I have some rather radical ideas for how both voting power, access and volunteering incentive could be structured. It required a rather large willingness to try something radical that could fail. It also requires many hours of technical implementation. The current membership system could/should be retained running parallel to this new system, to address some of the concerns voiced here (membership forum).
Voting Power
Basically the idea is to distribute voting power between members, based on the amount of money they donate. In a way like how investors in a company, gain votes by shares, but with a twist. All money submitted to this system would be considered a donation to the institute, so there is no payout, unless payout was granted in relation to an assignment to a project. The cost of a vote could rise exponentially, such that no person could buy an unhealthy number of votes, without donating substantial amounts to get them.
Example:
Monthly subscriptions:
1 vote subscription - $1
2 vote subscription - $2
3 vote subscription - $4
4 vote subscription - $8
and so on....
The exponential could be set to something other than doubling (tripling, etc..) to adjust to a reasonable level of money/power relation.
An obvious problem with this kind of "micro payment" system, is costs on transactions. This could be solved by members having an account containing Token Points (TP). That account would be credited each month, depending on the member's subscription choices. Such a membership account would also allow for some interesting possibilities for exchange of TP's, either voluntarily or by force by a majority vote, or some other mechanism. Lots of fun options there.
Forum Access
I haven't thought much about this, but basically subscription could be made to individual forums, posts by specific members, posts that require subscription (as selected by the author), or like now, a membership area subscription. Lots of possibilities. Subscriptions should be payed with TP's as well.
Volunteering Incentives (Karma)
Having a TP system would make it possible for members to hand over TP to members that do extraordinary work in favor of the mission. Creating such a system would encourage people to make public, work they have done, and it would also encourage people to publish work that other volunteers have done. Work that members respect and want to acknowledge. Since no money actually changes hand, these TP's changing accounts are purely symbolic, but they still represent a value internally due to the value TP's have in votes and access.
These TP handovers could be easily indexed, and a list of "top volunteers" could be generated, providing vanity incentive as well as a way to evaluate trust to a member.
Project Funding
Funding for projects could be done, by those who want to support specific projects, or by a specific proposal for general transfer of TP's from all members based on a popular vote. There are other ways to do this, that I wont go into detail with here at this time. Sorry, limited time to do this now. I think many here can come up with rather imaginative possibilities.
Obstacles
1. Political will to do something radical with a potential to fail.
2. Technical implementation (ongoing).
3. Usability adjustments. (ongoing)
-- Well, that's the basics of it. I have been thinking about this kind of system in a variety of contexts, and what I have outlined here is the bare minimum, to gain the effects, I believe would be valuable to cooperation. There are plenty of possibilities, and I hope some day, to develop a commercial site, that provides these, and many other features. I hope you will consider the proposal, and I am willing to answer any questions and come up with solutions to any concerns you may have. I am also generally interested in a wider response to these ideas.
Unfortunately I don't have time to do much volunteering work at the moment. Hopefully in the near future, when things settle down for me, I can help with implementation, should it come to that. I realize this is quite a handful for a small organization like ImmInst, but I think it could propel the institute significantly forward in its aspirations.
Caveat: When money is put into a TP account, they are essentially handed over to the institute, with the institute retaining the right to change the rules of the system, in any way it sees fit. Putting money into a TP account is essentially a donation in its own right.
Edited by lightowl, 19 July 2008 - 11:38 AM.