Moving OGS Forward

[anoek]

@LostStone

Even Paypal uses credit cards for transfer. Since I absolutely refuse to own credit death cards, is there a safe mailing address I can send a notarized or registered check? I would have joined previously if I was able to send cash.I don’t want to give Paypal my financial info because it’s just another corporation knowing more about my erpsonal business. That includes debit cards

Checks are quite a burden so we probably won’t ever want to deal with them (we are programmers after all… if it can’t be automated, we tend to stay away from it with a ten foot poll!) However perhaps once we have our bitcoin system in place, maybe that’ll be a more amenable way to be a supporter?

[anoek]

@jie

i made so bad experiences here with the moderators, that i not like the idea to give ogs money or ad-attention

That’s rather unfortunate. If you’d like to contact me privately to discuss your experiences I’d be very interested to hear them.

[Animiral]

After the first paragraphs, I thought you were finally going to open the source and get some more manpower.

But no, it’s just ads.

[Leira]

I’ll do my part and turn AdBlock off for OGS. That’s something I never do for any site.

Edit: Go figure, I already had

[Samraku]

Can someone post here when the ads go live so I can make sure that the exception I defined is working?

[anoek]

Sure thing! It’ll be a few days still though, we want to make sure the word gets out and there are no surprises, and we still need to work through getting them setup and ready

[halifax]

My suggestion: if ads is the way forward, display them for oldtimers but give newbies some time to get used to the system before displaying the ads for them, lest they be scared away!

Also make sure you test the ads on android/iphone/ipad. Some features to this day on ipad do not work as well as the should/could.

[ofekih]

Is there a way to assist in the development of OGS—I may be able to donate some of my free time to help with bug fixes or the development in similar ways and I’d love to know how I can contribute!

[IcedEarth]

+1 I think it might help more than attempts to localize problems via the beta site.
Ofcourse you may disable commit submissions from third parties, so it won’t take extra time to analyze 'em. Though, you might receive some emails with useful patches from us

[TheDidymen]

Hi, I would love to support the site if i could pay with ideal. im not sure how well known it is outside the netherlands. Most internet payments are done this way in the Netherlands. its very easy to use.

[azver]

Before resorting to ads, how about taking the screen real estate you would have given over to them and using it instead for direct pleas for people to support the site? (In a way, you’d still be placing ads there. Just ads for yourselves.) The option to support the site is actually not very visible currently, and the occasional popup notifications are too easy to dismiss. I wouldn’t be surprised if many players weren’t even aware of the option. And you could get creative with these “ads”, varying them and thinking up clever pitches. (“Gain influence! Support OGS.”) Even just the basic “If every player donated just $1/mo” pitch might make a huge difference if you could put it regularly in front of everybody’s faces.

If this doesn’t work, you won’t have wasted that much effort, because most of it would have been spent on the whole system of staking out effective yet non-distracting display space and only showing the ads to non-supporters, and all that would be reused by the commercial ad system. In fact, you could even keep displaying these direct pleas in the ad slots from time to time, mixing them up with the commercial ads. Maybe the optimal messaging will turn out to be some ratio of the two.

[sphaso]

My thoughts exactly.

[Nails]

I am already  site supporter and could easily double my monthly contribution .
How would I do this as I only see an option to cancel my support and not too
Increase my monthly contribution.

[temifar]

@anoek

Indeed, we’re discussing options as we speak on how to expand the ways in which folks can become supporters. Can I ask what options you have available and what your preferred method would be?

I’m ok with Paypal subscription, but I’d rather prefer annual or semiannual payments. One-time anonymous donations would work even better.

[HeWa]

Based on my experience: I’d suggest to improve the communication about “How to become a supporter, what do I gain and how can I stop my contribution?” (This is not meant as an argument pro or con ads. Nothing to say against advertisement - as long as it does not bother me as a supporter. Which was one good argument to became one.)

[joellercoaster]

Likewise, I would like to increase my monthly contribution - my original level no longer represents how much I play here or the amount of enjoyment I get from OGS. A way to do this easily would be awesome.

[trohde]

@Nails, @joellercoaster: I have done it before, it’s quite easy.

1. 

2. 

3. Click “Cancel this support”:
   

4. Set up new payment

[anoek]

@joellercoaster @Nails , as @trohde said you can do it today by canceling and recreated, but we are also going to be updating the payment system so you can do this directly.

[anoek]

@HeWa

I’d suggest to improve the communication about “How to become a supporter, what do I gain and how can I stop my contribution?”

Indeed, we do need to update our message now

[terrence_brannon]

I’ve been paying 1.00/month for a few months. I figured something was better than nothing. I am 100% in favor of ads for non paying members and will be happy to save my 1.00… Ads don’t bother me in fact I like the win win situation it creates for the advertiser and publisher.