Yes! How would it look with the footnote numbers vertically and horizontally centered? To me they look a bit odd at the top right as if they’re trying to be superscripts but there’s nothing for them to be a superscript to.
First, I would want to put them where they can stay in case of a check mark. (For that it would actually be better in the bottom right corner.) There should also be no confusion about footnotes being used as “some sort of checked” or “even partially checked”.
I’m not sure about the future, but in the case of these 3 particular footnotes, it actually is a “partially checked” situation — these are places where we acknowledge that the platforms have “better than nothing” in those categories even though they don’t match us fully.
In that case we might want to adjust styling and positioning to reflect that.
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I have to say, I really prefer the red Xs. (Or perhaps a red dash, or a red background.) The blank spaces are just a bit too subtle, putting the focus on the checkmarks instead - and we don’t want to highlight what those platforms do have, here, so much as what they don’t have.
The footnote-markers being anywhere but in the spaces they refer to, definitely makes them less intuitive, I’d say. But maybe we could give them a much lower contrast so that they don’t stand out and disrupt the visual organization as much.
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The purpose is to compare & contrast ourselves with the others. It’s okay if we highlight the upsides of those platforms when we do that. Unlike commercial organizations, we’re not competing with them, per se. Rather, we’re trying to do something they’ve been unsuccessful at. If one of those other platforms succeeded at funding public goods to the extent we want to see, we wouldn’t really have a reason to exist any more. This would be a good thing — we’d love it if someone else succeeded here!
(that got a little rambly. oops. The perils of forum-ing at night 
)
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I understand, but that still sounds like an argument for representing the similarities equally with the differences, rather than with greater emphasis.
I think the way you all have been posting the table in this thread (with checks and Xs) is the most neutral way to do that. That’s all I meant.
(That and, from a design standpoint alone, I’d want to do something about the unequal visual weight per-box.)
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Note that @mray also made this mockup for mobile…
edit: the embedding cuts this off weirdly. Click on it to view the whole thing.
…and I think I like this arrangement better than the one between the text between the boxes.
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I don’t find much sense in any of this reasoning. We could just as well say that we are working on Snowdrift.coop because of frustration with the existing platforms not having features we feel are essential. That’s true enough. And we’re not competing? I mean, all these points are semi-dubious in themselves, but none of them naturally lead to saying we shouldn’t show red X’s. This all seems pretty non-sequitur to me.
I like the red X’s but don’t have strong feelings.
I think a more accurate question is: do we want to be critical of the others or just focus on how we are better? The red X’s look critical, emphasizing the lack of the others. Leaving them out seems more forgiving. They are what they are, but they don’t have as much good features as us.
It seems fine to decide based on that sort of impression. No need for extraneous points about commerce or competition.
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I understand why we are currently going with fewer options, but if there is a way to represent more options, perhaps through an accordion/expansion, or some sort of a filter, then I really would like to see Indigogo and Gofundme.
Our goal here is to help people understand Snowdrift.coop by comparison to familiar or similar platforms. This is not the spot for general reports about the other platforms as a goal itself. That’s a job for the wiki page.
I think the answer here is to update the wiki page to have better styles, better looking charts, improve the overall structure and wording. Then, we will have in effect what you are looking for.
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I feel this way as well - we are competing with those platforms (just not in a zero-sum way) and so long as we think of any of these criteria as “better than”, we also have to say that snowdrift is better than the other platforms. For our endgoals, at the very least, if not in general.
Even not given the above, red X’s aren’t necessarily “critical” - even a company showing a comparison chart of it’s own services might use them for it’s lesser options. Ultimately, this is all nonverbal/non-textual communication, so it’s up for the viewer to decide how to interpret it - but if the color red is too strong, we could always go with a faded grey X instead
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Perhaps with an arrow on the right side that expands to the right and allows horizontal scrolling. Even if it’s just on the wiki (whose thin column of text is really not great for wide tables right now)
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Based on the feedback here I’d propose to update the already open issue to look like this:
- the text at the top gives proper context
- the layout is simplified and consistent with the mobile version
Concerning “X” <-> empty boxes, colors and other layout & styling issues:
I regard it as my job to help people to get what the page content offers, not use styling to compel people to interpret one way or the other. Maybe we frame our content, – and the general design reflects or supports that to some degree – but: using style as a tool to steer framing up to the smallest details puts too much of a burden on design. Let the content speak for itself, design should just underline. In this case we have a simple matrix that needs to be read – my approach is to reduce unnecessary elements and make the task of parsing easy and fun primarily.
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mray focuses on the visual design rather than the specific content, which is great. But please note that the content of the above image has inaccuracies. 
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Thanks @mray. I’ve put this in the top of the gitlab issue for now, but we need a version that also shows the visual style for the footnotes themselves.
I’m putting an updated version of the table here so I can put a screenshot of it into the git issue:
| Kickstarter | Patreon | OpenCollective | Liberapay | |
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| Mutual assurance |  |
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| Ongoing support | |
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| Specifically for public goods | [1] | |||
| No fees | [2] | |
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| Non-profit | [3] | |
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| Co-op | ||||
| FLO itself | |
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I uploaded the one in the body of your post into the new “Designs” tab, just to play around with it. It looks like one advantage there is that you can comment on a specific location of the picture.
How do I get to that new “Designs” tab?
Just below the top post (ie, the issue itself), there’s 2 tabs: “Discussion” and “Designs”.