[Foundation-l] e-gold proposal

Sun Dec 12 18:10:48 UTC 2004

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