Given our Non-Profit nature, wouldn't having a "Gold" option make sense?
Forgive me if this has been posted before, I am still pretty new here.
Coming here having the option to "Gild" was something I kinda just assumed would be a thing.
Obviously it wouldn't need to be call "Gold" or "Gilding", those are just terms from some other site that I know all of us will understand.
I have always liked the idea of users buying made up medals for topics and comments they felt the need to reward. It gives the users a sense of accomplishment/reward and gets the devs little micro donations.
Currently the most valuable material in existence is antimatter, so maybe a little "AM" medal?
EDIT: Something I also meant to mention, but forgot, was the badge system on DeviantART.
dA has always had these little pixel llama badges that I thought were really cool. The basic concept was/is that you can gift someone a little llama if you think they or their art is cool or for any reason you want. These llamas stack on your profile. People can additionally gift gear for existing llamas and the site occasionally gives out rare llamas (and other badges) for milestones, events or promotions.
I think a hybrid of reddit's gilding system and a badge system (like dA's) could be really cool.
I do have some ideas for ideas similar to this that I'd like to include eventually. Donations so far have been fairly good though, so at least for the moment I'd rather keep focusing on getting some of the more essential features/fixes done first.
I do really like the overall concept though, I think gilding was one of the best ideas reddit ever came up with related to gold.
Something I also meant to mention, but forgot, was the badge system on DeviantART.
dA is a little dated at this point and the userbase has shrunk, but they have always had these little pixel llama badges that I thought were really cool. The basic concept was/is that you can gift someone a little llama if you think they or their art is cool (or for any reason you want). People can additionally gift gear for existing llamas (even if you have 50, you can dress up the one displayed on your page) and the site occasionally gives out rare llamas (or other badges) for milestones, events or promotions. I think a hybrid of reddit's gilding system and a badge system (like dA's) could be really cool.
I agree that the concept of gilding was one of the best reddit ever had. I joined in 2008 when they went through their first real growth spurt, as a result I was there a couple years before it went into effect. While it did change the website quite a bit moving forward, the addition of gold roughly coincided with the infamous overtake and eventual fall of Digg in 2010. It was perfect timing. The massive influx of new users took to it like it was always part of the site and as we know it became wildly popular. The system has been corrupted a little bit over the years as their backers have grown more and more greedy, but the general concept is pretty sound (in my opinion).
I have always loved the idea of an incentivised donation system where users can donate on behalf of the content of other users, or just for fun.
I totally get that your priorities lie elsewhere, and at this stage that makes a lot of sense.
Thanks, that sounds like a neat system. I definitely think we'll be able to try some more interesting approaches to donations eventually. One of the nice parts of the non-profit/sustainability goal is having much more freedom to do those things in a way that the community enjoys, instead of just focusing on what will generate the most revenue.
I just don't want it to be seen as distinguishing someone because they donated x amount. There are going to be (and I'm sure there are already) really quality members here who can't afford to give a lot of money, if any at all. Their contributions to the site, in submissions or comments, shouldn't be any less important or distinguished than anyone who can contribute a large amount of money. Let the quality decide before a badge that people automatically upvote because of perceived value to the site monetarily.
I think the only way a badge system works is to have a subscription cost for the site. A user could be marked "subscribed" without further information, because people will subscribe to show they support the site, but won't be discriminated against among a sea of identical subscribers. It still slaps a badge of shame on anyone who can't afford to sub, and therefore lacks the sub badge.
Yeah, I agree. It's a hard thing to do correctly, and we'll have to be careful about it.
One thing to mention though is that the system @EscReality was talking about seems more about buying things for other people to show your appreciation, so it wouldn't necessarily be linked to whether the user themselves was donating. Reddit gold is like that as well, even if someone has gold you don't know if it's because they buy it for themselves or someone else gifted it to them in appreciation for one of their posts.
Yeah, that would work. I was referring more to the bolded phrase (emphasis mine) from @EscReality's post:
Do you have any thoughts on the incoming changes to Reddit Gold?
I didn't know they were doing anything, they shouldn't have been hiding announcements in a circlejerk subreddit. I'll go read, but from a quick glance they look like really dumb changes.
Relevant posts for other people (requires having gold to be able to view):
https://www.reddit.com/r/lounge/comments/941tpo/hey_rlounge_were_back_to_share_some_upcoming/
https://www.reddit.com/r/lounge/comments/94cjm0/what_the_gold_premium_and_creddits_coins_really/
What's so dumb about the changes?
Edit: Disregard, I saw the second post.
So reddit is trying to squeeze more money out of gold.
