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by timwiseman 5933 days ago
The moment you put the donate button on your website you’re calling yourself a charity case.

This line caught me. Yes, if you put a donate button you are drawing a parallel between yourself and a charity case if not outright calling yourself one.

But if you put a tip button on it is a very different situation. That is more comparing yourself to say a skilled hairdresser (it comes to mind since my step mother is one) where the end user is thanking you monetarily for the good work that you have done and expecting it to encourage you to keep doing good work in the future.
1 comments
andrewmayne 5933 days ago
I hear you, but we all have a pretty good idea how to compensate hair dressers and waiters. We also agree that there's an implicit contract that tipping is part of the transaction.

When was the last time you tipped the producers of your favorite television show?

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timwiseman 5933 days ago
An interesting comparison.

I've often been interested in how some things get chosen for tipping and other things not. I think one of the criteria is how convenient it is to actually tip. It would be hard to tip the producer of my favorite television show, effortless to tip my waittress. I think the other criteria is how personalized the experience is, in most things we tip for we are receiving a very personal close to one-one interaction.

But I think most blogs come closer to the waitress side than the television side. At least on blogs set up to receive them, it is relatively easy to tip (though I think it can and should become much easier in the future!). And the experience can be fairly specialized (I tend to read niche technical blogs rather than mainstream news ones), and fairly personal. After all, if I leave a comment on most blogs, I have a pretty good expectation that author will respond directly and intelligently to me. If I write a letter to the producers of a tv show, I might, if lucky, get a form letter and maybe a glossy photo of the cast back.

As to whether there is an "implicit contract" to tip bloggers, I think that particular piece of society is new enough that those rules are still being established.

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