On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 19:59:57 -0800 Ian Caldwell <inchosting@...400...> wrote:
you "buy" votes"
How does buying votes differ from just voting? Buy buying votes, voting becomes a special privilege (unless you can cast votes w/o paying and the two votes are differentiated and displayed separately, e.g: 10 "paid" up votes, 36 up votes, 17 down votes.) Perhaps there is some other privilege that can be sold?
Don't you have to worry about the users/voters voting for things that aren't beneficial to the project or ignoring more important things? In such a situation, would it be acceptable for the developers to ignore (at least temporarily) the user elected features to instead work on something else?
It is just a small step from buying votes to paying for features. Small enough that I'd worry about an user feeling that since they paid, the development team is now obligated to deliver (implicit contract).
Would money made from votes go to the feature on which the votes were cast or just go into the general fund? If they're not actually being used for the particular features then maybe they shouldn't be linked to them.
Unless you're using the buying votes to keep people from spamming the system or something. I assumed that the goal was fundraising.
Just my personal opinion.
Matthew Todd