Remove maximum tip amount/limit

[balupton]

@whit537 said the reasoning for the maximum tip amount is to not become dependent on one individual. I'm not sure that I follow that argument as the more money being donated to authors and distributed to authors must be a good thing right?

[lyndsysimon]

The idea, as I understand it, is that you want to build an income in a way that it isn't likely gone overnight. If someone is tipping $500 / week to me, I might very well be relying on that. When and if they decide to discontinue their tip, that $500 would be sorely missed.

Contrast that to a situation where 50 people were tipping me $10 each per week. For any given week, the chance of a substantial number of them stopping their tip is quite low. Even if my income over time decays, it should do so in a way that gives me time to seek another source of income.

[wilkie]

First issue: if somebody can donate a lot at one time, they can then stop. If they do, this will be incredibly disruptive.

Second issue: not motivating others to distribute to many people, or even not motivating them to look for others to support.

Third issue: lots of money going to one person is giving that person a lot of control on who receives their money as support and so on. this "gift" of authority accumulates.

Basically, to lock the amount of money one person can give to a single person would be to eliminate some of the power and authority issues that having a lot of money can have. Thus, the lock cancels that out by having such people give their money to as many people as they can. Note: they can still put as much money as they want into the system.

[lyndsysimon]

I'll also add that I think it's probably universally accepted that the limits on giving will reduce what some people receive through Gittip. The purpose of Gittip* isn't to get a few people making full-time money from a few people; it's a fundamentally different way to sustain community-benefit work.

• Note that the "purpose of Gittip" may be better read "The reason I'm an advocate for GIttip" or "What I see Gittip as potentially becoming". Like all community projects, each person involved sees it through the filter of their own biases and agenda.

[cakey]

It's also worth noting that the maximum changed just last month from $24/wk to $100/wk. (#1041) It would be best to wait a few more months and then evaluate demand for increasing the limit.

[mvdkleijn]

I think this can be closed? I see no point in keeping it open.

[chadwhitacre]

+1 from @isaacs on Twitter.

[chadwhitacre]

Also, if you want to regularly pay someone in the $1,000+ per week range, you should just hire them.

[isaacs]

If I want to pay someone $1000 once for doing something exceptional, though, gittip isn't useful for that right now.

[balupton]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

First issue: if somebody can donate a lot at one time, they can then stop. If they do, this will be incredibly disruptive.

So will not having that extra money in the first place. Out of the two scenarios of, receiving $1000/month for 6 months then nothing OR $100/month for 6 months then nothing, I'd definitely prefer the first scenario, which is a $5400 difference that I'd be much better off with than if I never got it in the first place.

Third issue: lots of money going to one person is giving that person a lot of control on who receives their money as support and so on. this "gift" of authority accumulates.

Shouldn't this be handled by the individuals, with gittip being a platform to facilitate such things. If I want to arrange a sponsorship deal with a company wanting to pay $4000/month (already happened for 2 months now), I'd love to use gittip as the platform for receiving that money. It is sponsorship afterall.

Having gittip dicatate one particular intention for what the money is used for means that we can't define our own intentions and rules. It's like the iPhone 1 - no app store.

The purpose of Gittip* isn't to get a few people making full-time money from a few people; it's a fundamentally different way to sustain community-benefit work.

Hrmmm, perhaps I'm missing something, but how does removing the limit stop either of those two goals from happening? The more money in the system, the more people are able to sustain themselves. Who it's from, really doesn't matter. I can pay the bills more with $4000/month from 1 giver, versus $400 a month from 100 givers.

[mehulkar]

The more money in the system, the more people are able to sustain themselves. Who it's from, really doesn't matter

I think it does matter. I'm more motivated to give when I know I'm on a level playing field. If I'm able to donate $1/week to 5 developers who are making $500/week from one other person, I don't feel like my contribution means anything and so I stop.

Part of the glue that holds an online community is that individuals feel like their presence is valued[1].

[1] Lessons learned from Design to Thrive

[seanlinsley]

@mehulkar but is the theoretical preservation of a sense of community really a good enough reason to prevent people from tipping what they want? I don't think so.

[balupton]

@mehulkar that's an interesting point and something worthwhile for me to read up. Not sure I see the relevance between donating $1/week having less motivation to someone receiving $500/week being caused by removing the maximum tip, as one could still earn $500/week with a maximum tip, thus running into the same issue you raise, making me feel that it doesn't have anything to do with tip amount limits... With or without tip limits, you would face the same issue you mention...

