5 ms·

Dang, it's people like you that are the reason we can't have nice things. I am pretty bearish on BAT's system myself, and I wouldn't use it personally, but it's

Dang, it's people like you that are the reason we can't have nice things. I am pretty bearish on BAT's system myself, and I wouldn't use it personally, but it's your attitude toward this stuff that makes me not want to try to come up with ideas to help content creators or the "advertising problem" on the internet. Stuff like this is why advertising still exists and is unfortunately the superior choice still in monetization even though it is beyond shitty.

reificator 9y ago
I think you're being unreasonably harsh here. You have to consider the perspective of the people you want to help. Lashing out at me for explaining why it's a difficult problem doesn't particularly help solve the problem. Let me try again: Think about how much spam you receive on a regular basis. Now imagine you're in a position where you have fans wanting to send you money: you probably get all the bulk spam plus a ton of targeted spam simply for being notable. This goes double if you have a need for people to be able to message you legitimate business inquiries, because then you're going to get illegitimate inquiries as well. Then imagine one of the messages in the flood (I know people with six figure unread message counts) that is your inbox said that they had some money available for you, and all you had to do was sign up for their service with your personal information. You'd be crazy to be willing to do that without researching, likely for several hours. And if more of these services start popping up, then you have to check up on each one individually as they come in. That's not something most people in that position can afford to do for 0.01% of their inbox. Or you could ignore them, but then you're at risk of upsetting your fans because they're trying to send you money and you're not receiving it, out of a quite reasonable assumption that it could be a scam. No one wins in that situation either. Or, consider the following situation: Someone you know recommends a donations platform, or you find one while searching, whatever. You sign up for an account, post the link somewhere, and people use it. It's much more inconvenient for the users who are giving the money and have to track down what platform you use, but at the same time they also get a level of assurance that any money they send will end up in your hands in the end.
- axlprose 9y ago
  > Lashing out at me for explaining why it's a difficult problem doesn't particularly help solve the problem. You didn't originally explain why it was a difficult problem at all, all you did was insinuate that most people are too lazy to read documentation, made hyperbolic statements about the difficulty of claiming money, and seemed to suggest that therefore this specific project is a failure or something. While this post is a bit better at clarifying your argument, the post you're responding to is still 100% in the right here. You may have thought you were helping with it, but the fact is that all most people like to do, is poke holes in reasonable solutions, just because they don't exactly match whatever specific criteria they had in mind. You have to remember that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and it's so easy to come up with criticisms, that even the people you're critiquing have probably thought of them already, much to everyone's astonishment probably. What's not easy, is coming up with any kind of alternatives or possible solutions to these holes, because if it were, they would've likely been implemented. Believe it or not, all this does is demoralize people actively trying to solve the hard problems you claim to be trying to "help", thus hurting your own cause in the end, because there's no motivation to be gained by helping a bunch of entitled armchair know-it-alls. Despite what everybody may like to think, technological progress is fundamentally a people problem just as much as it is an actual technological problem. EDIT: Just for full disclosure, as a cryptocurrency investor myself, I also am bearish on BAT. But that's just because I'm bearish on anything having to do with Etherium by default.
  - reificator 9y ago
    The original question was sarcastically asking whether reading the documentation was too much to ask, implying that laziness was the issue. I responded that for the target market, yes, it actually is too much to ask, and not because of laziness. I didn't come in and say the whole thing was a bad idea and that it should be abandoned. Just that if the design requires more than a paragraph of explanation, then that's a serious problem for the target audience. As well as pointing out that the idea of not requiring opt-in actually causes the friction that it seeks to avoid. If insight into the target audience's perspective is demoralizing, you honestly should stop and reconsider your priorities. I say that without any kind of sarcasm or criticism in my voice. If the people you want to help believe that the thing you're making will cause problems for them, that's a red flag. It's not always true, and it might not be true for all users, but it's something to seriously consider. If people are worried that your product will appear to be a scam, you absolutely need to reconsider.

reificator 9y ago

I think you're being unreasonably harsh here. You have to consider the perspective of the people you want to help. Lashing out at me for explaining why it's a difficult problem doesn't particularly help solve the problem. Let me try again: Think about how much spam you receive on a regular basis. Now imagine you're in a position where you have fans wanting to send you money: you probably get all the bulk spam plus a ton of targeted spam simply for being notable. This goes double if you have a need for people to be able to message you legitimate business inquiries, because then you're going to get illegitimate inquiries as well. Then imagine one of the messages in the flood (I know people with six figure unread message counts) that is your inbox said that they had some money available for you, and all you had to do was sign up for their service with your personal information. You'd be crazy to be willing to do that without researching, likely for several hours. And if more of these services start popping up, then you have to check up on each one individually as they come in. That's not something most people in that position can afford to do for 0.01% of their inbox. Or you could ignore them, but then you're at risk of upsetting your fans because they're trying to send you money and you're not receiving it, out of a quite reasonable assumption that it could be a scam. No one wins in that situation either. Or, consider the following situation: Someone you know recommends a donations platform, or you find one while searching, whatever. You sign up for an account, post the link somewhere, and people use it. It's much more inconvenient for the users who are giving the money and have to track down what platform you use, but at the same time they also get a level of assurance that any money they send will end up in your hands in the end.

axlprose 9y ago
> Lashing out at me for explaining why it's a difficult problem doesn't particularly help solve the problem. You didn't originally explain why it was a difficult problem at all, all you did was insinuate that most people are too lazy to read documentation, made hyperbolic statements about the difficulty of claiming money, and seemed to suggest that therefore this specific project is a failure or something. While this post is a bit better at clarifying your argument, the post you're responding to is still 100% in the right here. You may have thought you were helping with it, but the fact is that all most people like to do, is poke holes in reasonable solutions, just because they don't exactly match whatever specific criteria they had in mind. You have to remember that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and it's so easy to come up with criticisms, that even the people you're critiquing have probably thought of them already, much to everyone's astonishment probably. What's not easy, is coming up with any kind of alternatives or possible solutions to these holes, because if it were, they would've likely been implemented. Believe it or not, all this does is demoralize people actively trying to solve the hard problems you claim to be trying to "help", thus hurting your own cause in the end, because there's no motivation to be gained by helping a bunch of entitled armchair know-it-alls. Despite what everybody may like to think, technological progress is fundamentally a people problem just as much as it is an actual technological problem. EDIT: Just for full disclosure, as a cryptocurrency investor myself, I also am bearish on BAT. But that's just because I'm bearish on anything having to do with Etherium by default.
- reificator 9y ago
  The original question was sarcastically asking whether reading the documentation was too much to ask, implying that laziness was the issue. I responded that for the target market, yes, it actually is too much to ask, and not because of laziness. I didn't come in and say the whole thing was a bad idea and that it should be abandoned. Just that if the design requires more than a paragraph of explanation, then that's a serious problem for the target audience. As well as pointing out that the idea of not requiring opt-in actually causes the friction that it seeks to avoid. If insight into the target audience's perspective is demoralizing, you honestly should stop and reconsider your priorities. I say that without any kind of sarcasm or criticism in my voice. If the people you want to help believe that the thing you're making will cause problems for them, that's a red flag. It's not always true, and it might not be true for all users, but it's something to seriously consider. If people are worried that your product will appear to be a scam, you absolutely need to reconsider.