New link on the main page Support the website. This guy wants our money?!?! Outrageous

Finally! I think this is a great idea (not that I want to part with my money) but this site is a great tool and has saved me hours of thinking up my own stories. Having others posting their stories has often unlocked a key in my memory for creating my own.

Thanks Fabrice for all your time and efforts. I hope the donations will roll in and that you'll find more time to work on the site and continue it's upgrading, etc. I'm sending you my "donation" today.

Johnny

synewave Wrote:New link on the main page Support the website. This guy wants our money?!?! Outrageous

Really? What a nerve some people have... don't they know what voluntary work is all about? :-)

How dare he! Harrumph! I'm so deeply offended I'm going to click that link and tell Fabrice exactly what I think of him! ^_^

Click... €20,00 EUR... Done.

Fabrice, you rock. I wouldn't have finished RTK without you. If I can't buy you a pint at my local pub, I'll buy you one at yours.

Uhm, Fabrice, of course you can get a donation. However, you talked about finding other ways of funding the site: can I make two requests? Please, please stay away from agressive pop-up sellers that try to install programs or spyware on your computer. I'm sure they pay a lot, but they're making life unbearable. Also, ads that flash and play and distract from studying would be very bad on the actual study or review pages. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind things like that on the forum if it helps you. Maybe some nice discreet logo's from the publishers of these books would be in style .

A donation link is really a win-win situation for everyone. People that don't want to pay don't have to, and people who are generous enough to want to have that option. Not having a link on this website is one of the only sure-fire ways to not have ANY money coming in.

I like the idea, but I just wish I had a little bit more income to be able to provide a donation.

I am not worried about Fabrice turning this website into pop up hell. I am just sorry I can not give a thousand dollars, because in the end this site is worth more to my long term learning and my ability to survive in my wifes home country. For now $15 will have to do ... once i create a paypal account.

Thank you for finally putting this up!

(I think the publishers will be advertising for YOU in their next edition (^_^))

I just made a monthly subscription donation of 10 US a month. I love your site and I hope it helps. I have a few ideas for donations.
#1 is come up with a way people can link their donation to their account on your site.
#2 come up with a way to differentiate people who donate (something like the bold text for people through the first 2042 kanji).
#3 make a page with a dynamically updated monthly or overall goal "download bar".

dilandau23 Wrote:I just made a monthly subscription donation of 10 US a month. I love your site and I hope it helps. I have a few ideas for donations.
#1 is come up with a way people can link their donation to their account on your site.

As far as I can tell there isn't a way to send a reference, i.e. your kanji.koohii username, with Paypal payments. I'm no expert, but it's not immediately obvious if you can. But then I started getting all religious began to wonder how important (or not) it is that Fabrice knows exactly who his donations are coming from. Isn't it more the act of giving (to a worthy cause) that is the main thing as opposed to wanting recognition for it?

dilandau23 Wrote:#2 come up with a way to differentiate people who donate (something like the bold text for people through the first 2042 kanji).

As you can probably tell from my previous point, I would be totally against this kind of thing. As an extreme example, should someone earning $100,000, who donates $100 be seen as "better" than someone earning $1000 who donates $10?

Which leads on to the bolding of people who have completed RTK1. Personally I don't really like it. It's easy enough to tell how far along people are without highlighting those who have completed. I like to think we're all in this together

synewave Wrote:But then I started getting all religious began to wonder how important (or not) it is that Fabrice knows exactly who his donations are coming from. Isn't it more the act of giving (to a worthy cause) that is the main thing as opposed to wanting recognition for it?

Originally I was just going to send my ideas to Fabrice in an email . Then I considered the points you bring up and decided that it would be better to let others chime in. I do agree with you, to a point. Yes, technically, it doesn't matter about a donations origin. Yes, wanting recognition is not altruistic.

The fact remains, recognition is a great motivator, on this site and in the real world. Look at sites like SETI or the various distributed cancer research projects, all of which are altruistic in concept, but which have such high participation because of the "ranking" systems.

Heisig's genius was not just making stories and images out of primitives but also to simply number the kanji 1-2042 (and later 3007). Suddenly, people were able to quantify their progress, just like the system Fabrice came up with in counting the number of reviews. I am sure there are plenty of people on this site studying to see their name above only1tanuki and tatoeba, or perhaps their goal is to finish the first book as low as possible on the list. The point is these are motivators, they provide goals that may otherwise be missing.

I think that the recommendations I make are also motivators. In my mind I see people saying, "great site you should let me donate" then being done with it. Once you add a "download bar" into the mix they feel the itch to make it go up. Once you add the potential to have a different colored name (or a "donation avatar"), people want one. Once there is a list with a top and a bottom people want to be on the "better" side. I don't have to argue these points because they have proven themselves over and over, especially in the online world. I also don't have to argue against the fact that some people don't need these features, those people can, and always have, opt out of getting their name in lights.

What I do want to see, is Fabrice able to work on the site full time. Anything that motivates people, even a little, to that end is a boon in my book. We all can agree on that I think.

I think the whole motivation to see your name high or have a different way to distinguish yourself is very culture dependent. It may work for a competitive culture like the US, but personally, I feel more awkward about for instance receiving recognition for donating money. I have donated, but I don't see why that should grant me something in return apart from the excellent service I'm already receiving in studying here. I would feel embarrassed actually if my name would suddenly show up in purple just because I happen to be in the financial position where I'm able to donate a few bucks and not feel it too much.

