Arguably you already have an somewhat usable average even after the first 100 patrons or less. It might make sense to offer projects to refine their goal within the first month to avoid setting a really bad goal.
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does that mean you agree with me that the assumption is wrong and we do have an influence? i mean, framing is a thing
yes, time is not a good indicator. you could have 100 patrons after 1 month or 10…
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A spread-the-burden mechanism would lead to patrons paying less until they pay nothing due to fees.
So we would need a solution there too:
I disagree. Yes, we do have influence, but not unilaterally.
It is like measuring the speed of two cars by tracking time and distance they cover.
After measuring the same speed you can’t say one is faster because it looks like a racing car, probably driven by a more skilled driver. 
Our influence on how good we present either mechanism has no effect on the math behind it. That kind of influence is another, different and important topic.
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In the context of spread-the-burden you’d have to have an insane amount of surplus patrons AND refuse to adjust the goal towards that unbalanced situation. That’s extremely unlikely to happen. To a degree where you could assume bad intent. I see no possible motivation for a project to do that. It is similar to setting the goal to 10 patrons and leave it there despite 1000 people showing up.
people can be lazy and not care about funding that much
that would be a good incentive to update the goal
i don’t like that it is an additional rule which makes it more complicated for patrons to understand
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I updated the original post to feature a rough visualization video of how the proposal would work.
update: added the dollar based version for comparison.
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I didn’t propose an additional rule. Not sure what you refer to by that. I was only describing the nature of how you can run into issues when you’re indifferent, inactive or just malicious.
I mean having a spread-the-burden mechanism vs not having it.
The upper bars indicate monthly growth? I.e. these are pledges that started in a particular month? Oh, wait, this isn’t trying to show months at all, these are individual patrons?
I think the confusion is that the goal-growth is linear in the animation. The distinction is missing. In the crowd-goal, the very large pledge should show that it’s just one step toward the goal, the size of the pledge has no extra impact toward the goal. In the dollar-goal scenario, a large size pledge has a greater impact toward the goal (which means it gets more matching than a smaller pledge).
In other words, this seems a key distinction:
- crowd-goal: if I pledge $1 or $10, either way I get the same amount of matching from the others
- dollar-goal: if I pledge $1 vs $10, I will get matching for all my extra dollars
The dollar goal doesn’t care how many patrons get us to the dollars, so it incentivizes larger pledges for more matching. With the crowd-goal, larger pledges help the project and give extra matching incentive for other patrons, but there’s no direct matching of the extra, less incentive to give larger pledge.
I don’t think this matters enough. There’s pros and cons to the matching of extra dollars. I’m still leaning toward crowd-goal now. But this distinction doesn’t seem to be shown in the animation.
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After reaching the goal the mechanism has to behave somehow - the existing rules can’t just keep the same. So an “extra” rule has to be in place either way.
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It is a rough animation. As I said it would have to take into account how the joining of each patron is a discrete step, but remember my example is only showing very few patrons. At the end of the day it does not matter that much. Pause the video and move the time slider to the center and you’ll see that 50% is 50%, at 20% it is 20%, … . I actually just cloned a single shape and used it as patrons and goals on both sides.
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Oh oh! I get it now. The point of the difference in the animation is that each patron can only push the goal ahead the same amount regardless of their pledge!
So, the biggest pledge in the crowd-goal version actually would just be the same width as the others if this were less-rough, right? It’s not supposed to show different widths, that’s an artifact of quick rough version, right?
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it does not matter in what way difference in size is shown really. could be height, or width or both. I just went with the exact same shape scaled in both dimensions. It is all about proportions, and those remain the same.
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“sufficient simplicity” = people easily understand and relate to it, so complexity of the mechanism does not act as a barrier to potentially interested people becoming patrons.
“sufficient flexibility” = people can participate in a way that feels meaningful and attractive to them, which will differ greatly between different people in relation to different projects.
Those properties matter because the success of crowdmatching hinges crucially on it being attractive enough to very large numbers of people who currently don’t donate at all that actual large crowds of patrons form. If either insufficient simplicity or insufficient flexibility prevent it from attracting large numbers of patrons, it will not succeed.
