[tmbchr]™

Tim Boucher Dollars?



It’s that time again: threading together conversations from other posts…

  1. Supposedly QQ coins were originally designed to be awarded to top gamers
  2. The CEO of Shanda Interactive was allegedly sentenced to five years jail time for issuing $250,000 worth of virtual currency to himself.

Okay, now combine those with this discussion which arose on my post about disabling the RSS feed in an effort to encourage other types of interactions on this site and within the community of people which make it up. A reader named “cheeba” suggests that we find a way to reward top commenters and those whose comments are voted on as being “more valuable”. They point to Reddit which has up/down arrows allowing registered users to log in and vote to move an article up and down according to importantance/popularity.

Now here comes the quantum leap: What if I started issuing a community currency here on this site which would initially be rewarded to top contributors and which would be redeemable - potentially - for goods and services? Like, you could comment a certain amount and if your comments rose to the top through community decision, you would be able to redeem your points or whatever for t-shirts or books or audio recordings or something.

Does that sound like a project in which people would be interested in participating? It sounds really fun and weird and cool to me, though there would be an assload of technical considerations to figure out.

It would be a cool thing to attempt though, and we could even potentially find a way to hook it into other ideas covered here, such as the skills bank idea, and the RipplePay system. It would also be cool to find a way to integrate it into my existing system for me to personally make money off this site: through ad revenue streams, donations, etc. If we were able to perfect a system like this here, we could potentially also export it for other people to use on their own websites and in other types of shared value communities.

Homework: are there any other bloggers out there who have issued their own currency? How do we begin breaking a project like this down into actionable steps?







11 Reader Responses

  1. Samuel Bowles’ Local Scrip - Pop Occulture Says:
    October 17th, 2007 at 12:40 pm

    […] Very interesting in relation to the Tim Boucher Dollars idea: FEDERAL currency was in short supply during the Great Depression, so local banks, stores, town governments and others with initiative issued their own scrip. In Springfield, Massachusetts, the publisher of the Springfield Union News, Samuel Bowles, began to pay his employees in scrip redeemable at local stores, which used it to pay for advertisements in the newspaper. Seeing Bowles regularly and knowing his character, locals developed more confidence in his dollars than federal money, which helped the Springfield economy stay relatively healthy during those hard times. […]

  2. Crystal Says:
    October 17th, 2007 at 12:46 pm

    Whuffie.

    The usual economic incentives have disappeared from the book’s world. Whuffie has replaced money, providing a motivation for people to do useful and creative things. A person’s Whuffie is a general measurement of his or her overall reputation, and Whuffie is lost and gained according to a person’s favorable or unfavorable actions. The question is, who determines which actions are favorable or unfavorable? In Down and Out, the answer is public opinion. Rudely pushing past someone on the sidewalk will definitely lose you points from them (and possibly bystanders who saw you), while composing a much-loved symphony will earn you Whuffie from everyone who enjoyed it.

    […]

    There are few details in the book about how this system actually worked; most of the explanations given are very general, like this one: “Whuffie recaptured the true essence of money: in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you wouldn’t starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum could buy you security and peace. By measuring the thing that money really represented — your personal capital with your friends and neighbors — you more accurately gauged your success”.

  3. Tim Boucher Says:
    October 17th, 2007 at 12:50 pm

    Charlie Stross talks about similar in Accelerando, with sort of public trust ratings or something. I forget the term exactly.

    Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity

    Wasn’t David Bowie also publicly trading on his catalog or something for a while too? Is that still going on? Anybody know or can find more info on that?

  4. Crystal Says:
    October 17th, 2007 at 12:52 pm

    This site looks promising, but the links only point to the person’s LiveJournal page.

  5. Tim Boucher Says:
    October 17th, 2007 at 1:02 pm

    http://www.altruists.org/ideas/economics/altruistic/
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LETS
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_%28Slashdot%29#Moderation
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egoboo
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital
    http://www.digital.udk-berlin.de/en/pr...mmer07/haupt/bodytech/googlering.html

  6. Michael Says:
    October 17th, 2007 at 3:34 pm

    I think it’s a good idea. I would totally pay for a Pop Occulture t-shirt with real money, though. But it would have to be a cool one. The problem with your idea is that the money has to come from somewhere, and if this really is a community, then that shouldn’t be from your pocket. That would be stupid.

  7. speedbird Says:
    October 18th, 2007 at 6:46 am

    One of the big questions is: if you can print money, who do you give it to? As far as I can see, conventional paper currencies are intricately tied to stocks and shares: you turn a dollar into a share, increase the value tenfold, and that’s like printing nine dollars. But there are certainly other ways to do it.

  8. Julia Says:
    October 18th, 2007 at 7:42 pm

    whatever for t-shirts or books or audio recordings or something[…]assload of technical considerations

    Like how to built a Light Saber. I want a Light Saber. Remember a long time ago there were a lot of posts about building them? Something about red being green in another dimension and visa versa?

  9. Tim Boucher Says:
    October 19th, 2007 at 2:54 am

    What the hell?

  10. Julia Says:
    October 19th, 2007 at 10:39 am

    Instead of the technical considerations of a web site figure out the technical considerations of building a Light Saber. I thought the comment section was pretty close to an answer when that topic was current. Build it and they will come.

  11. Social Money: “Get Rich And Make Your Friends Rich” - To[p oBcultu]re Says:
    October 29th, 2007 at 2:32 pm

    […] An Indian website is offering the equivalent of what I was describing as Tim Boucher Dollars. Social Money program is an innovation by Indyarocks where the members will be rewarded for their day to day interaction with friends and family and it is also a way to reward user generated content (UGC). […]



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