A bit of friendly competition for the top spot of the member list, I can relate to a bit more (I started checking my ranking when I entered the top 20), but I see it as a consequence of working hard, not as a separate goal. The ranking doesn't motivate me to study more than I do now. I'm not adding kanji any faster just because I might be gaining ranks that way, and I am absolutely sure I wouldn't embarrass myself by clicking on the green columns just to generate more reviews.

Anyway, if there are enough people here that would be motivated, and therefore would donate for that reason, sure, by all means add some colours for them. But I would still like to opt to be able to donate anonymously, without it being a form of competition.

I'm going to chime it, with just too little tiny points.

One is that, it's a matter of personal opinion about recognition. I know some people are juiced by it. If it comes to a vote, I'd rather not be singled out. I prefer to do what I do for the good of the doing, and not (try not) to be motivated by the praise or recognition for the attempt. I'd rather focus on learning what I can of the kanji. Just my opinon.

The second is, I would rather that every person who signs up give a small monthly donation, than a few give big ones. So, like, it's better if all 2000+ of us were to give $1 a month, than if 10 of us gave a one time $100 donation--and who among us could give $100 a month, right?

I think that the original point Dilandau23 made was in accentuating that it's more money for Fabrice to run the site. People who are motivated by recognition, even if not the most altruistic, will give money to get their name in lights. The bottom line is, who cares who's at the top of the donate list, rather the guy who needs the money to provide a service that everyone here benefits from gets more money. Putting someone's name in lights is far more agreeable to me than popup ads.

BTW, making sweeping generalizations about a culture being competitve is a little funny when I know of many european sporting events at which people get killed by riled up fans of the opposing team. Sounds awfully competitive to me

synewave Wrote:As far as I can tell there isn't a way to send a reference, i.e. your kanji.koohii username, with Paypal payments. I'm no expert, but it's not immediately obvious if you can.

I've seen it done - for a concrete example check out the <form> element on this page.

The only bit that's not self-explanatory is the notify_url field - check out PayPal's Instant Payment Notification section for further info.

niktok Wrote:BTW, making sweeping generalizations about a culture being competitve is a little funny when I know of many european sporting events at which people get killed by riled up fans of the opposing team. Sounds awfully competitive to me

Shrug, I'm not trying to rank cultures by callin them more or less competitive. Some of the things I've seen in for instance Japan, like actually openly ranking students according to how well they perform sounds incredibly alien and unpleasant to me - it might sound totally natural to people who've been accustomed to being ranked compared with their fellow students all their life. That's the thing I mean. I don't have an opinion on which system works better, mind you, I'm merely trying to point out that what sounds like normal and a good idea to some people may sound almost repulsive to others.

And European soccer hooligans have little or nothing to do with the urge to compete - but to go into that we'd need an off-topic forum

[ファブリス]

My apologies everyone, I haven't had much free time this week. I hope to answer everyone this weekend, and to address concerns regarding ads/popups etc (they are pretty much out of the question).

Thanks for your support!

ps: if the forum gets busy, the "off-topic" forum may be a good idea.

Quote:This guy wants our money?!?! Outrageous

pps: my apologies, 失礼しました! *bows* ^_^

[ファブリス]

Thanks everyone!

The initial response to the donation page has been great. I hope it will work out over time.

Many thanks to the person who bought me the Kodansha E-J dictionary off my Amazon wishlist, the dictionary arrived yesterday!

astridtops Wrote:Please, please stay away from agressive pop-up sellers that try to install programs or spyware on your computer. I'm sure they pay a lot, but they're making life unbearable. Also, ads that flash and play and distract from studying would be very bad on the actual study or review pages.

There will never be any unsolicited popups either on the main site or on the forum.

There will never be any kind of ad banners in the study or review pages.

dilandau23 Wrote:#3 make a page with a dynamically updated monthly or overall goal "download bar".

Do you mean like the fundraising bar that appeared on Wikipedia for a while? I think that's a neat idea, but perhaps the website's not big enough right now or the fundraising "goal" is not high enough to warrant this at present.

ファブリス Wrote:Do you mean like the fundraising bar that appeared on Wikipedia for a while? I think that's a neat idea, but perhaps the website's not big enough right now or the fundraising "goal" is not high enough to warrant this at present.

Yes that is exactly what I was suggesting. My inspirations were, Wikipedia, World Community Grid, and of course, the original "motivator" SETI@home. It is true that these sites are all huge projects but I saw the download bar work on a small site once too...it was for FFXIclopedia. (Yes, I played in college instead of doing my Japanese Homework.) I suspect that even that site has a higher user base though.

niktok Wrote:I think that the original point Dilandau23 made was in accentuating that it's more money for Fabrice to run the site. People who are motivated by recognition, even if not the most altruistic, will give money to get their name in lights. The bottom line is, who cares who's at the top of the donate list, rather the guy who needs the money to provide a service that everyone here benefits from gets more money.

Exactly!

ファブリス Wrote:I would like to thank everyone who has donated for the website so far. I've received about 340 euros, most of which came during the first two days after I put up the support page. I would like to thank also the three persons who chose the recurring donation.

dilandau23 Wrote:make a page with a dynamically updated monthly or overall goal "download bar".

I was knocking dilandau23's suggestions a but further up this thread. But after reading that Fabrice has made 340 euros (as of April 7), perhaps some kind of counter might be a good idea. Just so we can see how much money we, as a collective, are sending (or not) to the man.

Synewave, thanks for bumping up this topic. I meant to send my support a long time ago but left it hanging and this reminded me to do it. I'm still not done with RTK 1, but I'm closer than I could ever be thanks to Fabrice and his website.