[tptacek]

Definitely a fantastic way to abate nuisance outreach is to allow people to entitle themselves to your time for the price of a 12 pack of beer.

This will have the opposite effect of the one you propose. Virtually everybody can afford $20; what he's doing is giving people new permission to contact him, and not only that but by attaching a price tag to it he's giving them expectations about his attention.

[metaphorm]

yes, actually. compared to $0 cash gate, anyway. he wants some level of email interaction, but only if you're above some threshold of seriousness. its not a very high threshold, but is enough to prevent trolling and spamming in any case.

[tptacek]

You really think that now that he's posted this offer, nobody's going to troll or spam him without spending $20 first?

I'm not suggesting that this is the most impactful charity thing anyone's ever done --- this is marginal stuff, to be sure --- but the trope where we try to unwind any charitable impulse anyone has to some insidious subtextual personal interest is always tiresome and virtually never very insightful.

It's particularly dumb in this case.

[metaphorm]

you ever been to a bar/stage where there's a cover charge at the door? you know why the cover charge is such a tiny amount of money?

this is a cover charge. yes, I do expect it to keep out 99% of trolls and spammers.