I looked at e-gold at some length when I needed a way to accept donations for my DICT distribution (www.ropersonline.com/dict). I had heard quite a number of Very Bad Things about PayPal, plus I don't like eBay and only cope with them where it's unavoidable -- in short, my motivation was high to look at alternative e-payment solutions. The end result: I didn't sign up with e-gold, I grudgingly signed up with PayPal. e-gold may be a good idea in theory, but their "cost of entry" (not necessarily in a monetary sense) is just too high. It's just too bleedin complicated to get money into the e-gold system. If e-gold already WAS a pervasive world currency, accepted as frequently as, say, VISA cards, THEN it probably would make sense to make it difficult to move money into or out of the e-gold system. This would make sure most parties keep their funds in their e-gold accounts and pay each other, circulating the money that way, yadda, yadda, yadda. It would NOT be nice to thus make things difficult, but it would make sense. Seeing however that e-gold is an "also-ran" in the e-payment market, this just doesn't make effin sense. As a user, I expect a single page where I can punch in a few numbers and be done. e-gold will only grow if they CATER FOR END USERS, with the possibility of e-gold internal money circulation arriving almost as an afterthought. With PayPal I find it *annoying* that the payer has to create an account, mandatorily. Why, oh why can't that be an OPTION? Let the USER decide if they want to go through the hoops, submit an email address, etc. etc. instead of just punching in their credit card details and be done. With e-gold however, things are INFINITELY worse: Not only does the user also have to create an account, they actually have to create TWO accounts, one for e-gold and one for the service the use to get money into the e-gold system (that's 2 new important and non-trivial passwords to remember). Plus, the (not very appealing or well-structured) e-gold website DOES NOT TELL YOU THIS upfront. You have to do a fair bit of reading to figure out how their feckin system works. I want a payment service that can be used by commercial and hobbyist webmasters alike, without the need for a minimum transaction volume AND without mandatory account creation. Let the user punch in their numbers and be done if desired. Make it an OPTION to create an (i.e ONE(!)) account if they so choose. Where the payment service has its own "currency", that currency should be easy-peasy to exchange into any other currency and easy to move into regular current accounts in all or most countries. I'm not the Wikimedia Foundation, but if I was the Wikimedia Foundation, then I would stay well clear of e-gold unless and until they get their act together. It's not in our interest to make it difficult and frustrating for people to donate money to us. (Plus it's not in our interest to have that money in a "currency" we can't use to pay for, say, new Apache boxen -- ie. we ultimately need to put the dough into WMF bank accounts anyway.) -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

With that I can actually agree. That is, PROVIDED that we don't promote them. IMHO an e-gold link can be listed somewhere down, towards the bottom of the screen/list, so it's there for the *nought point n* percent of people who actually use and prefer e-gold. But I would not grant this "also-ran" payment service more attention than that. If they want to be featured specially, then let them buy advertising. Elsewhere. I'm actually somewhat sorry for my harsh tone here... but at the same time I really did find e-gold infuriatingly impractical when I looked at their service... so maybe I'm just venting some overblown past frustration here. Thanks for humoring me. -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com On 12 Dec 2004, at 23:14, Robin Shannon wrote:

With PayPal I find it *annoying* that the payer has to create an account, mandatorily. Why, oh why can't that be an OPTION? Let the USER decide if they want to go through the hoops, submit an email address, etc. etc. instead of just punching in their credit card details and be done.

A person trying to likewise donate money to the Wikimedia Foundation with paypal indeed IS NOT forced to create an account. (see http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising/USD/onetime ) However, a person trying to donate money through paypal via the button on my own website IS forced to create an account. (see www.ropersonline.com/dict) Does anybody know why that would be?

It's just too bleedin complicated to get money into the e-gold system. If e-gold already WAS a pervasive world currency, accepted as frequently as, say, VISA cards, THEN it probably would make sense to make it difficult to move money into or out of the e-gold system. This would make sure most parties keep their funds in their e-gold accounts and pay each other, circulating the money that way, yadda, yadda, yadda. It would NOT be nice to thus make things difficult, but it would make sense. Seeing however that e-gold is an "also-ran" in the e-payment market, this just doesn't make effin sense. As a user, I expect a single page where I can punch in a few numbers and be done. e-gold will only grow if they CATER FOR END USERS, with the possibility of e-gold internal money circulation arriving almost as an afterthought. ...

I'm not the Wikimedia Foundation, but if I was the Wikimedia Foundation, then I would stay well clear of e-gold unless and until they get their act together. It's not in our interest to make it difficult and frustrating for people to donate money to us. (Plus it's not in our interest to have that money in a "currency" we can't use to pay for, say, new Apache boxen -- ie. we ultimately need to put the dough into WMF bank accounts anyway.)