Adding virtual currency to the Joomla community
Background
Lots of developers sacrifice lots of time by creating useful extension for the Joomla community. Many of these extensions are free - often developers doesn´t get the appreciation that they deserve. People download the extension without a simple “thank you”.
The concept of virtual currency
My idea is to implement virtual currency - let call it Joomgold, Karma or whatever. The idea is to let Joomla users gain/trade/buy virtual currency. The main purpose with Joomgold is to encourage contribution to the Joomla community.
How it could work
In order to control the cash flow there is a need of a bank. In this concept, JED is the bank. Developers will receive Joomgold when their extension are published at JED - meaning that JED is able to issue Joomgold every time an extension is published at JED. The developers could then transfer Joomgold to regular users in order to get help with translation, bugs or ideas. Users could also be able to buy extension with the Joomgold.
A bullletlist of thoughts- Joomgold would be “attached” to the profile at JED. Amount of Joomgold could be transfer automatically when extensions are published or manually transferred user to user.
- A market for the JED would let developers issue help for a certain amount of Joomgold, ie “I need my component to be translated for Swedish for this you will receive X Joomgold”. The market would be more like an open project tracker - users could search for job and earn Joomgold by contributing.
- In the JED profile for each user there would be “Gained income” - showing how much the users have earned in total - the user himself could see his own Balance
- Users should be able to spend their Joomgold on any Joomla project. Developers could sell their extension for a certain amount of Joomgold at their website
- JED could issue Joomgold each time an extension is published but also “extra” funds to the developer depending on popularity, downloads, updates etc.
So what do you think - waste of time, good, bad or what?
Original post http://bit.ly/gFlBIp
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Comment by Martin Blodau on December 29, 2010 at 3:06am -
I think it's kind of a cool idea and it could work really well. :-)
Reminds me a little bit of Ninjaforges "Bug your way in" program: (http://ninjaforge.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&am...)
Quite some time ago i did some extensive work with one of their extensions and it was really motivating and a rewarding experience to report a bug with a fix and in return get a free month of subscription.
Would imagine that your Joomgold idea can have the same effects for motivating people to help out.
Lets say i release a new extension and announce:
- "100 Joomgold for everyone who reports a recreatable bug and 200 Joomgold extra for providing a fix"
- Three months free subscription to my "premium extension club" for 300 Joomgold
Would definately gain some traction and help me as a developer immensely.
Another nice example of this in action is David Deutsch with his latest release of AEC (http://www.valanx.org) where he gave free subscriptions of different kinds to people that helped in the bughunting sessions.
Think that extension developers would love this currency idea from the start if it would be a "limited" currency. Meaning that you can only spend your Joomgold in the place where you earned it.
The tricky part with your idea would be the thing with having Joomgold as a "global" currency in the JED. Can imagine that some people will feel initial resistance to the idea of giving people benefits trough Joomgold that they earned somewhere else.
So that "global" part would have to be thought trough very carefully and presented in a smart way in order to succeed. The "limited" part could work out right away if implemented nicely in the JED.
Should definately look further into this and maybe find some examples of other projects that use similar systems for rewarding volunteer work.
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Comment by SWEUP on December 29, 2010 at 6:19am -
"
Think that extension developers would love this currency idea from the start if it would be a "limited" currency. Meaning that you can only spend your Joomgold in the place where you earned it.
The tricky part with your idea would be the thing with having Joomgold as a "global" currency in the JED. Can imagine that some people will feel initial resistance to the idea of giving people benefits
trough Joomgold that they earned somewhere else."I also think this could be difficult for devs to accept but i also think Joomgold would be only used for already free extension. I don´t think bigger commercial extension, let say Jomsocial, would like to sell their extension in joomgold. But let say already free extensions like Akeeba etc could be sold in Joomgold. Hopefully this would lead to greater contribution evolving the extensions even more.
In this case, there could also be an alternative to collaborate, for an example, with Drupal. Meaning that you could spend your gold between two open source projects (ie you translate a Joomla project and for that gold, you buy a Drupal module).
Furthermore, using gold or not, I think the "Market" function would be interesting. Right now it´s pretty hard both for devs and regular users to contribute (many might not a agree). What I mean is, from a noob/regular user perspective - "How do i reach out the get help for my extension (finding bugs, get translation done)? Right now users has to go to the devs website and get involved in the project in order to get information that the dev need help. The market would be an easy way (for devs) to publish for help and easy for users to contribute (assign to tasks).
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Comment by Mark W. Bender on December 29, 2010 at 4:33pm -
Here's some more info along the lines of your idea:
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/11/the-op...
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Comment by SWEUP on December 30, 2010 at 3:03pm
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Interesting reading - thx for link!
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Comment by Victor Drover on January 3, 2011 at 6:23am -
What would people but with their Joomla gold? What would set the value?
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Comment by SWEUP on January 3, 2011 at 8:49am
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As i describe above devs could "sell" their extensions in Joomgold - ie "secure" that users are comitted to Joomla. But you could also buy templates, tickets to events etc.
If JED have a fix value for issue Joomgold to devs for publishing extensions at JED, devs should have the freedom to set any value they like for translations, bugfixing (depending on compexity, personal Joomgold balance or simply how eager they are the get help?)
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Comment by Leo Lammerink on January 4, 2011 at 10:58am -
Virtual currency does not buy me bread and butter nor does it pays my kids schoolfees
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Comment by SWEUP on January 4, 2011 at 11:17am
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Well, the idea initially wasn´t for you to buy you bread in "phase 1".
But if the Joomgold could act as a layer between "Non-commercial" and "Commercial" you could post for help at the "Market" and let people work for you (and receive Joomgold).
If this help you to get your extension translated in many language and many bugs fixed, you could sell your extension for real money (and buy bread etc) - hopefully a stable and multi-translated extension would attract more potential buyers.
The main purpose is to get more contribution to Joomla - this also would lead to increased popularity for Joomla as CMS (and a bigger potential buyers market).
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Comment by Amy Stephen on January 4, 2011 at 6:13pm
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I think you're overall point is a good one, that being it's important to recognize contributions and for the community to be thinking in these terms. In the end, it's impossible to measure value. The concept of a meritocracy is a good one but it's like Utopia, good to reach for, but don't be naive -- you will not arrive.
It's up to every contributor to give, without expectation. If you can't do that, don't give. It's also important that everyone contributing know it is their responsibility, alone, to leverage their involvement in the community towards their personal goals.
A successful community understands it is in the best interest of everyone to keep striving towards a meritocracy and to encourage involvement. Not easy to do, I can say that after five years of observing several communities.
Good topic - thanks for sharing!
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Comment by SWEUP on January 5, 2011 at 12:21am
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Thanks Amy for input!
What do think about a "market" described above? I agree on
"A successful community understands it is in the best interest of everyone to keep striving towards a meritocracy and to encourage involvement.
But what i misses is a easy way for noobs/regular users to contribute - if a user don´t know how to contribute, how could he ;) Could the market be an easy way in? or..
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