support the flattr "divide the spoils" model

[chadwhitacre]

Would it be better to let patrons set a total amount and then divide that amongst various people, as Flattr does? Gittip would still be differentiated by using a real currency instead of a virtual one.

[waldyrious]

I personally prefer this model. That way I know that even if I get trigger-happy I won't outspend my budget :) And btw, another difference of Gittip is being way more open from the ground up ;)

[lyndsysimon]

Count me among the dissenters on this one.

One of the things that seems to be at the core of Gittip is the idea that the income stream is somewhat fixed. If we were to adopt the Flattr model, then every time a tipper added a new tippee, then the share of the pot going to each person would decrease proportionately. Over time, as tippers tipped more tippees, the result would be a slowly depreciating income stream for all tippees, as contributors tipped additional people and rarely if ever stopped tipping anyone (as they would have no incentive to do so)

It feels odd to argue against lowering the psychological barrier for funding someone, but in the end we have a choice between giving a little bit of money to a lot of people, or giving a fair amount of money to a few people. Flattr already does the former, and as I understand it, that's a part of the reason for Gittip's existence. I advocate that we focus on being the latter.

[waldyrious]

I submit that in most cases the change shouldn't be as severe for tippees, as people adjust their budget. For example, If I set aside $20 for gittips and have 4 tippees with $5 each, when I want to add a fifth I'll either drop one or adjust each one to 4$. The more people I want to support, the less attractive the manual adjustment option is, so I'd probably end up cutting the tip for one of them by 5$ abruptly. The shared model makes each tippee get a $1 cut, which seems much less sudden and (I speculate) makes for a less volatile income stream.

Regardless of the tipping model, it would be a useful feature if each user could set both a maximum limit for total tips, and a minimum amount for individual tips, and then we could adjust our settings accordingly whenever a new tip would break any of those limits. Or if the reduction would make the tippee go under their stated target income -- that would be an interesting alert to get, too.

As for the ethos of Gittip, I believe we can support both models as the more open approach is already a good differentiator from Flattr.

[ncoghlan]

While it's a bit trickier to design and implement, I like waldir's idea of having a setup of "I tip these people this much, and split the rest up to maximum amount I have set amongst these others". When I go over the maximum, gittip would ask me if I wanted to raise my maximum, lower one, some, or all of the fixed donations, or move one, some or all of the fixed donations into the split pool.

[ncoghlan]

Also, a split pool could work in nicely with #372

[waldyrious]

To be clear, I didn't suggest splitting tips into two pools. Let me know if my message made it seem so. I was arguing for the second model only, as a simpler approach.

But if a split pool could be implemented in a way that isn't confusing to users, I'm all for allowing them the flexibility to choose either model as they prefer. However, it's important to be careful not to have a complex model that people would need more than a few seconds to apprehend.

[chadwhitacre]

I've added this ticket to the "Nexus" milestone. I think of that as a bunch of related questions that we'll visit in 2013 once some basics settle down (#289, #313, #66, #126).

[seibert]

This issue also relates to the minimum tip problem. With all the new people jumping on gittip, there are more people I would like to fund, but the $1/week per individual minimum sets a high bar for my decision to fund someone.

Some people/projects (like readthedocs) are totally worth $52/year to me, but other slightly less awesome (but still awesome) people don't reach the $52/year threshold, so they get zero. Unfortunately, this centralizes funding on gittip to a handful of rockstars and limits the number of people both giving and receiving. The only way around this is to time-modulate my tipping (like rotating people every few weeks), but that takes more thought than I'm willing to expend, and I think also doesn't really fit with the gittip goals.

I'd really like to see some resolution to this, whether it be flattr style tip splitting or just an additional $0.25 tip tier. Of course, there's a delicate economic dance here, because reducing the "quantum of tipping" could either raise or lower the amount of money exchanged on gittip each week.

[chadwhitacre]

@seibert I hadn't noticed your comment before bringing back the 25¢ button, but now I understand your enthusiasm. :-)

[chadwhitacre]

Subsumed by #449.

[chadwhitacre]

+1 from Justin Wilcox in private email.

[chadwhitacre]

+1 from @mwhooker on Twitter.

[chadwhitacre]

Revived as #1493.