Regular donors to Privacy Guides via a membership can now display their support in our community with a Member flair and/or title on their forum profile.
Become a monthly/yearly member here
You will need a MAGIC Grants donation account to donate on a recurring basis to Privacy Guides, and these credentials are separate from your forum account.
Under Title, you should have the option to select “Member” - This will display the word “Member” next to your name on your posts and on your user card.
My next suggestion would be to have tiered donation levels. The FSF offers various perks depending on the size of the donation. But I’d say this is a good first iteration of perks for memberships.
Another suggestion: if you donate X amount, offer to ship free merch pro bono. Also stickers. You still net a profit with the donation, and we get to spread brand awareness and it feels “free”.
I recommended in another thread to consider handing out some badges for writing articles and other behavior to support the knowledge share (awarded for articles written that isn’t compensated by PG).
To avoid badge dilution, consider having two categories of badges; some that have a limited amount for the PG team to award on a periodic basis (eg a quarterly most articles written badge), and milestone badges that occur similarly to the current badges where everyone gets a badge for progressive involvement in the community.
Maybe consider silly gag gifts for yearly prizes… A trophy in the shape of those big brother cameras,
Wouldn’t the problem with Signal be that we’d be using our real names? It’s not like every has two devices to set up Signal on if they are already using it as their primary IM with people in their lives.
I’d much rather it be a Delta Chat or SimpleX or XMPP app where you can show the same username as you have here for uniformity and simplicity. Let Signal be as it is as your main chat app (because I do use my real name with people I chat with on it)
Also, what point exactly would a chat app with members serve? Is it to simply have another place to talk about privacy stuff or did you want it to be for another reason?
Member mix overlaps with the forum, unless it serves a totally different purpose, which cannot be catered by the forum, otherwise it does not generate enough value to justify the additional works as well as drawbacks listed below
Portion of discussion topics might be channeled to the IM instead of the forum, as the IM group is paid member exclusive, meaning it is excluding unpaid members, which seems do harm more than good.
IM groups are much more challenging / labour intensive to moderate.
IM platform related issues (e.g. If select popular platforms then it could be challenging for some people as they need to find a way to hold multiple accounts on the same device / if select niche platform then might seem unattractive)
I have some wild “perk” ideas
a) Suggest and vote the use and priority of use on funds (Don’t really think it is possible but it makes donors feel more involved (as they actually are)
b) Exclusive annual / semi-annual physical events (like Bar night)
c) Exclusive tours (of course joiners need to pay for themselves, asking PG to fund it is obviously nonsense)
d) A chance to design next Mech
Sorry for using point forms, I understand it might seem a bit unfriendly, I simply think it would be more readable.
You don’t need to use real Names on signal.
I have 2 signal accounts, one that uses my pseudonym, the other is my personal. And I use just my one primary Android phone lol.
I use the pseudonym/online one for signal groups like Techlore.
Also you can always just hide your phone number and set a username and also use a username on the display name.
In my experience of another group, While it can get political sometimes, more often than not discussions are good, And since it’s a members only group that’s less of a problem and moderation will exist.
