We have a funding experiment going on? I couldn't agree more with all of your criticisms of the current experiment. I know mk was excited to try it, but I literally haven't thought twice about it since the first day. I spoke with insomniasexx and she had the same feeling. Like dublinben, many users have been clamoring for a way to help support the site, which is really, really awesome. More and more, I like a straight up donation mechanism. You choose the amount. It's a good clean start, then we can go from there. I do like the barrier to entry that your suggestion brings though. That's a good thing.Similar to what kb suggested, to have an account, it costs two bucks. That's all. In fact, you can even have an account if you like for free, but to comment or post, you need to pay the two dollars.
There will be a transactional fixed cost of about $.30-$.40 just to process a $2 transaction. I have always liked the $5 model. It's clean, it covers the transactional cost and the cost per user and puts some more in the hubski hat for things like stickers, t-shirts etc.
In the end, I think it should be a combination of things. A donate button should always be available to just straight up give, if it's a bit hidden. Have a small friendly reminder drive once a year to promote it too. The barrier is a really nice idea, but it will certainly piss people off. Not that it's a bad thing. I think we have something unique and valuable here that it's a good consideration, and it discourages assholes, and it regulates the fluxes along with keeping the culture preserved. There were some good points raised on poorer countries having access limited then, but there's certainly ways around that. I haven't thought it through that thoroughly yet, but there are a number that pop into my head immediately. And the more I think about it, the more I like the Conflict Tower approach as well. We already have a good number of meetups. Having one that happens to have a 'Members Only' meeting during it wouldn't be too bad. It's scalable too, and can be "filled" and finished if the site feels satisfied.
That username is green either because they follow you or you mutually follow each other (greenish-blue). Edit: went to delete this because the other person got there first, but then discovered I can undelete! That is amazing!
My husband and I both pay $12/y each for access to a site that helps us decide on WoW gear upgrades. So a dollar per month. I would probably be willing to go around the same for hubski. But this still keeps out the poorer folk who rely on public internet facilities/hotspots and I really hate that they'd be excluded from here. However, I suspect there would be people willing to sponsor others; maybe people would even throw in to a sponsorship pool -- $5/yr + $5 to the pool. Maybe a nominal amount from every paid subscription could get allocated to this? But how do we know who we'd be ok sponsoring? We could let newbies do shares and hubvotes but only make one comment a day, perhaps, and make it obvious that a badge would give sponsorship to people badging them. "+$" maybe. If paying contributors see someone who they want to keep around, but who hasn't paid up, they give them a badge, have the badge take the user cost/year value from the sponsorship pool and give them a month or a quarter or a year. I dunno. I've been thinking about it for a while. Maybe it's silly.
Something missing from this discussion since I first raised it is the first half of the equation: how much would Hubski have to cost. Rob and I nearly came to blows over a number I massaged out of Reddit - it was a placeholder number, not a hill to die on. I'd also be perfectly cool paying $10/year with the option to endow 4 subscriptions, for example, or $100 to open the magical floodgates whenever I damn well felt like it. Several of the private trackers I subscribe to offer the ability to buy ratio. Several others allow invites only when you've crossed a threshold. I think there's a lot of versatility IF we decide pay-to-play is worth pursuing. It's a big "if."