[Foundation-l] e-gold proposal

Sun Dec 12 22:14:40 UTC 2004

Well i would say that the more different forms of payment, the better.
Surely there are some wikimedians who are e-golders aswell, so if they
wanted to use e-gold, i cant see why they shouldnt be able to.

paz y amor,
[[User:The bellman]]

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 19:10:48 +0100, Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
> 
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