Patron based proposal for mechanism 1.1 (instead of $-based goals)

Clearing the Path
65

Sure, but picking the specific points where they meet isn’t helping us to map out the range of differences in terms of where they could lead. Put another way: yes we can agree that there are points that are the same. But why are you opposed to discussing the differences (which do indeed exist)?

Your argument that differences can be ignored because we could make up whatever rhetorical numbers applies just as well to not doing crowdmatching. We could say that unilateral donations are identical to crowdmatching because we could create numbers where the same donations happen with or without crowdmatching. That does show that crowdmatching is really just a framing itself in a sense. But it’s still useful to discuss it and to develop it.

Let’s assume we won’t hit 100% by the next crowdmatch (which is likely situation), this is the key point. To be doing crowdmatching, we’re thinking there is a pool of patrons (and maybe also pledge-increases) that remains untapped. The 100% point is the least interesting. The whole question is what happens as we’re building toward it.

So, the other pledges that will be there at this month’s crowdmatch point are $X total without my pledge. And I look at this and am considering adding a higher-than minimum pledge. In crowd-based mechanism, the increase the project gets because of my pledge is less than it would be in a dollar-based mechanism.

This is a usable comparison, a simple mathematical fact for any one patron making a pledge decision. This should be discussed as to the ramifications.

2 Appreciations
66

I’m not picking. This applies to every step between 0% and 100%. Test it.

I quote myself to give you the answer again:

It does not apply just as well. The fact that a mechanism has a final say is the first big difference, and then there is the question of how exactly that mechanism works. That’s literally what I’m discussing here.

You on the other hand insist that it is a good idea to bring in irrelevant, but related questions like: Why do people pledge? What could make them consider to pledge more? – questions that are important and not to dismiss, generally. But they apply to unilateral pledging as well as crowdmatching and don’t add to the discussion about mecahnism 1.1.

Congratulations to applying your bias. What is the reason you assume a change dollars per pledge and not a new pledge with the same value popping in? (wich is a corresponding way of influencing the set premise). Or what about this: What If you chose to reduce an existing pledge to the minimum? :hushed: – suddenly the dollar-goal is much more vulnerable to that behavior.

Do you just assume that’s never going to happen? New people never join at low levels, and existing pledges never are diminished? What else? Do we have other hard constraints you just invent for comparisons sake? There are thousands – but I don’t care about them.

I don’t argue that way for a good reason: The entire WHAT–IF–GAME is boring to play. Of course you can twiddle around within the space of error margin that opens up due to the non-equivalence of dollar-goal and crowd-goal. But what do you get out of this mind game?

1 Appreciation
67

That’s the key point I’m making. Given nothing else in the world changing and not being at the 100% point of a goal, I’m only comparing the mechanism effect of my one pledge being larger or smaller:

  • crowd-based goal: Everyone else gives an unchanged amount regardless of any change in my pledge size
  • dollar-based goal: Any increase in my pledge results in increased dollars from other patrons, and decrease in my pledge results in decreased dollars from other patrons

There is no bias, there’s nothing outside the mechanism, there’s nothing speculative, this is not a mind-game in the slightest. I’m talking about a core difference between the output of two different mechanisms and how they respond to a specific number being changed.

Can you please recognize the fact of this mathematical difference, and can we please discuss the ramifications of the difference?

1 Appreciation
68

@mray the thing here is, you proposed a crowd-size goal in this thread, but i haven’t seen any argument for choosing it.

You argue that they are the same and that is true with the assumptions you allow, so why should we choose a crowd-size goal then instead of a dollar goal?

Can you please post a list with arguments for a crowd-size goal?

69

This looks like progress. :fireworks: We seem indeed to agree that neither mechanism has an actual edge when it comes to measurable objective benefits and can start exploring their true differences that boil down to all sorts of:

FRAMING:

things that come to my mind are…

  • counting in humans is more personal, direct, emotional and approachable than summing up the content of their purses

  • expressing a goal in terms of a “we”, a group, a team, a crowd you can be part of – is the better invitation than pointing to an amount of currency and ask others to add more onto that.

  • higher-tier patrons share their extra leverage with lower-tier patrons, making the community even more inviting especially for lowest-tier patrons.

  • The crowd metric is closer to our values
    Crowdmatching is all about what happens when people come together to bring change to the world, and that is much more than the resulting money goals at the end of the day.

  • “I’m in!” is a statement that makes more sense with a crowd goal.

