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I finished creating a very basic, no frills, micropayments forum...
So far this is the most valuable cat photo on the forum. In the upper right hand of the page, below my username, is my balance... $9.35. This is the amount of money that's in my wallet. Right beneath the signature section is where I've placed the post's total value and the coins buttons. The total amount of money that's been allocated to this post is $0.57 cents. Any member can click on any of the fancy coins and some ajax magical goodness will take place.
In order to create this very basic ajax valuing system, these are the pages that I modified...
overall_header.html (1 line of code)
navbar_header.html (~2 lines of code)
viewtopic.php (~ 5 lines of code)
overall_footer.html (~ 1/4 page of code)
viewtopic_body.html (~ 1/2 page of code)
... and here's a new page...
ajax_value.php (~ 1 page of code)
To give credit where credit is due... this "ajax like" code was quite helpful.
The code that I myself wrote is a trainwreck. I'm sure it's all types of wrong, and in the wrong places... so there's plenty of room for improvement.
I could have spent many more days, weeks, months and years improving and developing the functionality and features of this micropayments forum... but that would have defeated the very purpose of facilitating monetary feedback. :D
So right now I'm looking for beta testers! The first 50 will get a dollar in their wallet. Just PM me your username and I'll share the link with you. Then you can share your most valuable cat photos and we'll be able to see who's cat photo is truly the most valuable! And/or we can have some serious discussion about the potential benefits/problems of facilitating micropayments.
If there are any features/functionality that you'd like added...then you could post your suggestion in the feedback forum. It's probably a good idea to only have one suggestion per post. That way, if/when people allocate money to your post... we can be sure which suggestion it is that they value.
Yes, you can allocate money to your own posts. When you do so though, the money won't go back into your wallet. Basically you're "boosting" your own post. Kinda like on facebook. But with this forum... everybody and anybody can also help boost your post. It's crowd boosting/amplifying. Every post can be crowd sponsored.
If you haven't seen it, here's my first topic on the topic... Micropayments For Threads?
Let me know if you have any questions!
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Forum post: Micropayments for communities?
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Hi everybody!
I participate in many online communities and I recently decided to start one of my own. It's a phpbb forum.
The reason that I started my own community is because I really love the idea of micropayments. I shared the idea with a few different communities and there wasn't much interest. According to a poll that I included in one forum, around 70% of the community was against the idea.
So a few days ago I shelled out $60 bucks for some hosting and modified the phpbb code to facilitate micropayments. And now I have a very basic, but functional, micropayments forum. With one click you can give a post a nickle... which, via ajax, goes directly into the poster's "wallet". It's entirely free, there's absolutely no fees or cost of any kind. The only time I get any money is if you allocate money to your own posts. Because, it wouldn't make sense for the money to go back into your wallet!
I have a ton of questions... but my main question is... would any of you be interested in being a beta tester?
Now, I think it's possible that this is coming off as promotional. But, like I said, I *really* love the idea of micropayments. The purpose of my micropayments forum is solely to (hopefully) prove to other online communities that micropayments are a really good idea.
Take this community for example. Regardless of how much time/effort/thought you put into your reply... no matter how much I value your reply... all this website allows me to give you in return is a vote. The majority of you perceive that this system is perfectly adequate. Why? Because there's an abundance of good answers. Plenty of people are happy to freely contribute... so why mess with something that works?
Right now you're free to allocate 1 hour, or 10 hours, or 100 hours replying to this question. You can freely allocate as much of your time to me as you want. But I can't freely allocate my nickle to you? If time is money then money is time.
Votes on this website are used to determine the value/rank of an answer. However, in economics, value is a function of sacrifice. Given that a vote doesn't even cost a penny... there's no sacrifice! Hence... the "best" answers on this website aren't the most valuable... they are the most popular. Opinion polls are interesting, and useful, but the fact of the matter is that actions (spending) speaks louder than words (voting).
I might be wrong though! But if you're unfamiliar with the term "contingent valuation" then you haven't studied the topic as much as I have. So maybe I'm not wrong.
If I'm not wrong, then this would eliminate the need for displaying ads on your website. Every post would be an ad. Whenever you allocated a penny to somebody's post you would be helping to promote their thoughts. No "results" would be organic... they'd all be (crowd)sponsored.
The first 50 beta testers will receive one dollar in their wallet. If you decide to be a beta tester, and you see the potential of facilitating micropayments, then you can share the idea with your own community. All the phpbb files that I modified will be freely available. It adds up to around 2 pages of code.
If you're interested in being a beta tester... send me a PM either here or over at the phpbb community... Micropayments For Threads?
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