More Perks For Supporters Please

[Xerographica]

Lately I've been trying to encourage more people to chip in to help support NationStates... here's my most recent attempt. I haven't had much success. Well yeah, free-riding is a real problem. This problem can be reduced by offering more perks. Naturally my favorite idea for a perk is voting-with-donations. For example, donations could be used to rank/prioritize suggestions. Here are a few other possible perks...

- Colorful username for supporters in the "WHO IS ONLINE" section. Moderators have red usernames, and the people on the secretariat have pink usernames. I've seen some people with green + bold usernames... what does this mean? (it means role play mentors)

- Supporters should have their own forum. What would we discuss? Let's find out!

- Supporters stay logged in forever. This is the only forum I participate in where I have to log in each day.

- Postmaster generals receive a signed digital copy of one of Max Barry's books. Ok, it doesn't have to be signed.

- Each year one postmaster general wins something really cool.

Are these perks of any interest? Can anybody think of more desirable perks?

Also, it would be really great if it was super easy to buy Supporter/Postmaster/Postmaster general for other members. Merry Christmas! Happy Birthday! Happy Arbor Day! Happy Earth Day! [This option already exists!]

I just tried to buy a gift for Maqo, but it didn't work because he's an ex-nation. It would be nice if the gift could function as virtual CPR.

[updated for attempts at clarity]

[USS Monitor]

Naturally my favorite idea for a perk is voting-with-donations. For example, donations could be used to rank/prioritize suggestions.

Even though you've sometimes butted heads with Moderation and your threads have sometimes been headache-inducing, there is something admirable about your dedication.

However, I am pretty confident we will not be letting people pay to have suggestions prioritized. We get too many suggestions that sound great to one person, or one group, but would be bad for other communities. We don't want to put anyone in a position where they have to spend money for their interests to be taken seriously. Admins also just have their own opinions about what they want to do with the site and what features they want to code. NS is a labor of love more than a cash cow.

Here are a few other possible perks...

- Colorful usernames for supporters. Moderators have red usernames, and the people on the secretariat have pink usernames. I've seen some people with green usernames... what does this mean?

- Supporters should have their own forum. What would we discuss? Let's find out!

- Supporters stay logged in forever. This is the only forum I participate in where I have to log in each day.

- Postmaster generals receive a signed digital copy of one of Max Barry's books. Ok, it doesn't have to be signed.

- Each year one postmaster general wins something really cool.

Are these perks of any interest? Can anybody think of more desirable perks?

Also, it would be really great if it was super easy to buy Supporter/Postmaster/Postmaster general for other members. Merry Christmas! Happy Birthday! Happy Arbor Day! Happy Earth Day!

I think you can gift store purchases to other players. I've never actually used the store so I don't know how easy it is, but I think that's already a thing.

The rest of this, I'll just leave for others to discuss, and we'll see what happens.

[Sanctaria]

You would not believe the discussions had over finding colours that were/are appropriate for new usergroups like the IEs and the GenSec. Can't imagine Fris dealing with the headache of having to give a special colour to every supporter who asked for one.

[USS Monitor]

You would not believe the discussions had over finding colours that were/are appropriate for new usergroups like the IEs and the GenSec. Can't imagine Fris dealing with the headache of having to give a special colour to every supporter who asked for one.

Custom colors for individuals wouldn't be a viable idea, both because of the technical challenges and because of the confusion it would cause, but it wouldn't be as far-fetched to create a site supporter user group with one color for the whole group. For example, the old GenSec color or the old IE color could be repurposed as a site supporter color.

[Maltropia]

It is fairly straightforward to gift supporter packages to other players, I thought. Certainly I've had no trouble in the past.

I've seen some people with green usernames... what does this mean?

You do realise your username is green, right?

[Xerographica]

You would not believe the discussions had over finding colours that were/are appropriate for new usergroups like the IEs and the GenSec. Can't imagine Fris dealing with the headache of having to give a special colour to every supporter who asked for one.

Custom colors for individuals wouldn't be a viable idea, both because of the technical challenges and because of the confusion it would cause, but it wouldn't be as far-fetched to create a site supporter user group with one color for the whole group. For example, the old GenSec color or the old IE color could be repurposed as a site supporter color.

Right, this is what I meant.

[Xerographica]

It is fairly straightforward to gift supporter packages to other players, I thought. Certainly I've had no trouble in the past.

I've seen some people with green usernames... what does this mean?

You do realise your username is green, right?

Oh, I guess I meant green and bold... like yours is. Why is your username bolded?

[Sanctaria]

You would not believe the discussions had over finding colours that were/are appropriate for new usergroups like the IEs and the GenSec. Can't imagine Fris dealing with the headache of having to give a special colour to every supporter who asked for one.