  • PEOPLE > MONEY

…If money is all you want - look for venture capital or a bank! :smiley:

CONS:

  • I see how from the projects perspective, crowd goals add an extra calculation and a bit of fuzziness. But for a project, that is a reasonable price for having an extra source of revenue. Projects perspective generally play a subordinated role here: our main goal is finding best ways to get patrons. Succeeding with that will make projects most probably follow.
3 Appreciations
70

Thanks! That is some new input to discuss. :fireworks:

I still strongly disagree with that, but ignore it for the moment, so we can make progress. Maybe we don’t have to agree fully to continue.

In general, counting in humans is more personal and emotional. See how Youtubers beg for subscribers: “Join the X army and become part of the family of angry gamers. And don’t forget to hit the bell icon or it will be sad”.

But when it comes to funding, a dollar goal is more approachable (the patrons pay with money themselves and not with humans).

A dollar goal is also more direct, since you don’t have to calculate the actual goal with the average (do we even show that to the patrons?). The actual goal (the money the project needs) is the dollar goal!

In the end, developers and servers will be payed with money and not with humans and patrons know that. Don’t obfuscate that. It feels intransparent and dishonest.

Yes. You can do that when having a money goal: “1237 patrons have pledget to give 2000$ together of the goal of 5000$. Join the Crowd and help to reach the goal!”

I don’t understand what that means.

So, people with less money would rather join when everyone has the same impact on reaching the goal (1) instead of when some have a higher impact (1-limit)? So they dislike when we come closer to the goal??? Maybe they appreciate someone with more money than them joining. (We want them too, right?) With more money pledged we get closer to the actual goal (funding a project), so when the mechanism reflects that, it is just transparent and shows that more money has more impact. I don’t think it helps to obfuscate that.

I still claim: With a dollar goal patrons have a higher motivation to give more than the minimum level, because that brings us closer to the goal. They want to reach the goal, that’s why they donated in the first place. So with a dollar goal, the average donation will be higher than with a crowd-size goal. That means we can reach a financial goal (funding) with less people.

When you don’t trust the math, call it framing or whatever you like.

I agree. But a dollar goal with crowdmatching is also in line with the values. And our mission is to fund FLO. When we achieve that more efficiently with a dollar goal, we should choose that.

How? I can say “I’m in!” when joining with a dollar goal. It’s still a crowd and we can focus on that in communication.

Again, how does that make sense in the context of funding FLO projects?

Can you make a full sentence?

I would say:

Project goal (e.g. pay dev with money) > funding goal (collect needed money) > people (give money)

So money is more important than people, but what the project will achieve with that money (FLO) is more important than money.

You will think: HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT???

But funding is about money and trying to hide that will hurt our mission.

It’s about money in all three steps. Calculate that to people 2 times is more complicated and forcing projects and patrons to think what a patron is worth might even be problematic. That is not the case when saying “The crowd of X people give X together”. Everyone is doing their part to reach the goal.

If people is all you want, go on Facebook and beg for likes! :stuck_out_tongue:

Same for patrons that want to know how much money do they actually need and how much do they get already!

I don’t want to support projects that don’t show that directly. (But i still do when the project is important to me)

I fully agree.

1 Appreciation
71

I’m not going to address all your points. What I overall am getting here is a series of examples that framing works both ways. I agree. That’s the nature of framing, saying that statement X can also be stated differently isn’t only not surprising, it actually is something I go to great lengths to make clear from the get go. But we don’t even seem to come to an agreement over that, as it seems. :confounded:

72

You can call it framing or whatever, i don’t care at this point. I just want to find a conclusion from this long discussing and make a good decision for our project.

It looks like we have explored the ideas in all detail and will just not agree what we think is better. That’s something i can accept. Thanks for the discussion!

74

  1. @mray and @davidak, I STRONGLY suggest that any time you two are at an impasse, you switch to discussing in German. We have enough communication issues when it is just one person who is not a native English speaker…

    However, it would make the thread hard to follow for those who don’t speak German, so I would suggest using a separate thread (either a public topic or private message), or hiding the Deutsch part inside a [details] section — you can find the template for adding one of these in the gear menu:
    image

  2. This thread is long; it especially has a lot of back-and-forth without making any progress in the discussion (lots of talking past one another); and has been quiet for two weeks. This makes it hard to catch up on and contribute to (there are many points unanswered, but it’s hard to know which ones are still contentious.

    I think we should end discussion here and continue in other topics.

