allow for one-off tips

[chadwhitacre]

The essence of Gittip is recurring tips, but once we solidify that I'm open to mixing in one-offs.

The reason recurring tips are important is because my mortgage is recurring and Gittip is about paying my mortgage.

There is a $80 open bounty on this issue. Add to the bounty at Bountysource.

[thiloplanz]

Maybe not. The sustained weekly tip seems to be the main differentiator for gittip. The motivation behind it is very good, better not to muddle the message. Since the amounts involved would tend to be bigger, this could also lead to (legal and fraud) problems . You can use Flattr (or PayPal) for one-offs. And I suppose you can even use gittip right now for one-offs by just changing your preferences a week later.

[chadwhitacre]

Agree, let's ride the "weekly" wave for a while. We can reticket this if/when there is demand.

[chadwhitacre]

Via HN:

I see no reason why you couldn't just represent the values separately on admin panel... "You are 'earning' $200 a week on GitTip, and also got $50 extra in your tip jar this week."

[felideon]

Maybe one way to not break the core recurring model is to implement an "extra tip" feature. So if I commit to $1 a week, every now and then I can tip another dollar (or more) above my current commitment. So it would be more like a base salary + bonus compensation.

[chadwhitacre]

+1

[chadwhitacre]

I like it, @felideon.

[chadwhitacre]

Not sure we want to constrain to people you already tip though. Maybe it's global? If you give at least $10 a week on Gittip you "unlock" one-offs?

[felideon]

That's a good point. I think the bottom line for a developer must be "Can I live off this?" and as long as arbitrary tips don't give a false sense of security then it should be fine.

(Disclaimer: I am not an OSS hacker.)

[kn0ll]

for what it's worth, i'd imagine recurring tips provide a false sense of security- not one off tips. living off recurring tips would require accepting that at any time, xx% of my living wages could be withdrawn for any or no reason.

with a 1 off tip, there is no expectation other than "here is some money i got, better spend it wisely".

[felideon]

That's a good point @catshirt

[chadwhitacre]

living off recurring tips would require accepting that at any time, xx% of my living wages could be withdrawn for any or no reason.

@catshirt The low tip amounts are meant to mitigate against that. It would take a high percentage of people withdrawing support to put you in jeopardy.

[thiloplanz]

Since the amounts involved would tend to be bigger, this could also lead to (legal and fraud) problems

Some ideas to mitigate this:

• One-off-tips are not instant, but occur during the usual weekly payout. (Until then they can be cancelled or changed)
• One-off-tips count towards the weekly per-donor maximum amount.
• One-off-tips follow the same privacy/transparency rules as weekly donations: Receipts are made public, donors stay anonymous.

So in essence, they work just like a weekly payment that you set up one week and cancel the week after that.

[chadwhitacre]

+1 from /r/Anarchism:

Gittip should also add support for non-recurring tips. For one, this is necessary for any system that wishes to subsume the current transactional market economy. Also, with the above model for organizing groups that avoids the problem of capitalist exploitation, one of the main problems with exchange relations -- that it obscures exploitation -- is avoided.

[chadwhitacre]

We should have a UI for leaving a fixed amount in your Gittip account each week to use to fund one-off tips.

[chadwhitacre]

+1 from @danostrowski via Twitter. See his further comments on #255.

[thiloplanz]

The possible cooperation with Flattr (which is all about one-off tips) could also bring interesting options here, see #284.

[chadwhitacre]

+1 from @jonsmock via Twitter.

[jonsmock]

Thanks @whit537 - I missed this issue somehow.

I was picturing the situation where someone posts a helpful screencast or article, but they're not the type to post often. Or they helped me on IRC. Or they helped me on Stackoverflow. I may not want to tip them indefinitely, but perhaps I'd tip them $X this week, because it really helped me out or taught me something.

Seems like the problem for Gittip in general is "converting" people into recurring tippers. One-off tips may be a gateway for people, since the commitment is lower, but it's a concrete stepping stone. And I'd imagine at volume, many one-off weekly gittips would become indistinguishable from a single recurring gittip to the receiver. So there'd be a place for both to coexist.

Example: a screencaster posts on a wide array of topics and has a gittip badge on her site. Perhaps she doesn't have a consistent enough thread to illicit many people to consistently support her through recurring tips, but her screencasts are helpful enough that each week many people offer one-off gittips, not necessarily on her current week's post but also on her backlog.

Not pushing the feature, just offering some food for thought :-)

P.S. this is perhaps pie in the sky, but linking Gittip to StackOverflow could be powerful. (I'm sure someone has thought of this before - sorry!)

Edit: I completely understand that the goal is paying the mortgage, as noted at the top :-) Perhaps I should have focused on the gateway part of this thought rather than my example.

[kzisme]

@mattbk link broken

Erm...Twitter is down right now it seems - My bad!

[mattbk]

+1 from https://botbot.me/freenode/gratipay/2015-09-21/?msg=50183992&page=1

[kzisme]

I know we are currently focusing on Payroll and other things, but are one-off donations still being thought about for the future?

I ask because we had a recent inquiry about that feature on Twitter

[mattbk]

I think it's still on the table, not sure where it fits on the roadmap.

[chadwhitacre]

Still on the table from my pov. I think, post-2.0, that we should broaden our payments product to be more full-featured: one-off payments, as well as different recurring options.

[mattbk]

+1 from http://twitter.com/dchw/status/862681585157406720.

@ levicook I see your Gratipay . . . how do I just make a 1 time donation. lvh.me has helped me debug OAuth flow code quite well.

[chadwhitacre]

+1 from @HTCode in #4474.

[HTCode]

I think that after so many years, there is enough evidence that the one-off payments feature is useful. I hope that it will be considered soon. Is there any decision taken about this ?

[chadwhitacre]

We'll get to it eventually.

[chadwhitacre]

+1 from Danny Spitzberg in private email.

[mattbk]

+1 from https://gratipay.freshdesk.com/helpdesk/tickets/8688.

[chadwhitacre]

Calling this done in #4598. 😅

[helmo]

@whit537 please claim the $80 bounty for this on https://www.bountysource.com/issues/317079-allow-for-one-off-tips

[chadwhitacre]

Thanks for posting the bounty so long ago, and for the gentle prodding now. However, we have decided that it's time to close down Gratipay, and it wouldn't feel right to claim this bounty in light of that. 🙇

[helmo]

Thanks for trying all these years.

PS: I've mailed a request to bountysource to refund this bounty.

[Cervator]

Bounties refunded. Sorry to hear the bad news. Sincerely :-(