What makes me skeptical about crowd size being part of the math is:
- It can only be simple if everyone donates the same. As soon as you try to add options to donate more, it becomes complex. In the particular way of doing this you’ve proposed, actually only the minimum donation is matched by others. Let’s say the minimum is $1 but that feels way too low to me and I want to donate $10. Then what the rest of the crowd donates is only affected by my first $1 since it’s the same whether I donate $1 or $10. But what I donate is affected by the size of the crowd, so if the crowd is 50% toward the crowd size goal, I’ll donate $5, etc. That is complex to understand.
- Even that flexibility, at a significant cost of complexity, doesn’t really add the flexibility I think we need, since having only the first $1 of my participation matched by the crowd hugely reduces the motivational power of crowdmatching. I don’t think it’s genuine flexibility. It’s really just a slightly different framing of our current one-donation-level-fits-all model with an overlaid option to donate more and match the crowd size, but without being matched in return. $9 of my $10 pledge is not being matched, so how different is this scenario to just asking me to donate a monthly amount without crowdmatching at all?
- A crowd size goal seems arbitrary and doesn’t feel to me like it gives me much reason to participate vs. not having a goal at all. I think if Snowdrift decides to stick with matching people rather than willingness to donate, then I’m not sure that adding a goal helps much, and might actually hurt by adding complexity and vagueness, i.e. no clear answer to the question “why should I get excited about helping to achieve that particular crowd size?”
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First of all THANK YOU for perfectly addressing my questions. I really do appreciate that.
Concerning flexibility and simplicity we actually seem to be on the exact same page, I value those for the same reasons you do. I second your dedication to underline the easy understanding is key to participation is something we absolutely need for our success.
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About complexity.
In a recent discussion with David I think finally understood your point here. If I’m not mistaken the problem is best described when we compare the event of a single patron joining – and then comparing the outcome in both cases. Yes, there are differences, and they may have an impact on an attempt to understand matching. But that’s only problematic when there is a preset framing that search for one special variation of matching behavior. The actual matching that does happen and that can be found is actually easy to understand and has the same overall identical impact. I think, if we can assume that the framing fits the actual matching from the get go – there is no problem at all. -
About flexibility
I think you are misunderstanding the crowd-goal variation of the proposal. Matching does happen and to the same extent - just in a different way. Nothing keeps a patron from applying the exact same degree of flexibility in matching. If any portion of any pledge would get less matched there would have to be a difference in the final donation. Again, with a skewed framing it might come along wrong – but that’s what we have to take care of: make sure that the understanding of the mechanism fits how the mechanism really works. -
About the crowd size goal
This is a problem in and of itself that I think we are having problems to solve in both cases. Even if a hard number expressed in currency is something we tend to understand better than a certain number of people it still begs the question: “How arbitrary is it?” The way the mechanism currently is envisioned creates an incentive to set a realistic goal, not a desired goal. And it is subject to be changed all the time – unless there actually is some specific amount of money that embodies a more or less permanent desired end goal. Which I doubt is ever the case. No project can make more or less use with $3989, $4000 or $4011 – especially when the said mark only represents a wish, not the an actual amount of money.
I think relevant discussion to that topic is expected to happen here: Goal adjustment – terminology – framing
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On that point, your $10 is still there as matching incentive to others. One new patron choosing to pledge gets more dollars out of you in matching than they would if you only pledged $1. So, it’s not the same as giving without crowdmatching.
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Besides the value of a goal, even though arbitrary, it has one core benefit: that’s the point at which the budget limit kicks into a different behavior. So, the main point is that it’s the budget limit. It’s a statement of “I’m willing to crowdmatch up to a crowd of this size”.
So, yes, it’s like our current model + option of different size pledges + better per-project budget cap approach.
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Yes, but it only incents them to pledge $1. (And it feels to me like this discussion itself underline the complexity here.)
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So, yes, it’s like our current model + option of different size pledges + better per-project budget cap approach.
I’m not sure it’s necessarily a better budget cap approach overall. It is good that it avoids having to auto-drop patrons to avoid exceeding their budget cap, but it does that at the cost of imposing the same crowd size limit on everyone. In the current model, people with higher budget limits can continue matching as the crowd size grows beyond what works for some other patrons.
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