1 Appreciation
75

good idea. and we actually had a discussion about this topic in german. it was easier for me, but we ended up with the same situation. we where not able to find a consensus which option is better. we could try again and see if we have understood us correctly until now… i try to find a common ground, but it is very hard here

yes, that’s the problem. and it don’t help to repeat the same point over and over again :grimacing:

I think we could make progress when others would contribute. This two post seem relevant

I even would like to end this thread with just one argument to show that this idea don’t make sense:

The purpose of funding is to get money. A project has to do budgeting to see how much money they need to achieve their mission. Using that amount as a funding goal (dollar goal) is the obvious choice.

I haven’t seen a single funding campaign that asks for something other than money. It just don’t make sense!

Do you mean in What is objective or measurable? - #8 by wolftune?

We need a decision here to complete the mechanism.

76

I see two parts to the discussion:

  • Framing, which started to be discussed near the end => Goal adjustment – terminology – framing

  • Incentives for individual patrons: first resolve
    What is objective or measurable?, then in a new topic

    • I was going to post in that thread, but ended up sending my [long] message to @mray privately instead – I’ll post a shorter version publicly later based on whether it is helpful in moving the conversation forward.

  • Actually making a decision: in a meeting or a new topic, once we have resolved the things above and decided the meta question of how to proceed if we cannot find alignment on this.

2 Appreciations
77

Another thread lead me to this phrasing:

with a crowd-size goal a patron has less fine grained impact on the matching rate. they can only join (1) or leave (0) the crowd while with a dollar goal, the range is minimum to our limit. that also means that patrons who pledge a higher amount than the minimum has a higher impact on the matching. we want that impact, since it means more funding. and it relates well to the role of patrons that contribute more. (more funding = more impact) for success, we need patrons that contribute more than the minimum, so the mechanism should have an incentive for that! but it’s important that our limit is low enough, so the project can afford to loose high impact patrons

i think that are the advantages and disadvantages we have to talk about when discussing a crowd-size vs. dollar goal. and no, @mray, that is not framing!

(we are stuck with that topic until we have a decision)

78

You are putting things from the left pocket to the right pocket. Switching what you call “fine grained impact” from the matcher to the one being matched, raising questions like:

  1. What kind of “impact” is that – how is it even useful or matters either way?
  2. Why is it more useful for the matcher to begin with?
  3. What “quantities” of matching do we talk about here?

If you think there are advantages – show them. If you can’t, maybe you were talking about framing all way long.

Because I agree on all your statements that underline how we want positive impact and more funding. But if there is no tangible fact or anything more than just a different way of looking at it – it is only framing.

I think I have met the burden of proof how both ways to express the goal are almost entirely synonymous. Show where things are wrong. You can falsify the claim by giving an example where it would not apply.

79

OK, consider this simple scenario:

We have 10 patrons in the crowd which give 10$ each.

We could have a 10 patrons crowd-size goal or 100$ money goal. It does not matter. Both are 100% reached.

Now one patron decides to give only 5$.

Let’s see what happens.

With a crowd size goal:

rate = number of patrons / crowd-size goal x 100

rate = 10 / 10 x 100
rate = 100%

So the project gets 95$.

calculation

9x 10
+
1x 5

With a money goal:

rate = total pledges / money goal x 100

rate = 95$ / 100$ x 100
rate = 95%

So the project gets 90.25$.

calculation

9 x 95% of 10 = 9x 9.5 = 85.5
+
1x 95% of 5 = 4.75

So, with the same input, you get a different output, because the equation is different. In one case is the patron matched, in the other case their pledge.

You can argue that we can’t compare the goals, they are not the same, but that does not matter here. The fact is, in this example, the patrons action has in impact on the matching with a money goal and does not have an impact in the crowd-size goal.


You can say, with a money goal:

“When you give more, everyone gives more”

(Which is the same dynamic as with matching donations of a wealthy philanthropist. We know that that work as motivation!)

While with a crowd-size goal:

“When you join, everyone gives more”


The impact that the patron has on the matching rate. You can call it crowdmatching effect. This impact exist with both goals.

I argue that the impact is more fine grained with a money goal, because a patron can decide to set a lower pledge when they are unhappy with the project.

more detailed explanation

When they have pledged 10$ before, they could decide on 9$, 8$, 7$, … 1$ (when we allow custom amounts).

With a crowd-size goal, an unhappy patron can only leave the crowd, which mean, we have lost them for funding.

What is matcher in this context?

In the example, it’s 4.75%.

