In short, we (the founders) are reciprocating with our own commitment contracts, pledging $1395 to Beeminder users to force ourselves to stay on our own yellow brick roads. Maybe it’s more in the category of a nice little gesture that most users won’t even know about. It certainly doesn’t address fundamentally the issue you raised. (Of course, that wasn’t the point of it—we just really needed to raise the stakes on our own commitment contracts since paying ourselves wasn’t cutting it!)
(PS: Not bikeshedding by any means! You can’t imagine how helpful all this has been. Especially the further consultation we’ve been having with pjeby offline, but this whole comment thread as well.)
Not really. I mean, I guess it helps with the general status differential, but it doesn’t resolve the general “ick” I get from the idea of a transaction where one of two things will happen:
I will get value, and you will not get paid.
I will get negative value, and you will get paid.
Basically, someone always loses; it pattern-matches a negative-sum game, even though it’s not one. But you’re binding me to give to charity, then there’s a way to see it as win/win from my perspective, and win/win from your perspective (success story, or charity story plus money; either of which is helpful for your marketing).
...
This is about the 3rd or 4th rationalization I’ve given for why this is important to me. I honestly can’t give a good external reason for why you should believe any of them, since they’re probably not all truly necessary factors in why I’m making an issue of this. But I can sincerely attest that despite the shifting rationalizations, this feels to me like a good line for me to hold, and like something that will honestly help you get customers if you do it.
Do you think this mitigates the problem at all: http://blog.beeminder.com/blogdog
In short, we (the founders) are reciprocating with our own commitment contracts, pledging $1395 to Beeminder users to force ourselves to stay on our own yellow brick roads. Maybe it’s more in the category of a nice little gesture that most users won’t even know about. It certainly doesn’t address fundamentally the issue you raised. (Of course, that wasn’t the point of it—we just really needed to raise the stakes on our own commitment contracts since paying ourselves wasn’t cutting it!)
(PS: Not bikeshedding by any means! You can’t imagine how helpful all this has been. Especially the further consultation we’ve been having with pjeby offline, but this whole comment thread as well.)
Not really. I mean, I guess it helps with the general status differential, but it doesn’t resolve the general “ick” I get from the idea of a transaction where one of two things will happen:
I will get value, and you will not get paid.
I will get negative value, and you will get paid.
Basically, someone always loses; it pattern-matches a negative-sum game, even though it’s not one. But you’re binding me to give to charity, then there’s a way to see it as win/win from my perspective, and win/win from your perspective (success story, or charity story plus money; either of which is helpful for your marketing).
...
This is about the 3rd or 4th rationalization I’ve given for why this is important to me. I honestly can’t give a good external reason for why you should believe any of them, since they’re probably not all truly necessary factors in why I’m making an issue of this. But I can sincerely attest that despite the shifting rationalizations, this feels to me like a good line for me to hold, and like something that will honestly help you get customers if you do it.