[Foundation-l] e-gold proposal

Mon Dec 13 00:37:20 UTC 2004

Jens Ropers wrote:

> With that I can actually agree. That is, PROVIDED that we don't 
> promote them. IMHO an e-gold link can be listed somewhere down, 
> towards the bottom of the screen/list, so it's there for the *nought 
> point n* percent of people who actually use and prefer e-gold. But I 
> would not grant this "also-ran" payment service more attention than 
> that. If they want to be featured specially, then let them buy 
> advertising. Elsewhere.
>
> I'm actually somewhat sorry for my harsh tone here... but at the same 
> time I really did find e-gold infuriatingly impractical when I looked 
> at their service... so maybe I'm just venting some overblown past 
> frustration here. Thanks for humoring me.
>
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>     www.ropersonline.com
>
> On 12 Dec 2004, at 23:14, Robin Shannon wrote:
>
>> 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]]
>
The one positive aspect of e-gold that I really like is that it is 
currency neutral... it works the same if it is Rupee, Dollars, Yuan, or 
Euros.  Wikipedia is quite international in scope, and the ability to do 
donations from places outside of the USA is an attractive feature.

I will say that I agree that PayPal is horrible, and it would be nice to 
have an effective micropayment system, but all that I've seen so far are 
thinly disguised scams.

E-gold has been around for several years, so this isn't just a 
fly-by-night scam in itself, and should be evaluated on its merits. 
 Unfortunately, I haven't done nearly the amount of research into it as 
I perhaps should have myself, so my opinion of e-gold as a service 
provider for cash transactions is not particularly good.  Still, if we 
accept on-line cash donations we shouldn't restrict. ourselves to a 
single provider like PayPal or Western Union, particularly if there 
isn't any regular cost for maintaining the account

It would be nice, for instance, to have some means to "buy" Wikipedia on 
CD-ROM (or DVD) as a "donation" to the Wikimedia Foundation.  This is 
certainly under the realm of something to worry about in terms of 
fundraising techniques.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning
218 Sunstone Circle
Logan, UT 84321
(435) 753-3330
robert_horning at netzero.net