1 Appreciation
80

Maybe this is why you are so confused.
You can’t set up a scenario and then …set it up again very quickly introducing a slight change. You now just replace the old with a new scenario. Think about this: why didn’t you just start with THAT scenario right ahead - why do you have to build first and then tweak it? This should be a hint. You now have this scenario:

 9 giving 10$ and 1 giving 5$

What happened is that the perfect analogy of both goals being identical (at first) suddenly falls apart. Suddenly one mechanism slaps a 100% tag on a scenario that the other one slaps a 95% tag on. Effectively undermining the very reason why you chose the simple 10x10 numbers in the first place. This completely de-validates every assumption you build on top of that example, rendering all subsequent calculations irrelevant. You no longer compare two comparable scenarios. From here on you can’t expect to reach sensible conclusions anymore.

Or, here, wrap your head around this:
Why not make one patron just leave entirely? – It would just tweak a 5$ loss to a 10$ loss - right? You just have done it before, certainly you can do it again. Why do you think suddenly everything fits nicely together again when both projects are at 90%, and what has that to do with the fact that it makes no sense to express a crowd goal as “9,5 people”?

Please give this more thought. When you want to compare, you need to consider that the crowd-goal assumes the average pledge of a patron as the “worth” of one patron and may often not be correct in doing that, assuming too much or too little. But on average it is always correct, by definition. Even if you manage to set up an example that highlights selective errors.

1 Appreciation
81

This has to be wrong, you can’t have someone switch to giving less and the result is unchanged.

The result would move from $100 to $95. You lose that one patron’s $5.

(Which is yes, still different from the $90.25 that would happen with the dollar-goal).

2 Appreciations
82

You are right. I didn’t calculate that correctly.

83

tl;dr @mray is actually right :grinning:

We discussed 3 hours in mumble and found out where we talk past each other and where able to agree on things.

He is right that i can’t compare a 10 patron goal to a 100$ goal. I have just invented those numbers for my example.

To compare that, we would need real world numbers. In one case with a crowd-size goal and in another parallel reality the same patrons and a money goal. That is not possible. And projects are different. Popular projects have many patrons and niche projects could have enthusiastic patrons that pledge a lot of money. We could do A/B testing to get real world data.

So i simplified my example more to argue for my point. We have a money goal. Say there is someone that want to join the crowd and think how much they should contribute. They are on the project page on our platform and put in 5$ in the text field. They get direct feedback how that affect the rate (%). Now they put 10$ into the field and the bar moves more. They understand that 10$ has a higher impact than 5$.

Robert agreed that this effect exists. But in a realistic case, we have more patrons and a higher goal than in my simplified example and the difference is so small, that you don’t even see it. Less than 1%!

example

rate = total pledges / money goal x 100
rate = 25,000$ / 50,000$ x 100
rate = 50%
project get 12,500.00$

5$ pledge
rate = 25,005$ / 50,000$ x 100
rate = 50.01%
project get 12,505.0005
you pay 2.5005
your matching is 2.5$

10$ pledge
rate = 25,010$ / 50,000$ x 100
rate = 50.02%
project get 12510.002
you pay 5.002
your matching is 5$

100$ pledge
rate = 25,100$ / 50,000$ x 100
rate = 50.2%
project get 12600.20
you pay 50.2
your matching is 50$

500$ pledge
rate = 25,500$ / 50,000$ x 100
rate = 51%
project get 13005
you pay 255
your matching is 250$

it’s interesting that you pay always slightly more than your matching

Robert argues that you could show a similar number with a crowd-size goal, like: “your 1$ donation will result in X$ matching from the crowd”.

example

the project also want to get 50,000$ and know the average pledge is 5$

rate = number of patrons / crowd-size goal x 100
rate = 5,000 / 10,000 x 100
rate = 50%
project get 12,500

1$ pledge
rate = 5,001 / 10,000 x 100
rate = 50.01%
project get 12,503.0001 ((5000 x 5 + 1) x 0.5001)
you pay 0.5001
your matching is 2.5$

5$ pledge
rate = 5,001 / 10,000 x 100
rate = 50.01%
project get 12,505.0005 (5,001 x 5$ x 0.5001)
you pay 2.5005
your matching is 2.5$