They're making it more expensive, more confusing, harder to get/give benefits, and basically turning it into a shitty F2P game scheme overall.
Which in essence destroys everything that is good about the gilding system.
It's another example of "could they be doing this more wrong than they're doing".
It's impressive, really.
My guess is they hired a new product person with experience in F2P mobile games that came up with a brilliant plan for how to "fix" reddit gold.
I guess I understand that Reddit is just doing shit to maximize profits now, but I think that there are better ways to do that than just screwing with things that have previously been successful.
I don't suppose there's a mirror/summary of these anywhere else? Not keen on giving reddit money to learn why people are about to be less interested in giving them money.
I'll try and summarize, because it's been explained really poorly and it's scattered all over the place.
The current gold system is basically:
Now, from what I can understand, this is the new system. Keep in mind that one of the reasons they say they're doing this is to make it "easier to understand":
I... think that's it so far, but there seems to be more planned that they haven't described yet.
Wow, that sounds really stupid. I have to agree that it really does sound like a F2P mobile game tactic. I knew they were making stupid changes to draw in a bigger crowd, but I had no idea they would screw with people who were already giving them money.
Any plans of accepting Flattr or Brave Payments?
Sure, I think more donation options is always a good idea. I just haven't really looked into either of those in particular yet, my impression was that they weren't used much.
Yea I know, I was just thinking having the ability to make a small donation on the behalf of a specific topic or comment would be a cool option to have on top of normal donations.
np, ty for pointing it out.
Not to downplay your idea, but it feels too "reddit" to me to have gilded posts and comments, whether they're called that or something else. Quality content should rise with whatever rating/sorting system this place ends up using, instead of super-popular posts being distinguished by some sort of monetary system. I get that the site needs funding to run, but I plan to do that on a subscription basis through Patreon, because a few extra bucks every month isn't much for a good place for quality content and discussion, no ads, and a system that values my privacy.
I agree with all of this. I still think OP's idea of offering very minor incentives or rewards to donate is a smart one. This site especially could use it.
What if users who donated got additional themes or customizations that they could use on their profiles? Or like a colored dot after their name or something?
Another route we could take is if there was a tildes store. Like what if the Deimos made t-shirts or laptop stickers or some other merch and sold it with the profits going to the site? I'd be tempted.
Also, we could take the Wikipedia route and occasionally bug users for money in banners. This is my least favorite, but if it worked, I really honestly wouldn't mind.
banners would be cool
what if @deimos did like a gofundme type thing with different rewards based on donation amount, like a small badge next to usernames or easier access to "trusted user" status (this wouldn't be completely exploitable because very few users will be willing to fork out actual money to comment tag troll)
that of course would only work while we're in a private state because with a huge influx of users it would be incredibly difficult to moderate who's using trusted user privileges properly.
Yeah, I'm not sure about making it easier to get trusted user status, you're right about the potential for abuse. But yeah like a badge.
And you're right. Banners could be cool. Maybe we could get graphic designers to do art on them and stuff to make them look nice.
we could even make 4 different banners for each theme to make it aesthetically pleasing hnnng
Yeah, I agree with this, especially with how eye-catching a gold icon is - it's certainly something I look at with priority.
What about a silent gild? Such that the commenter will be rewarded for the status privately, so that it doesn't show an icon on the post itself.
Which, btw is how reddit gold originally worked. Gold was hidden unless you were looking at it directly.
I don't remember the exact thread, but I recall concerns about advertisers using gold to "super upvote" their posts.
I think it's fine as long as the gold badge is hidden in the feed, but visible when you click into the comments section of an individual topic.
Reddit's redesign now shows the gold badge on posts in the feed, allowing for a "super upvote" situation, but for many years Reddit had made the explicit decision to hide the gold badge until you click into the comments section, specifically to allay concerns about the super upvote. After they took more investor funding and need to monetize more, they've changed their stance.
Well, it was me that added submission-gilding and was always pretty adamant against showing it in the feed. I'm not around to make a nuisance of myself and argue against things like that any more.
(Also, the gildings show in the feed on the old design now too, not only the redesign)
I like the idea of there being a representation of having donated, because that drives donations and donations are good.
Elsewhere, where I mod (not reddit) we have little flairs which people can select from a bunch of, and they show when someone has donated, beside their name. It works well, I would say it drove a more than 10X increase in donations, in part because people do not want to be seen not to have donated, but more because it served as a reminder to those who regularly did so. We have a few you can select from when you donate, which last forever, and then you can 'upgrade' them by donating again. Almost half of users donated at least once.
Yup, that system sounds somewhat similar to what I am thinking would be a great fit here, a combination of a badge system and a gilding system.