[Foundation-l] e-gold proposal

[Jens Ropers]

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:

> Well i would say that the more different forms of payment, the better.
> Surely there are some wikimedians who are e-golders aswell, so if they
> wanted to use e-gold, i cant see why they shouldnt be able to.
>
> paz y amor,
> [[User:The bellman]]
>
>
> On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 19:10:48 +0100, Jens Ropers 
> <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
> -- 
> hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
> jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au
>
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