I signed up for a monthly donation, but I still see the banner inviting met to donate [Thank you for using iNaturalist! Does iNaturalist spark your curiosity? Does it bring you joy? If so, it’s easy to contribute in 30+ currencies. ]
I know it’s only a technical issue and that it’s silly, but the continued presence of the banner makes me feel I didn’t give enough or that my donation was not properly processed.
I’m not sure if this would be a good idea, as users might get a stronger impression that the intended message is “you are using our free service, so you should feel bad if you don’t give money”. I’m not sure if this really is the intention? It would deny the fact that making observations and identifying stuff for others is no less a valuable contribution, and is actually volunteer work that can be quite time consuming. Some people wish to contribute in terms of work rather than money (and vice versa). Maybe a possibility would be to provide an option for every user with an account to disable the banner (opt-out)? This is how it works in Wikipedia at least (with an account, you click it away and it is gone).
I don’t mind the “annoying” requests for money on various websites as long as it’s for a good non-profit cause. I tune them out, whether I’ve already donated or don’t plan to (but still might).
I use ad-blockers in my everyday browsing so I find seeing advertisements like this quite noticable.
Same for me, I’m using adblock and my intention of donating shouldn’t rely on giant banner I see all the time, it should dissapear after you read it as it usually happens with such ads.
I’m kind of on two minds about it. If it is there as part of a short term blitz, kind of like PBS pledge drives, then I can live with it. If it is permanent, then, yes some way to hide it for users who have contributed or wish not to see it would be nice. For example, while I currently don’t contribute financially, I’d like to think the dozens of hours a month I contribute in curating is considered an in-kind donation.
I suggest that anytime a user requests some new mostly-unneeded feature on iNat that requires staff time to address, they should have to make a donation. I’m only half joking.
They added a little (X) button, so you can remove announcements from the dashboard now.
The X button makes it go away for a short while, but it comes back after a day or two (I am a monthly donor).
I like the little changing messages that donations are welcome. It’s a reminder that nothing in life is free and if it’s valuable to you, you should be willing to support it monetarily. No guarantees that iNat will even exist a decade from now.
Because we’re changing the announcement frequently (currently once a day), you have to ignore each one. Apologies for the inconvenience and thank you for being a monthly supporter. Please ignore freely.
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