If all that changed at FR was that a current contributor's name in a post was changed from black to green and indirectly got just another 10% of regular posters to contribute a dollar a month saving FR from bankruptcy could you deal with that?
Alternatively, why not acknowledge FReepers who keep the lights on and the site up for all the freeloaders?
My miserable but automatic, monthly contribution is small but with others it adds up to ~ $35,000 quarterly - 1000 people supporting 200,000 users for 1/3 of the costs? Check with Jim for actual numbers ... one thing I am certain - its a small number of FReepers paying a big percentage of the budget.
One other thing, aside from just keeping the lights on, apparently from reports we need some server upgrades to avoid downtimes - especially during FReepathons - kind of embarrassing. ;-)
I made up an example for Onyx here.
Consider just the first one. Unobtrusive, acknowledges the poster's level of support and as seems to make you uncomfortable, distinguishes the FReeper from the free riders.
I think it might even have been Onyx that noted that it takes $2 to process a contribution so a $5 per quarter would likely need to be the minimum to be acknowledged graphically as a contributor.
Given the VERY minor contributions necessary from a larger minority of FReepers to keep us up and running I'm not really worried about the freeloaders feelings.
For my part, if these miniscule changes could shame frequent FReepers into contributing, save FReeRepublic, unnecessary then I think its worth a try. FWIW. ;-)
I think the processing fees are percentages, like in stores and established by credit cards and pay pal. AMEX, which I use, almost always charges more. Jim could better tell you.
Let me read your detailed post in a little while, because I have my very talkative son from CA on the phone.
A whole lot of our loyal, generous and steadfast FReepers donate every FReepathon, by their state’s and via mail-in donations. They just don’t donate monthly for their own reasons.
I think that’s the difficulty I think we would encounter with acknowledgements of donors, in a tier system, given that many elect to remain anonymous and I’m sure they’re some of our most generous donors. Only Jim knows their identities and likely not, or not necessarily, their matching screen names.
A Premiere Membership might need a little more thought, but not if it were not apparent to others, only to the user/member, in that all ads were blocked for the Premiere Member. Understand what I’m trying to relate?