Custom colors for individuals wouldn't be a viable idea, both because of the technical challenges and because of the confusion it would cause, but it wouldn't be as far-fetched to create a site supporter user group with one color for the whole group. For example, the old GenSec color or the old IE color could be repurposed as a site supporter color.

A group one might be more viable, but from the pluralisation in his opening post, I thought it would be an individual thing.
Edit: On reflection though, instead of another standout-y colour, site supporters might just get their usernames emboldened? It keeps all regular users the same colour while denoting those who have bought supporter packages.

[USS Monitor]

It is fairly straightforward to gift supporter packages to other players, I thought. Certainly I've had no trouble in the past.


You do realise your username is green, right?

Oh, I guess I meant green and bold... like yours is. Why is your username bolded?

To go with his mentoring gig.

[Xerographica]

Even though you've sometimes butted heads with Moderation and your threads have sometimes been headache-inducing, there is something admirable about your dedication.

Yes, we've definitely had our conflicts, but thanks.

However, I am pretty confident we will not be letting people pay to have suggestions prioritized. We get too many suggestions that sound great to one person, or one group, but would be bad for other communities. We don't want to put anyone in a position where they have to spend money for their interests to be taken seriously. Admins also just have their own opinions about what they want to do with the site and what features they want to code. NS is a labor of love more than a cash cow.

There wouldn't be any sort of obligation for the top-ranked suggestions to be implemented. The donors would know and understand this. However, they would also know that their priorities would naturally have some influence on the priorities of the leadership. You can't "unsee" or "unknow" the demand for things.

I think you can gift store purchases to other players. I've never actually used the store so I don't know how easy it is, but I think that's already a thing.

I've been looking around but I don't see this option.

[Arcturus Novus]

Custom colors for individuals wouldn't be a viable idea, both because of the technical challenges and because of the confusion it would cause, but it wouldn't be as far-fetched to create a site supporter user group with one color for the whole group. For example, the old GenSec color or the old IE color could be repurposed as a site supporter color.

A group one might be more viable, but from the pluralisation in his opening post, I thought it would be an individual thing.
Edit: On reflection though, instead of another standout-y colour, site supporters might just get their usernames emboldened? It keeps all regular users the same colour while denoting those who have bought supporter packages.

(or italicized, that stands out a little better imo)

[Maltropia]

Oh, I guess I meant green and bold... like yours is. Why is your username bolded?

Again, yours is also bold. The mint and spearmint names designate Roleplay Mentors; you can tell because it says Roleplay Mentor under my name.

[Maltropia]

I've been looking around but I don't see this option.

Directly underneath the Store banner on the Store page is a button labelled Gift Options. Clicking it brings up this interface:

Intuitively enough, you then enter the nation name and press Select, bringing up this screen:

Voilà.

[Xerographica]

Oh, I guess I meant green and bold... like yours is. Why is your username bolded?

Again, yours is also bold. The mint and spearmint names designate Roleplay Mentors; you can tell because it says Roleplay Mentor under my name.

Oh, I meant down below, where it says, "WHO IS ONLINE". Sorry about not making that clearer.

[Xerographica]

I've been looking around but I don't see this option.

Voilà.

Thanks!! In my defense it's a subtle button?

[Trotterdam]

It appears that you are already a site supporter.

The main rationale for giving more site supporter perks would be to encourage people who are not currently site supporters to become so, earning more money for the game.

Since you already felt site supporter status was worth purchasing even without those extra perks, you can't feel all that strongly that they're necessary.

[Xerographica]

Intuitively enough, you then enter the nation name and press Select, bringing up this screen:

I see that screen... it says, "Infected Mushroom will be notified of your gift by telegram." But I don't see the option to actually pay for the gift... ???

[edit] Ooops, I figured it out. I didn't notice that down below I was given the option to decide which level to buy for him.

[Xerographica]

It appears that you are already a site supporter.

The main rationale for giving more site supporter perks would be to encourage people who are not currently site supporters to become so, earning more money for the game.

Since you already felt site supporter status was worth purchasing even without those extra perks, you can't feel all that strongly that they're necessary.

Yes, the current perks are adequate enough incentive for me to become a Supporter. My point is that they aren't adequate enough for most people to become Supporters.

[Wabbitslayah]

Those perks seem unnecessary to me. Though as someone who has multiple nations with site supporter (mainly for TG box yay!) and has donated to others, it would be nice a feature or two new. As it is I'm content as is.

[Frisbeeteria]

The one perk we'd really like to provide is for whatever Support level you purchase, applies to all your nations. Unfortunately, that will require a major change to how the site works with players and nations, so don't expect it anytime soon.

- Supporters stay logged in forever. This is the only forum I participate in where I have to log in each day.

