it down, or make all the supporter tags the same color then. At least then it would look a lot better.

I want to clarify a few things: I think its reasonable to get perks like ad-free access with the donation, and although I do block ads, I would prefer to pay for it if there is a charge, because I like this website and want to support it.

I don't think the slippery slope argument makes sense, because donations are in a different category than post counts and join dates and so on, in my opinion.

I was not trying to start a trend, lol, just because I happen to prefer to hide the tag or prefer it to be in a "plain" boring blue on blue color, does not mean everyone else on the site would want to do that too. Sure, a few people agree with me, but its not the majority. I admitted its kinda a weird request in my initial post, to be honest. That said, I don't think its unreasonable to give options on this, so I appreciate that the site admin said he will look into it.

Lastly, I'm definitely not a communist, lol, I am rather the opposite - I'm firmly an "American First" person, and most of you know what that means. Let's just say I am very unhappy with the current president, to put it mildly. Just had to briefly comment on that, heh -- I may be a bit odd and unique, but definitely not communist! :LOL:
 
Taluntain said:
I think it does, because it is very rarely used with monetary donation systems on websites. "Supporters" is how accounts with donations are normally referred to, not donors. Maybe that's due to American influence, but that's the way it is.

Also, "donors" wouldn't really work in our case, because Supporter status is not only applied to members who donate, but also to any who contribute to RPGWatch in other ways; like being on staff or helping out in other ways.
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Heh. I've often seen 'donor' (e.g. our own legacy tags), and sometimes 'contributor', but not 'supporter'. I'm sure anything is possible, though. We can just pretend that saving the RPGWatch is the cause we support. ;)
 
Arkadia7 said:
Lastly, I'm definitely not a communist, lol, I am rather the opposite - I'm firmly an "American First" person, and most of you know what that means. Let's just say I am very unhappy with the current president, to put it mildly. Just had to briefly comment on that, heh -- I may be a bit odd and unique, but definitely not communist! :LOL:
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There you go, america first. :D Americans are the worst to get bent over a barrel by big business. :oops:
View: https://youtu.be/DAD5iMe0Xj4?t=1657
 
Pladio said:
I would never have expected a donations discussion to be this heated :p

From my perspective @Taluntain - just let us know if the funds aren't enough and I'll pitch in with whatever I can at that point in time.
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Well, you started it by complaining about all your tags. :p (just kidding)
Do you expect any discussion here not to be somewhat heated? Personally, I'd start to worry.

I suppose we're just interested about any change to the website.

Something struck me as odd: we have to donate a fixed amount for a given period. For example, I started with a 1-year donation because I feel comfortable with that period, but what if I wanted to donate a little more per year? I also wondered what would happen if I donated for 2 years right now: would the subscription last for 2 years (resetting the counter), or 3 years (accumulating)?

Anyway, maybe there's more than enough with the current amounts.
 
Redglyph said:
Something struck me as odd: we have to donate a fixed amount for a given period. For example, I started with a 1-year donation because I feel comfortable with that period, but what if I wanted to donate a little more per year? I also wondered what would happen if I donated for 2 years right now: would the subscription last for 2 years (resetting the counter), or 3 years (accumulating)?

Anyway, maybe there's more than enough with the current amounts.
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I think that if you donate using the forum's donation system, your "subscription" gets extended according to the extra donations you make; we can verify that if someone will make another donation alongside the existing one. Certainly if this wasn't added together automatically, I'd do it manually so that any extra donations are reflected in the subscription duration.

As for the current donation amounts, while the initial show of support was very encouraging, at a rough estimate we've so far covered less than half of the expenses incurred since I've taken over RPGWatch. And I'm only counting the absolute basics here, such as hosting, licences and domains. But it's early days yet, some more donations will probably be coming in once I finalize the donation system. Realistically though, I never expected donations alone to cover everything, but they certainly do help.
 
Carnifex said:
I don't have paypal yet plan on kicking in when I get my next check, assuming the site will take credit cards.
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I've come to appreciate PayPal after my credit card had to be renewed two times because of online fraud. I hate to leave my number on barely known websites, or even known sites with flawed security (Dell is one of them).
 
Taluntain said:
As for the current donation amounts, while the initial show of support was very encouraging, at a rough estimate we've so far covered less than half of the expenses incurred since I've taken over RPGWatch. And I'm only counting the absolute basics here, such as hosting, licences and domains. But it's early days yet, some more donations will probably be coming in once I finalize the donation system. Realistically though, I never expected donations alone to cover everything, but they certainly do help.
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Well, if that's one year's worth of expenses, then it probably is fine. I assume every year, you'll get the regulars to donate relatively easily.
 
Pladio said:
Well, if that's one year's worth of expenses, then it probably is fine. I assume every year, you'll get the regulars to donate relatively easily.
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It still sounds a little tight, unless many donations were only for less than a year. It's only been a little over one and a half year since the move.
 
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