Please allow me to nitpick extremely here. (I think every detail counts immensely when such a complex mechanism is being conveyed in an easy digestible format)
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I regard it problematic to have “rough” amounts displayed next to “precise numbers” – 1 character being = 10 shovellers, 8 characters = 2000 shovellers. Well, I do get your rationale and I see how this makes sense as a tool generally. It’s just extra work to figure out what is precise and what isn’t. People should not have to switch concepts and search for hints when a switch is necessary or appropriate.
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The text refers to “you” (as in donor) and “your project” (as a project member), this makes it unclear what we are supposing about the viewer of such a diagram.
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Your math is off, an extra cent isn’t magically matched to $100 . The extra amount of money you bring in to the project gets doubled by the rest of the donors. A project with 10.000 people would get $10 from the next donor, and raise extra $10 from all other already existing donors, adding a total of $20 to the project.
Apart from my nitpicking - what do you think those illustrations change or add to the current material on the homepage?
What exactly was unclear? I’d be totally interested in finding better ways to deal with this visually.
Our rationale here is to be exceptionally clear about our mechanism not EXPLODING and ruining every bank account associated with us. (Which was a real concern of many people initially). Understanding that part isn’t necessary to understand the basic idea about crowdmatching, though. So I’d not try to draw too much attention to clarify that particular point. I think that question needs not to be addressed in more detail on the front page or “how it works” page…
BUT:
I like the idea to have a more detailed and more exhaustive visual approach to representing the mechanism. Currently we mainly have a very simple illustration page and a 60 second video. Maybe we should start “fleshing out” a more detailed and more complete “manual” that helps to clarify more, but not ask people to read the entire wiki.