process feedback from Alex Davies

[chadwhitacre]

Received in private email to chad@zetaweb.com:

Not sure if this is the best way to contact you. You might consider setting up a "contact" page that has your preferred method of communication.

I'm working on a site, and there are two things that are holding me back from asking for all my donations using gittip.

The first is that there's no way to display who the top contributers are on my site. I'm going to be looking for corporate sponsors, Mostly open source 3D printer companies. They're going to want their logo on my site.

Not being able to do that makes for crappy monetization.

The other issue is how narrow your focus is. It's very much designed for programmers. which you might consider to be a feature, not a bug.

Regardless, we're making a public facing product. A lot of the people who are going to be tipping us aren't going to be concerned about how we're using git, or about the code at all. They're going to be concerned about the site. Right now you don't make it easy for non-programmers to sign up and start donating.

So right now gittip is not suitable for us. We like your politics, but the implementation doesn't work for us. If I were you, I'd broaden your client base beyond just git and code. Target people doing media things, like patreon's clients.

A bit more focus on projects, like websites, instead on individuals would be nice as well. Right now you can do it, but it's pretty obvious that it's designed to support individuals, not projects. I think that's a mistake in your methodology.

[chadwhitacre]

Not sure if this is the best way to contact you. You might consider setting up a "contact" page that has your preferred method of communication.

Sorry it's not more obvious, but we do have contact info on:

https://www.gittip.com/about/

[traverseda]

Evidently creating a git ticket was the best way to contact you.

The site I'd like to use gittip on is still pretty early in its development. You can see it here and the source is here.

[traverseda]

So, right now the policy is

Gifts come with no strings attached. You don't know exactly where your gifts come from, and the maximum gift from one person to another is $100 per week.

Emphasis mine.

What's the reasoning behind that? Is that an ideal, or a technical limitation.

[chadwhitacre]

@traverseda It's an ideal, not a technical limitation. It made the most sense when Gittip was strongly individual-to-individual. I'm expecting we'll relax that somewhat as we evolve to encompass group-to-group giving more fully.

The other issue is how narrow your focus is. It's very much designed for programmers. Right now you don't make it easy for non-programmers to sign up and start donating.

Say more? Can you be more specific?

[traverseda]

With the individual to individual model you have now, it's hard for end users to know exactly what they're paying for.

As a rule, you're not giving your money to a project. You're giving your money to an individual. That means you have to assess the individuals skills, instead of just looking at the end product.

You also make it hard for average users to sign up by requiring a bunch of different accounts. Using gittip as my donation engine means all my users have to go through a long multi-step process.

When you're dealing with monetization, if people feel frustrated with the process they're more likely to just stop.

There's a lot of little things like that. I get the whole "require social proof to prevent fraud", but how you're doing it seems inelegant. There's a lot of little things that lead to a bad user experience.

Take a look at patreon. They have a model that works less well for content creators, but they're a lot more approachable.

I plan on implementing OAUTH in order to minimize that, hopefully people will be able to use their rhombik account to donate, but that doesn't help people who, for example, make youtube videos.

Their fans still have to go through a multi-step process.

As for concrete suggestions on how to fix this, I have a few. I haven't given them a lot of thought, so it needs another pass or two to go over the implications.

Projects. Most patrons don't care about the individuals involved in a project, they care about the end result. Moving from an individual centric model to a project central model would be a big move towards engaging users.

Interactivity. Users want to know what there money is being used for. Make it easy for a project to push activity updates and progress reports. A news feed would be a good addition.

Later on, some simple (optional) financial overviews would be good. A pie chart that shows where the money is going to.

Less rigidity. The content providers know their audience better then you. Don't try to push the rest of gittip on a patron.

Gittip isn't really going to do well as a way of discovery other projects you might be interested in. We have reddit, facebook and all kinds of other things who do that professionally.

Accept that for the most part a user is going to find gittip through a project they like, not the other way around. Make discovering new projects easy, but don't presume that you're going to do better at marketing then the content providers on your network.

"I am making the world better by" is pointless, and gets in the way of people who know their audience better then you do. It's rigidity without any benefit.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that you shouldn't try to make decisions on behalf of the content creators. Don't try to shape their interactions with their community too much.

Does all that make sense? You might consider reading up on gameification and stuff like skinner boxes. You can see some decent intro videos on that stuff here and here.

[seanlinsley]

Most patrons don't care about the individuals involved in a project, they care about the end result. Moving from an individual centric model to a project central model would be a big move towards engaging users.

Have you seen https://www.gittip.com/about/teams/ ?

[chadwhitacre]

With the individual to individual model you have now, it's hard for end users to know exactly what they're paying for.

As a rule, you're not giving your money to a project. You're giving your money to an individual. That means you have to assess the individuals skills, instead of just looking at the end product.

Three of the top 12 receivers right now are projects, not individuals:

• https://www.gittip.com/Gittip/
• https://www.gittip.com/readthedocs/
• https://www.gittip.com/Kiberpipa/

Gittip is skewed towards individuals, yes, but it's not like there's no projects on there. Though it's also true that Gittip wants to highlight the individuals behind a project. That the purpose of the Teams feature, for example.

[ehmatthes]

I've been mostly keeping my head down about gitttip because I've got a couple other projects that I have to get finished. But I follow gittip conversations every day because I want to see the platform succeed, and because I have a couple projects that I am going to want to build gittip support for:

• Introduction to Python
  • Many of the supporters will be comfortable with programming, but many of the users will be brand new to programming. This is the first project I will do a gittip campaign for.
• Open Competencies
  • This is a longer-term project. The primary support for this project will probably be teachers and parents, many of whom know nothing about programming.

