Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Money, money, money

I have such mixed feelings about NaNoWriMo. It's helping me write a story that might otherwise never have surfaced but it comes with so many demands for money, money, and more money. Recently it was "Double Up Donation Day" which generated five different private messages asking for money: before, during and after the magic day.

I posted about it to the feedback and suggestions forum and this is what I got:
Me: I would like fewer donation requests.

I always donate at the beginning of November to say thank you for the website. Repeated follow-up requests for more money are annoying.
Moderator: The donation requests go out en masse, and not everyone can donate at the start of the month--they may be on a fortnightly or monthly pay schedule, they may want to wait until they've written x amount of words, and so on. You're not the only one getting more than one request! I donated in October, plus I'm an ML, and I still get requests. I just delete 'em and move on.
Me: I didn't assume I was the only one. I was just giving feedback in case anyone is interested that I find the number of donation requests is too high and I find it annoying.

If Wikipedia asks for a donation, they also check if they are asking too often and are annoying. I assumed it might be the same here.
Mod: Well, it was just Donation Day, so I assume the higher volume of requests was due to that.
I feel so much better now. I nearly posted that but I doubt if the sarcasm would be recognised.

So I shall stay with the Nano groups on my favourite website, which is Ravelry, and just use the Nano site for updating my word count. Somehow the Ravelry owners manage a huge website* that is easy to use and very intuitive and their requested donation is only $5 a year. Plus the only time you see the option to donate is if you want to upload images directly to the forums and not through your project pages.

It seems like such a wasted opportunity when forum mods and owners ignore genuine feedback.



* 5,711,874 registered users, 989,706 Ravelers were active during the last 30 days (up to 10/11/15). In 2014 Nano had 325,142 participants

2 COMMENTS:

Lexi said...

Charities do the same thing, as they know people who have already donated are more likely to do it again. It's irritating. Oxfam used to ring me soliciting money, until I asked a surprised young man if he had heard of the parable of the widow's mite, and explained that Oxfam had had my mite, and there was no point pestering me for another one.

fairyhedgehog said...

Nicely done!

I'm sure all the requests reach a point where they're counterproductive. I can't be the only person to think, "That's the last time they get anything out of me!" after one hustle too many.

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