I don't ever have to log in, as long as I visit my nation page first, forums second. I think that's more a browser setting than a site feature. It's certainly not a special moderator feature. For whatever reason, other mods don't seem to work that way.

[Reploid Productions]

The donors would know and understand this.

No. No they would not. We already get people whining that because they're site supporters they should get a free pass on warnings. We've had a guy in the past pretty much openly attempting to bribe the admins with promises of donations and big spending if we would just prioritize his (flat-out Not Plausible/Not Desireable/Not Gonna Happen Ever) technical suggestions. We are definitely NOT going to add any sort of promise implied or otherwise that site supporter will give technical suggestions more weight.

[USS Monitor]

- Supporters stay logged in forever. This is the only forum I participate in where I have to log in each day.

I don't ever have to log in, as long as I visit my nation page first, forums second. I think that's more a browser setting than a site feature. It's certainly not a special moderator feature. For whatever reason, other mods don't seem to work that way.

If you have it set to login automatically, that works on both gameside and the forums. I have it turned off because it makes it harder for someone to get into my mod stuff in the unlikely event that someone else gets on my computer.

[Xerographica]

The donors would know and understand this.

No. No they would not. We already get people whining that because they're site supporters they should get a free pass on warnings. We've had a guy in the past pretty much openly attempting to bribe the admins with promises of donations and big spending if we would just prioritize his (flat-out Not Plausible/Not Desireable/Not Gonna Happen Ever) technical suggestions. We are definitely NOT going to add any sort of promise implied or otherwise that site supporter will give technical suggestions more weight.

To be honest, when I made my first purchase I did have an ephemeral, but enjoyable, daydream that less of my threads would get locked.

Over on the phpBB forum people can vote on suggestions. Evidently they think it's beneficial to know how (un)popular a suggestion is. Naturally I think it's far more beneficial to know how valuable a suggestion is. Of course I'm curious which technical suggestions were so valuable to that guy in the past. Right now I have absolutely no clue about all the different suggestions that have been made in the past that haven't already been implemented.

The premise of "sticky" threads is that there are some things that are too important to fall victim to "out of sight, out of mind". I just remembered that my grandfather was fond of sticking post-it notes everywhere. Well, not everywhere, primarily in his bathroom. My best guess is that donations are the best way to "sticky" suggestions. But I could be wrong.

[The Free Joy State]

No. No they would not. We already get people whining that because they're site supporters they should get a free pass on warnings. We've had a guy in the past pretty much openly attempting to bribe the admins with promises of donations and big spending if we would just prioritize his (flat-out Not Plausible/Not Desireable/Not Gonna Happen Ever) technical suggestions. We are definitely NOT going to add any sort of promise implied or otherwise that site supporter will give technical suggestions more weight.

To be honest, when I made my first purchase I did have an ephemeral, but enjoyable, daydream that less of my threads would get locked.

Over on the phpBB forum people can vote on suggestions. Evidently they think it's beneficial to know how (un)popular a suggestion is. Naturally I think it's far more beneficial to know how valuable a suggestion is. Of course I'm curious which technical suggestions were so valuable to that guy in the past. Right now I have absolutely no clue about all the different suggestions that have been made in the past that haven't already been implemented.

The premise of "sticky" threads is that there are some things that are too important to fall victim to "out of sight, out of mind". I just remembered that my grandfather was fond of sticking post-it notes everywhere. Well, not everywhere, primarily in his bathroom. My best guess is that donations are the best way to "sticky" suggestions. But I could be wrong.

I'd have said that viable, interesting ideas are the best way to "sticky" suggestions.

Otherwise, what would stop -- for example -- a deranged billionaire paying to take up entire first pages of various subforums with greeter spam?

"I paid for it" is not a synonym for "it's important".

Custom colors for individuals wouldn't be a viable idea, both because of the technical challenges and because of the confusion it would cause, but it wouldn't be as far-fetched to create a site supporter user group with one color for the whole group. For example, the old GenSec color or the old IE color could be repurposed as a site supporter color.

A group one might be more viable, but from the pluralisation in his opening post, I thought it would be an individual thing.
Edit: On reflection though, instead of another standout-y colour, site supporters might just get their usernames emboldened? It keeps all regular users the same colour while denoting those who have bought supporter packages.

Custom colours for Site Supporters would not only be a headache for new players -- who wouldn't know what special position site supporters held but would assume it had to be something along the lines of admins, mods, mentors, or editors -- but would be annoying to Supporters, too.

Do you have any idea how many queries you'd get from players, asking how you do this, or what that button does, or why this issue is a certain way. IMO, it'd be worse if you repurposed the old IE colour or GenSec colour. Because any CTE players who resurrected would think you were IEs or GenSec (not many people look at the bottom of the forums, seriously).