Here are my thoughts, looking at gittip from the perspective of most non-programmers I know:

• The first thing I see is "who inspires you", with a box for a Twitter username. Most non-programmers I know don't use Twitter, and wouldn't know their colleagues' twitter usernames if they had one. Clicking on a link I see GitHub and Bitbucket, which are even more foreign to most non-programmers.
  • I wonder if searching by name would be helpful? We can always send people a direct link to our gittip profile pages, but sometimes people hear us say "support me on gittip", and then don't have the link handy when they are ready to offer support. The gittip home page does not give potential supporters a way to easily find someone they know is on gittip.
• What about someone new to gittip, who wants to learn more about the project? All of the links that explain gittip are in small text at the bottom of the screen.
  • Would making these links available prominently, above the fold, help people explore gittip more easily?
  • This might be an interesting a/b test. Place some links above the fold, and track the number of people who exit after viewing only the home page, and the number of people who go on to /about.
• Profile pages look reasonably clear, if you understand gittip.
  • Again, it might be good to have the main links above the fold, so that people who go directly to a profile page can learn about gittip before deciding whether to donate. On pages with more detailed profiles, those links are pretty far down.

I wish I could mock up some of these ideas, sorry to just be offering feedback at this point.

[ehmatthes]

Projects. Most patrons don't care about the individuals involved in a project, they care about the end result. Moving from an individual centric model to a project central model would be a big move towards engaging users.

Gittip was originally intended to support the individuals behind projects, aka the 'distributed genius grant' concept. I am fine with building better support for teams and projects, but I would hate to see the focus on supporting individuals be lost in those efforts.

Accept that for the most part a user is going to find gittip through a project they like, not the other way around.

This sounds spot-on, and totally appropriate.

"I am making the world better by" is pointless, and gets in the way of people who know their audience better then you do. It's rigidity without any benefit.

I'm not so sure about this. I recently rewrote my gittip profile, and having to start out with that prompt made me think again about exactly how my work is making the world better. If someone is asking for funds on gittip, their work should be making the world better.

That said, I could see that phrase being a bit idealistic for someone who is, say, creating open games. Not everything has to be aimed directly at making the world better.

[chadwhitacre]

"I am making the world better by" is pointless, and gets in the way of people who know their audience better then you do. It's rigidity without any benefit.

Reticketed as #1659.

[chadwhitacre]

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that you shouldn't try to make decisions on behalf of the content creators. Don't try to shape their interactions with their community too much.

Does all that make sense?

Sure, that makes sense. Thanks for the feedback. :-)

Did you see the ticket we had about reaching out to content creators (#737)? I also did a call with Jack Conte from Patreon and a couple others a while back:

http://blog.gittip.com/post/51236581424/open-call-with-centup-flattr-and-patreon

You also make it hard for average users to sign up by requiring a bunch of different accounts. Using gittip as my donation engine means all my users have to go through a long multi-step process.

When you're dealing with monetization, if people feel frustrated with the process they're more likely to just stop.

There's a lot of little things like that. I get the whole "require social proof to prevent fraud", but how you're doing it seems inelegant. There's a lot of little things that lead to a bad user experience.

Take a look at patreon. They have a model that works less well for content creators, but they're a lot more approachable.

I plan on implementing OAUTH in order to minimize that, hopefully people will be able to use their rhombik account to donate, but that doesn't help people who, for example, make youtube videos.

Their fans still have to go through a multi-step process.

Maybe #1167 addresses what you're talking about here?

[traverseda]

Have you seen https://www.gittip.com/about/teams/ ?

No. I saw a couple of "team" projects on gittip, but I presumed they were just regular user accounts. Without reading through your documentation, the difference is not apparent.

Gittip was originally intended to support the individuals behind projects, aka the 'distributed genius grant' concept.

I think we can work with these two. Having a project (or a "team") able to regift their money to a bunch of individuals. A project consists of a bunch of individuals. That needs to be visible.

Showing who's behind that project will give better feedback to the patrons, and it allows you to retain the individualist methodology you used so far.

Basically, make who's involved in a project more transparent. I'm presuming that's already in the works, it's just the current state of flux that's causing it to be a bit obscure.

Right now your team implementation is really really overcomplicated, and is another example of needing less rigidity. You presume that you know better then the person running that project.

There are a lot of different use cases.

Maybe #1167 addresses what you're talking about here?

Yeah. That's pretty much it. It is annoying that you need a social media account though. I'm looking for a ticket on allowing accounts that aren't tied to social media, but I can't find one. I'm presuming that's a discussion you've had?

At this point I think we should probably split this up into multiple sub-tickets.

[chadwhitacre]

@traverseda To directly address the other of your original points:

The first is that there's no way to display who the top contributers are on my site. I'm going to be looking for corporate sponsors, Mostly open source 3D printer companies. They're going to want their logo on my site.

Not being able to do that makes for crappy monetization.

As you point out above at https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1657#issuecomment-28221831, this is by design. I'm open to the possibility of relaxing this design constraint, especially around your use case (companies giving to projects). That's going to take some community discussion (though I'm not sure that now is the time to prioritize that discussion). I've reopened #236 to talk about the general issue, and I've reticketed the widget idea as #1661.

[chadwhitacre]

Right now your team implementation is really really overcomplicated, and is another example of needing less rigidity. You presume that you know better then the person running that project.

There are a lot of different use cases.

Let's pick up with this over on #1660.

[chadwhitacre]

It is annoying that you need a social media account though. I'm looking for a ticket on allowing accounts that aren't tied to social media, but I can't find one. I'm presuming that's a discussion you've had?

I've added a +1 for you to #1052.

[chadwhitacre]

At this point I think we should probably split this up into multiple sub-tickets.

Agreed. :-)

I think we've reticketed everything that needs to be reticketed, yes?