Personally, I feel the solution for that is the ability for non-anonymous donations, but that is another topic. (not sure the issue number for it)

[mehulkar]

@Daxter I think designing a community involves making some decisions that adhere to the kind of community you want to foster. Convention over configuration, if you will. I don't know much about the Gittip community so my opinion may not be relevant. But all in all, I think of placing restrictions in the right places (and I think this is one of those right places), is like building dams in the right places so that a river flows in the direction you want. At the same time, considering how open source works, I can see the argument for an ad-hoc, no rules system as well.

@balupton It's not about $1 versus $500. It's about my contribution compared to the average contribution. If I'm one of 500 people each donating $1, I feel a sense of kinship. If there is only one other contributor and they are giving $499, it's almost embarrassing to be giving $1. I know the adage is "every little bit counts", and that may be true, but it's much more powerful to feel like you're an equal than to feel like you're just tagging along.

[balupton]

Just had a viewpoint from a different angle...

My vision for gittip is a platform for receiving income. That's it. Anything that doesn't help that, gets in the way.

Income here is important, as ideally I'd like to earn my full time income from gittip.

The advantages gittip offers over traditional forms of receiving income is that it is public and open, and hopefully easy.

Gittip isn't easy yet, as it is too opinionated. It doesn't put the power of our income in our hands, it puts it in gittips hands. This is a huge deterrent of adopting the platform, as well a problem if it is ever to provide sustainable income.

Perhaps sustainable here is being used differently by @isaacs and myself, it seems we are using it in terms of we can pay our bills with it, whereas the gittip opinion is sustainable is a stable amount over time.

The only thing that matters I'd say is the first, we need people being able to earn incomes from gittip that pay the bills. Anything that gets in the way of that, is a bug.

Taking this from a different angle. Lets imagine the world in 5 years with gittip going in both directions.

1. Gittip keeps its current opinions. Donators can't donate more than $100. Receivers are expected to earn small amounts from many people. The only way people can earn a sustainable income that pays the bills is if they did something really popular (regardless of value it added to people, because of the cap, the value return in terms of donation back is also capped), rather than something very valuable to a small niche. This means Gittip is only viable as an income replacement for the select few famous people out there. Game over. Go home.
2. Gittip changes its current opinions. It gets out of the way, and puts the power of earning income in the individuals hands. Donators can donate as much as they want, and when they want (once off donations, recurrent). They can also be anonymous or public. Now this world is quite different. Now gittip can be right now a replacement income. Companies can use gittip to pay their employees and contractors (easing the road from closed companies to open companies, as well as all the social rep for doing so). Creators can use Gittip to take in sponsorship deals (anonymous and behind the scenes, or public for everyone to know awesome company is now sponsoring blah project). Creators could also offer pledges for returns for extra incentives on helping them earn a full time income, and to help @mehulkar feel that his donation is worthwhile. Gittip can expose an API for creators to extend to offer thank you emails to also help with that. This world becomes a world where we all earn our incomes from gittip, in an open and public way. And this can happen right now, turning off caps, allowing one off donations, exposing an api, allowing public donations, that can make people switch from their existing systems into Gittip now, not in 20 years if the current gittip philosophy with it's constraints and disempowerments ever takes off. And doing it now, helping companies move into this, at their own pace, one step at a time, allows them to further adopt the generosity, public, and open mindset. It's a step in a huge right direction for the companies, the movement, and for income. Without doing this, companies, creators, and donators will continue to fight with Gittip, avoid it, or suffer a low income when using it, rather than be empowered by it.

What the world needs is a free, open, and transparent way of earning sustainable incomes. Not another opinionated piece of software people have to fight with, avoid, or lose out. Gittip can be that platform where in 5 years, every single person is using it for their income. Or it can just be that other crowd-funding platform that is just paying a select few people some dollars.

[mvdkleijn]

@balupton This is a repeat of a discussion on issue #5 I believe... I'll repeat some of my comments here:

I for one absolutely love the regular weekly income scenario of Gittip. I agree completely with Chad's vision of salary replacement. Sorry guys, but the one off donations are nice but way too irregular for me (and most other OSS devs I think) to even be able to have a "normal" life and give up my regular job.

If you want one-off payments, use PayPal, credit cards, Flattr or any of the other alternatives already around. I don't believe we need yet another one-off payment system. That's the whole reason I'm supporting Gittip at least.

True, for Gittip to reach the goal of sustainable, regular income, it will have to grow massively but that takes other things than simply "stepping out of the way of the flow of money". Also keep in mind that people have to get used to the idea of making regular donations. Its a new concept and admittedly our marketing has been not so good... :smile:

Gittip's function is to provide a buffer between somewhat random givers and their receivers who need more stable incomes. This allows receivers to get a relatively stable income whilst allowing givers to start and stop giving without too much impact on total income stability.