It'd just be creating unnecessary hassle for a lot of people who just want to enjoy the game.

[Xerographica]

To be honest, when I made my first purchase I did have an ephemeral, but enjoyable, daydream that less of my threads would get locked.

Over on the phpBB forum people can vote on suggestions. Evidently they think it's beneficial to know how (un)popular a suggestion is. Naturally I think it's far more beneficial to know how valuable a suggestion is. Of course I'm curious which technical suggestions were so valuable to that guy in the past. Right now I have absolutely no clue about all the different suggestions that have been made in the past that haven't already been implemented.

The premise of "sticky" threads is that there are some things that are too important to fall victim to "out of sight, out of mind". I just remembered that my grandfather was fond of sticking post-it notes everywhere. Well, not everywhere, primarily in his bathroom. My best guess is that donations are the best way to "sticky" suggestions. But I could be wrong.

I'd have said that viable, interesting ideas are the best way to "sticky" suggestions.

Otherwise, what would stop -- for example -- a deranged billionaire paying to take up entire first pages of various subforums with greeter spam?

"I paid for it" is not a synonym for "it's important".

"I paid for it" is synonymous with "it's important to me". Knowing what's important to us is necessary for NS's development to be maximally beneficial. Personally, I kinda enjoyed the trading cards. But it really wouldn't have been a suggestion that I would have donated any money for. Everybody's different though, which is exactly what makes it really difficult to try and guess the total amount of benefit generated by the trading cards. If correctly guessing the demand for things was so easy, then markets wouldn't be so useful.

Regarding deranged billionaires... what's to stop a mob of men's rights activists from voting up some hateful content on Reddit? On Reddit you can sort the content by votes or by date. Here we'd be able to sort the suggestions by donations or by date. Honestly it's not like I can link you to many relevant examples. Here are cat photos sorted by donations. Nothing technically stops Jeff Bezos from donating a million dollars for the worst cat. I doubt that he would though, given that he's busy doing things like buying Whole Foods.

In the thread I linked to in the OP we're using donation to rank political systems. So far $22 has been donated for capracracy and $13 has been donated for pragmatarianism. Pragmatarianism is ranking everything with money while capracracy is rule by goats. So far the devious donors are outspending the one devout donor... me. But in this case it's not like the winning system is going to be implemented. I'm pretty sure that with suggestions the devout donors would outspend the devious ones. There's a chance that I might be wrong.

A group one might be more viable, but from the pluralisation in his opening post, I thought it would be an individual thing.
Edit: On reflection though, instead of another standout-y colour, site supporters might just get their usernames emboldened? It keeps all regular users the same colour while denoting those who have bought supporter packages.

Custom colours for Site Supporters would not only be a headache for new players -- who wouldn't know what special position site supporters held but would assume it had to be something along the lines of admins, mods, mentors, or editors -- but would be annoying to Supporters, too.

Do you have any idea how many queries you'd get from players, asking how you do this, or what that button does, or why this issue is a certain way. IMO, it'd be worse if you repurposed the old IE colour or GenSec colour. Because any CTE players who resurrected would think you were IEs or GenSec (not many people look at the bottom of the forums, seriously).

It'd just be creating unnecessary hassle for a lot of people who just want to enjoy the game.

Personally I was never a new "player". I signed up because I saw that somebody had created a forum thread about pragmatarianism. The role playing aspect of this website never really captured my interest. A while back I ran across a suggestion that made sense to me, but evidently it conflicted with a fundamental aspect of the game.

Anybody know what percentage of the members are in the same boat as me? If we're in the minority, what are the chances that we'd be willing to make the most donations? If we were the biggest donors, then the forum would grow more than the game would. Then again, if the gamers were the biggest donors, then I'd probably be more interested in learning about the game mechanics.

It's funny when you think about it. What I'm interested in is actually doing government rather than simply playing it. Rather than democrats versus republicans we'd have gamers versus forumers. Heh. Except then it would be gamers versus forumers versus bloggers... and then versus vloggers... and then versus ____________. The demand for features would be just as diverse as the members are.

Anyways, when I signed up I really wasn't confused about the username colors. I knew that the red were mods and I had no reason to learn the other colors. But for new players interested in gaming, you'd figure it would be easy enough to have a page to explain what the different color usernames were for. You can see a similar page on the deviantart website. It's actually my first time seeing that page. I guessed that it existed and it only took me a few seconds to confirm it.

What difference would it make to easily identify the percentage of NS members that are supporters? If a new member looks down to see who's online and notices that 1 out of 20 members is a supporter... what do they think? What do they think if 15 out of 20 members are supporters? It would change their perception of the community's value. Just like knowing the demand for a suggestion would change our perception of its value. Quantifying value is really helpful for increasing it.