500$ pledge
rate = 5,001 / 10,000 x 100
rate = 50.01%
project get 12,752.55 ((5000 x 5 + 500) x 0.5001)
you pay 250.05
your matching is 2.5$

it’s interesting that the matching is always 2.5$. your pledge has no effect

5$ pledge / 2000 patrons
rate = 2,001 / 10,000 x 100
rate = 20.01%
project get 2,002.0005 (2,001 x 5$ x 0.2001)
you pay 1.0005
your matching is 1$

5$ pledge / 4000 patrons
rate = 4,001 / 10,000 x 100
rate = 40.01%
project get 8,004.0005 (4,001 x 5$ x 0.4001)
you pay 2.0005
your matching is 2$

5$ pledge / 8000 patrons
rate = 8,001 / 10,000 x 100
rate = 80.01%
project get 32,008.0005 (8,001 x 5$ x 0.8001)
you pay 4.0005
your matching is 4$

5$ pledge / 9999 patrons
rate = 10,000 / 10,000 x 100
rate = 100%
project get 50000 (10000 x 5$ x 1)
you pay 5
your matching is 5$

Robert also said, that i get less matching when i pledge more with a money goal. I guess that’s correct, but i haven’t calculated it.

At the end, i said that i’m happy that we can still talk friendly with each other, even tho we disagree a lot in the forum. At times it can feel like we fight each other, but in the end we work on the same goal and know we have the same values. I’m happy with this result. Thanks for your time!

Before thinking further about this approach, i will check out the new proposals.

3 Appreciations
84

I think this is back to being incomparable and/or needing real-world data.

In a dollar-based goal, if you pledge a ton, you can get the crowd closer to the goal point, and doing that could result in lowering the number of patrons involved in hitting the goal. Proof: goal is $1,000 and I pledge $1,000 (given I’m allowed to), then I get no matching at all. If I’d pledged smaller, a crowd could grow.

In a crowd-based goal, if I pledge a ton, it won’t affect the number of patrons needed to hit the goal, so I will still be matched by the same number of others.

But in a situation with a dollar-goal that never is reached, then you could argue that higher-pledges get more matching.

In the end, more or less matching is possible in either scenario, and it all depends on how real people actually behave or respond to the different mechanisms.

Meta: thank you both for your persistence! I still strongly believe we come out of this stronger by working to find alignment, much better than if we don’t really work through things and just force a decision or something. But I do hope along the way we also learn how to continually improve our communication and efficiency! Cheers!

2 Appreciations
85

Today we talked 4 hours and 30 minutes. We agree on most parts!

Robert says, in both mechanisms, every patrons gives in relation to the success of the project, the match rate (%). It makes no difference if we measure it in crowd-size or total pledges. I agree, you can say it that way.

Based on that, Robert says “matching” don’t exist. It is no real money, only virtual. It exist only in the perspective of a single patron (A). The matching that A “receives” is the money that others give. So when looking from outside, the money the project get payed out is the money each patron give and the matching each patron receives for contributing at the same time. I use the same money 2 times and label it differently. Robert considers that dishonest and manipulation of patrons. But i think it is OK to explain the impact a new patron has with their action of joining from their perspective, that’s what they understand best.

I disagree that the matching is virtual, since it is real money the project get payed out from the other patrons, because i joined! Without my contribution, the project would not get it. It is no money that magically appear, but money our mechanism holds back.

Robert understand why i say the mechanisms are different, but because this difference is based on the matching he considers only virtual, he think this difference is also not important.

This difference is distribution of matching.

With a money goal, a patron receives more matching when they pledge more money (about 1:1). You see that in my examples in my previous post. You could frame matching as a reward for contributing. New patrons have an incentive to pledge more, because the project get also more money from the existing crowd. It is important for Robert, that i point out that this is not only the impact of the new patron, but also from the crowd, that provides the matching.

I think that is a good explanation we should use, because it can effect the decision of new patrons to pledge more. (based on the success of matched funding)

With a crowd-size goal, the total matching is distributed equally between all patrons. So every patron receive the same amount of matching, independent from their pledge. Someone who pledges more can provide matching for other patrons and create an incentive for them to join. That might be an incentive to contribute more. But they have to think around multiple corners.

So in the first case, a new patron consume matching the existing crowd offers (until it is exhausted = goal reached) and in the other case, a new patron can provide matching.

What i like about the money goal is that a new patron get a direct reaction from the crowd (matching) based on their action (pledge amount). In reality, that does only matter when the money is payed out and until then things can change, but i think that is obvious to new patrons. They might actually pay more % from their pledge and receive also more matching. But that is in their interest.

What do you think about this difference?

3 Appreciations