Two badges that will appear on profile, activities & other places username appears (like reviews).
Donor = Someone who has donated anything
Supporter = Someone who has donated >$5 in the last month
As a part of this update, I will also be updating the ‘Support Us’ page and the Patreon / Kofi pages with more details. I will also be adding a subscription on Patreon and possibly Kofi if they support such things.
There will be not supporter-gated features yet. This is simply the first step. No current features will be supporter-gated.
Please read the recent update and subsequent discussion for more info.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone! Will make it an optional display.
you’re right, perhaps i’ve been in korea too long. Frankly I think ‘donor’ is the more appropriate term? That doesn’t have a weird vibe does it? Like organ donor?
Perhaps a followup request! I agree it should probably be more fun but that’s not something i’m great at. If someone has good ideas please share!
We did decide to do this approach:
$3+ for supporter (no features, just optional badge and our love)
$5+ for upcoming plus
No ‘donor’ tier… but as you can see you can give one off donations below.
If you don’t see your active patreon subscription linked, there’s a simply button to ‘connect’ your account.
As for the supporter badge, here it is it’s just a little yellow heart underneath your small avatars & next to your profile name on your profile page only. You can turn it off in your ‘supporter’ settings in your account settings… but i don’t think it’s very invasive! We did consider putting it next to your username too in the activity feed but decided against it for now. Would love to hear your thoughts!
Have you considered having the heart show up on avatars here on the forum too (like how on the wk forums the user’s wk level appears) or is that a pain to implement / undesirable?
Forum badges are a thing. That’s how WK handles showing a user’s level.
(They are set by groups, so you will need to put supporters in their own group/remove them dynamically)
I do think this is a bit weird. Who would pay $3/month for just a badge if it’s $5/month for the features? I’ve seen other places make the “just a supporter” tier be simply $1/month. Unless the goal is to encourage more $5/month supporters because it’s “just” $2 more per month.
This has been the back of my mind for a while. Why pay anything it’s free anyhow? Great a yellow heart but if there isn’t much more than that and I don’t want to hand over 60 bucks a year (which to me still seems like a lot) just my opinion. I do really like natively and when I as considering donating I was thinking (originally up to 50 bucks a year [$4/mo] and decided on 3/month for 36 a year). That’s where I am now. But in all honestly if I’ve been paying and not really getting anything back and then now to get something back I MUST pay 60 bucks a year it makes me feel like there is no point in paying at all unless I increase my donation.
Personally for me the 50 a year was the threshold when I was thinking about doing the monthly donation. I realize these things cost money to run and really love the site and appreciate everything that is happening and all the work being put in. However with the constant demand for everyone wanting subscription fees and the economy on the rails, not sure I want to be shelling out 60 bucks a year. Realize everyone has a different threshold for what makes sense to them and what’s affordable but for me I might just drop the payment all together until I can see what optional features (that I probably don’t and won’t need) come about.
I might be the only one that feels this way and just my 2c. These comments are meant to be constructive, rather than negative. Would suggest giving some consideration to those of us that have been donating and getting nothing for a long time and suddenly now it feels like none of that matters and oh yeah yet another subscription fee is going up.
So we lowered the ‘Supporter’ tier - the one with no features just a badge - to $3 a month ($36/year). The $5 one will have features. Does that make a difference? I know folks are in different situations and I want to allow people give what they can and feel good about it.
And you can still give one-time donations on Patreon or Kofi. You’re right though. For one time donors & past donors, right now we don’t have a great way to celebrate them. Maybe a donor note on the profile? We’re trying to figure this out so your thoughts (and others!) are very important! We very much appreciate the constructive criticism, it means you care
There are processing fees as @Megumin says but to be honest it’s just trying to do a natural price. People seem to usually give around $3 to the site, not really lower.
And you can still give whatever amount you want to the site!
Ultimately, we do want to make compelling enough features where by people genuinely want to go ‘plus’. But we’ll see
in the simplest of terms… regardless of the user or situation…
Pay between 1-4 bucks a month or pay ZERO and get the exact same thing
…thus why donate or spend anything? There isn’t much reason to donate anything unless it can meet the min tier now.
It’s not a charity, there’s no tax deduction, there’s literally zero benefit for the user unless the step up to the min of 5 bucks a month. A little digital yellow heart is nice but personally I don’t think it’s enough incentive for the majority of people to bother donating.
Then what happens in a year or two, when oh no it needs to go up to 6 bucks a month or 7 bucks a month because costs increase…this is a slippery slope for future enshitification (and seems to be the path these sorts of things always end up on regardless of good intentions)
Not sure if anyone has run the numbers but how many more people would do 3 bucks a month vs 4 or 5 bucks a month to where there is some quantity of users that makes the lower dollar value more worth it as more users might be willing to pay (of course in the long term this value will always increase) prices never go down.
I still feel a one time annual payment would be nice, I wouldn’t mind paying $50 one time vs 5/month for 60 or some other annual options would be nice to have.
I’ll probably stop donating when the paid features roll out formally but in the meantime - my donation is through ko-fi not patreon, didn’t see a way to link the heart thing for ko-fi
Thank you for mentioning this! I’ve gone ahead and manually marked all the active Kofi subscriptions as supporters too. I’ll let others chime in before discussing the other things
you’re right, perhaps i’ve been in korea too long. Frankly I think ‘donor’ is the more appropriate term? That doesn’t have a weird vibe does it? Like organ donor?
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