More or less by chance I discovered as late as today the possibilty to become a member and thus to support Little Golem (only 20 USD per year, donations are welcome, too). I assume many other players haven't yet noticed this possibility to help Richard maintain and expand this fantastic site. I appeal to all of us who enjoy playing here to apply for membership and to pay their fee. I can well understand that in some countries 20 dollars is a lot of money, but in the affluent societies of Western Europe and North America it shouldn't really be a problem. Let all of us who can afford it give our contribution! Click on SUPPORT in the Main Menu on the left.
I do agree. Richard is probably showing too much discretion about this new feature. I suggest a banner on the main page. Proud to have subscribed yesterday, i call everyone to join Little Golem membership and support this wonderful site. Jean.
I just saw this forum message also. I just joined and I also sent in a donation as I can afford to and this site is my main site on the internet now and is worth a lot more than twenty dollars to me.
Thank you so much for your work Richard. I would never have noticed your 'support' entry, I even had trouble finding it when I was just directed to it! Rather than have your main banner say 'play chess on little golem' say 'support littlegolem! become a member!'
One thought also is to allow us to click on a list of who are the members and sponsors. This is a common practice with many charitable organizations.
And speaking of which, I know we on little golem have a higher level of consciousness, I wonder if we can work together to promote more human and environmental/ecological harmony on our planet.
I don't think there should be a banner which asks for support (as long as there are no financial problems, that is).
It's littlegolem's style to do this in such a modest way (in stead of begging for money like a commercial fool). I like it this way. I think people who want to pay will find it or ask for it.
"I think people who want to pay will find it or ask for it."
Some of us did ask about it, in a previous thread. I didn't notice the "Support" link until this thread pointed it out. Richard Rognlie's PBMserv website has a small box on the main page for donations. I don't find that offensive in the least. I wouldn't call a little more visibility "begging." Richard is providing a very valuable service, worth much more than $20 per year to me. A more conspicuous reminder of the value of this service to us users, seems perfectly appropriate. And it might result in more donations.
Kla, i can only say you are a more observant person than me, I neverrr would have found it, and i was the very person originally looking to contribute in the first place.
If I ever notice support I would assume (erroneously) that it meant Littlegolem supporting me in using the site and I would never have gone there.
How about for each name listed give a special color if you are a member/contributor.
I too, was one of the people in favor of some sort of support for Richard to help maintain this site. And I too WOULD NEVER HAVE FOUND THE LINK if not for the posting of this thread. While I cannot handle becoming a full fledged member right now, I can, and did, donate 6 months worth :-)
Thank you, Richard...I appreciate the hours of fun you have established for us.
I would like to become a supporting member as this site is one of my main sites in the I-net and I think it's the best site for turn-wise gamin there is on the Net.
Is there a way to send a donation from Europe without paying too much bank fees? International money orders are expensive and I want to support this site, not the banks.
By the way: IMHO the donations should be a POSSIBILITY. Don't make this site a paying-members-only-site
Besides credit cards, you could also pay via PayPal which is available in many European countries. Once you have transferred money from your bank account to your PayPal account, there is no charge to the payer from PayPal. But I do not know if European banks would charge you to transfer money to PayPal or not. Details are at the website (try the "Help" link.)
has anyone from the us had difficulty with the ecommerce site being used to collect fees? i have tried using my credit card and paypal and had not luck. the paypal transaction just never showed up and my credit card would not process. it said something about my bank refusing to authorize or something. any one else having trouble?
perhaps some perks would be a good idea. goldtoken.com is a site which provides a selection of games for free, but for a modest membership fee u get access to lots of game variants and spinoffs, exclusive forums, chance of forming your own little club with inter-club compos etc. perhaps a similar system would work for little golem, and encourage more people to support this wonderful site.
Does anyone know what operating costs are associated with such a site? I'm not sure if I'm being realistic, but I'd rather see this site mirrored somehow by more than one user, or become a new kind of P2P network, than see one person forced to squeeze money out of users.
A lot of users seem to like this site a lot, and spend lots of time here. How many people have programming skills? I'm not much of a technical programmer, but security issues aside, having more than one server for this site shouldn't be too complicated, and a P2P network between a number of dedicated or part-time servers would be an interesting challenge in terms of cryptography and networking.
Richard never asked for a dime. It has been his satisfied users of the games offered here that first brought up the idea of allowing us to contribute something to help defray his costs (not to mention his time). It was we who repeatedly broached the subject until he finally set up an account and made contributing easy and painless. No one is trying to "squeeze" money out of anybody...
Oh, those red letters! **NOT** a member! Richard's really putting the squeeze on, isn't he James? You're not sure if you're being realistic? Let me assure you, you're not. You're proposing massive changes which- *flash bulletin* - would cost an incredible amount of time and resources, which in turn- *this just in* - cost money!
Hmm... perhaps I was being unrealistic, but I deny that any cost need be involved. There is a lot of open-source software that has been developed at no cost except for the time of those involved... look at the software available for the freenet community, www.freenetproject.org for an example. But you're probably right, it would be hard to find enough people who care enough to completely rip this thing apart and rewrite it.
Don't worry, Mike. Nothing abnormal. Just point on page 2 the thread "problems joining". You should be registered as member within a couple of business days.
I would be happy to support this site. Is there any way to send cash? (at own risk, of course.) I do not use credit cards, nor do I wish to open a pay-pal account.
Little Golem