I would argue that one-off payments, though nice, are detrimental to overall OSS support. Developers more quickly feel obliged to pay more attention to the giver's wishes rather than continue on the way they have been. You'd have to be very strong willed to keep going as normal. If you dig deep down inside you'll have to admit to always treating such a giver slightly different.

Also, I believe someone giving a one time amount of $ 1,000.- publicly causes other potential givers to think their gift will be "too low" or "no longer necessary". Apart from the fact that for most OSS developers of smaller projects, getting a $ 1,000.- donation is a dream that rarely if ever comes true.

In any case, 2, 3, 5 or even 10 people giving $ 1,000.- one time won't cut it. You need sustainable income that comes in regularly (not everyone is good at investing, even if you'd consider that a wise move, which I don't) and you want no serious impact from the loss of one or even a few givers who decide to stop giving. If 5 people give me $ 1,000.- annually (if only that were true), one of those 5 leaving would cause a serious dent in my income.

The idea here is many small amounts make one stable, big amount.

So with those comments already made, I'll respond to some points of your comment...

I agree with you that our goal is to be able to get a regular, stable income through Gittip. I don't entirely agree with some of your remarks from point 2 in your comment.

Donators should be able to donate as much as they want. Having a soft cap though would be nice to prevent one donator from being able to have an overly big impact on overall income stability. I consider sporadic or spiked income a bad idea. The soft cap could be something like "a single donator can't donate more than 25% of the total income". As income increases, the cap would also increase.

One time donations should also be possible, but they should either be treated as a one-time "holiday bonus" or "christmas bonus" or they should be spread out over the year. My choice in this would be: spread it out over the year until I reach my monthly / weekly goal, then pay them out as one-time bonuses.

That would allow people to get a stable, regular income and still allow for one-time bonuses.

Companies paying employees through Gittip is something else entirely and not a good idea. Labour and tax laws can be very complex and differ per country. Gittip should not get in between.

A thank you API is not a bad idea. On the other hand, I as "content creator" (though I'm a developer) would prefer to spend my time working on the product people liked enough to pay me for rather than spending time on "marketing". :smile:

As for pledges... if I wanted to pledge doing something in return for X money, I would use BountySource or the like... I hate that idea vehemently. It creates a debt from the creator to a subset of people. I don't like debts. It also creates an implicit and legally binding client-supplier contract. (at least in my neck of the woods) You reward me for the gift I gave you earlier because you liked the gift so much. If you want something different, ask.. chances are I'll add/change it if its a good idea.

Same arguments go for (forced) public donations..

As for who we want to have donating: I believe its a good thing that companies donate back to the community since they use our products so much. However, I also feel that a large part of donations should be coming from individuals. We should be trying to get people to understand that the piece of open source software they like so much is produced by someone out there, investing their personal time and money to make it. Give those people a platform to make regular contributions.

Especially for FOSS developers.. there is no real platform like this for developers. Flattr and all the others are heavily geared towards bloggers, youtubers et all. I love the fact that Gittip is geared a little more towards developers.

[chadwhitacre]

@balupton It's funny, I came to the conclusion half-asleep in bed last night that you and I are approaching Gittip in fundamentally different ways, and these posts today are confirming that. :-)

Companies can use gittip to pay their employees and contractors.

That's not what Gittip is for. Gittip is for no-strings-attached gifts to support the work of people and teams you believe in.

My vision for gittip is a platform for receiving income. That's it.

That's not Gittip's vision. Gittip's vision is "a future in which the economy is characterized by trust, collaboration, cooperation, sharing, openness, transparency, care for one another, inclusion, inspiration, purpose, generosity, patience, empathy, optimism, and love."

The only way people can earn a sustainable income that pays the bills is if they did something really popular (regardless of value it added to people, because of the cap, the value return in terms of donation back is also capped), rather than something very valuable to a small niche.

Any Internet community with less than one million members is a small niche. Three well-paying clients isn't a niche, it's a consulting business. That's good! It's just not Gittip.

I see you trying to use Gittip to run a consulting business (this is what I came to last night). If your money comes from a few larger clients there's nothing wrong with that, but also Gittip is not a good fit to handle your billing for those clients. You don't need Gittip in order to have open finances (e.g. one, two).

[T]hat can make people switch from their existing systems into Gittip now, not in 20 years if the current gittip philosophy with it's constraints and disempowerments ever takes off.

This is the sort of short-term thinking that Gittip is designed to dampen. Twenty years isn't that long. :-)

[chadwhitacre]

To date I haven't closed issues without a clear consensus. In closing this ticket without a clear consensus, I'm experimenting with being more direct in my leadership style.

@balupton: I appreciate you for having taken an interest in Gittip and having put so much thought and energy into this community. As discussed above, it appears that you and I have different perspectives on what Gittip is and should be.

[mehulkar]

:+1: It's awesome that you took the time to explain and expound on this. @whit537 love the concept of Gittip. I just had a long conversation with the founder of Loudr about how they're fundamentally changing economics by introducing this principle of "pay what you want" to the music industry. Gittip is also challenging some fundamental beliefs and I am definitely on board.

[balupton]

Those are some real good points, thanks so much for posting them. Also humbled that the leadership has been shown to close the issue! Well done Gittip! The reasonings provided also make a lot of sense. Gittip chases the ideal, not the inbetween.

This does raise a question though; how can we facilitate the inbetween? how can we ease that transition from no income, to complete income on gittip (or other open channels)? Naturally, with the decisions here it seems like that facilitation will have to occur outside of gittip which is fine enough, but what could possibly be done? E.g. What pathway and steps could a consultant follow to achieve a 100% open, donated, and sustainable income (Similar to #1273)

I've taken the liberty to setup an initiative called Go Open which will hope to address this facilitation, so we can have more making the switch, as well as more people getting sustainable incomes paid. Keen to hear people's thoughts on this.

[balupton]

Does this apply to company accounts that are representing their employees? @yrassoulli is wondering.

[chadwhitacre]

Does this apply to company accounts that are representing their employees?

@balupton @yrassoulli Yes. Generally companies are expected to be the ones at the upper end of the $100/wk range per gift.

[rummik]

IMO, if we were going to be thinking about upping limits, I think if anywhere it should be on teams since it's likely going to a group rather than an individual. (Just wanted to put that in, since I seem to have missed this thread)

[tshepang]

@rummik :+1:

[chadwhitacre]

+1 from @belusion at https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1378#issuecomment-44084602:

There is no reason to have artificial limitations. Get rid of the limit entirely.

[balupton]

@whit537 can we keep +1 +0s -1s etc in the original post on the thread (as a maintainer of the repo, you'll have edit privileges of my initial post), it's a bit annoying get alerted all the time to something that doesn't further the discussion. This request applies to all other issues too.

[tshepang]

@balupton don't you get notified anyways when someone edits a Comment?

[chadwhitacre]

@balupton Recording votes as comments enables us to more meaningfully sort by "Most Commented" in the issues listing.

[neilk]

I realize this issue is closed, but I found it from the building.gittip.com page on resentment. I heard about this aspect of Gittip from Boris Mann the other day and was surprised. In the spirit of airing my own concerns...

You are correct to identify the problem, that if donations are coming from primarily one overwhelming source, that leads to problems. I've experienced it myself as the Wikimedia Foundation transitioned away from large donations from granting organizations, to many small donations. But, crucially, we started with the large donor model, and it's what paved the way for a sustainable small-donor model.

Donors are understandably reluctant to provide funding to something that doesn't have a track record. And recipients may not be very good at marketing what they are doing, or planning to do. And even if they were, they won't have as much of a network built up.

So the common pattern is often to concentrate on convincing a smaller number of people to pay larger amounts of money, at least at first.

If you're limiting what can be spent on Gittip you're effectively saying that it's only for organizations which have:

• low startup costs, or those costs are borne elsewhere (personal savings, other donation platforms)
• large personal network that they've already built

I'm noting that many of the people who are doing well on Gittip have these characteristics. It's not clear to me that anyone starting out from scratch would choose Gittip.

The maximum tip amount is just one of the factors which seems to select for those kinds of users. Now, maybe you want your hands to be perfectly clean - I read somewhere else that Gittip tries to embody the perfect, with no compromises. However, it seems to me that the maximum tip amount is the kind of choice which could and should be left up to the recipients.

If Gittip is architected right, the recipient will want to set that kind of maximum themselves, once they have many people donating regularly. They will do it so they can focus on their mission. But they may want to accept larger donations at the start. Or, maybe they will have some other ways of handling the occasional spike in donations.

The larger point is, I'm not sure the makers of the donation platform should assume they know what's best for their users in this respect.

[lyndsysimon]

:+1: @neilk

Lots to ponder there :)

My own experience is that building a community of supporters is long, hard work. I believe most (or all) of my supporters are people for whom I've had an impact on their lives or careers. Unless you're someone that is advocating a controversial position or has an existing soapbox to ask for donations on, it's extremely difficult.