this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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Lemmy

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[Help Design Lemmy] How to improve the Joinlemmy Donation page? (join-lemmy.org)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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This is a follow-up to my previous post asking for design suggestions for the new donation dialog. It gave a lot of valuable feedback which is why I'm making another similar post.

This time it's about the donation page on join-lemmy.org (linked above). What can be done to improve the texts and design? For a start I already changed the text to the same one from the donation dialog. Here more space is available, so a longer text with more details could be written (possibly below the donation buttons).

What do you think about the available donation options? Do they work for you or would you prefer to donate through a different platform? On the other hand it is possible that the number of available options is already too confusing. Would it help to add a short description for each button?

Below are lists of contributors, translators and sponsors. They haven't been updated in two years and no one complained, which indicates that they don't serve as motivation for people to contribute or donate. So I would remove that whole section which will leave a lot of free space. What else can we put there, maybe a list of reasons why people should donate?

By the way I plan to make a recurring series of posts like this. The next ones will likely cover onboarding for new users, the reports page and more. If you know a catchy name for this series you can also comment it below.

Edit: The changes are now deployed, but you are welcome to make further suggestions.

Help Design Lemmy

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

0.6 / 3 devs funded*

Currently the information is shown when hovering over ("Based on a median European €50,000 software developer salary from developersalary.com"), which is behaviour expected when you hover over an (i)-icon (or a question mark). If you put in an asterisk, there should be somewhere on the bottom of this element that refers to said asterisk to indicate the extra info. It's not intuitive to having to mouse-over an asterisk, imo.

4 months remaining

I imagine this is referring to current balance. I'm not saying there should be a sense of urgency communicated but it might hurt donations if there's is shown that you've got 4 months left anyway.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Right, I removed the asterisk and added a dotted underline instead to indicate hover text. The text with 4 months left is an old leftover, Ive removed it. Also made the text bigger and changed the button layout (though it looks too green now).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Personally I like ❔ like the top 2 of this image:

But that's just 1 opinion.

I agree that this is very green! Perhaps adding some icons of the platforms will help break it up a bit:

https://en.liberapay.com/about/logos

https://www.patreon.com/en-GB/brand

https://docs.opencollective.com/help/about/introduction#media-logo

Crypto is a bit more difficult, I don't think there's a universal crypto logo/icon. Perhaps Bitcoin will suffice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Not sure about the question mark, but the icons are a great idea! Here is how they look with different colored buttons:

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Even though it's not in line with the rest of the page, I like the contrast of the icons with the blue more than the green.

Off-topic but Patreon's logo got really ugly. What the hell

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Short and simple is always better, people stop reading if it's too long.

Thanks to the generosity of our users we are able to develop Lemmy as an open source platform free of tracking and ads. Making a donation will allow us to continue maintaining and improving the platform. To make a one-time or recurring donation click the button below. Thank you for using Lemmy.

Here's a good listicle about donation pages. https://wpforms.com/donation-page-examples-to-inspire-your-online-fundraising/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

That is true, but not so easy to do. To make donation pages like those in your link would require setting up some kind of nonprofit and directly handling credit card payments with some payment processor, and probably various legal requirements. By relying on existing donation platforms we have much less hassle.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Sorry, I meant just the text as examples. Maybe a cute picture with the devs all together would help.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

We devs have never met in person, and we are too shy to publicly share our pictures :D

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That is true, but not so easy to do. To make donation pages like those in your link would require setting up some kind of nonprofit and directly handling credit card payments with some payment processor

Shouldn't it be a good idea anyway to set up a limited liability company at some point anyway? in case you will get sued.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

AGPL specifies that everything is provided without liability or warranty, so I dont see how anyone could have reason to sue. Besides Lemmy is not a company, if anything a nonprofit would make sense.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

IANAL , but theoretically a judge could decide that part of the AGPL is "unreasonable" and a case could go to trail which could be expensive.

Also you are still running the lemmy.ml instance which could theoretically lead to a lawsuit. its why lemmy.world created the fedihosting foundation which reportedly functions as a limited liability company.

Also a cooperative (what you want to set up), where some of the profit in the form of a salary go to the "owners" which are the workers as far as i can tell can't be a non profit

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

The patreon page sucks. You can and should show the tiers without requiring people to become members first.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Not sure what you mean, I can see these without login:

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

All of the tiers show for me too, without me being a member or being logged into Patreon.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm loading it up on mobile

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Okay I looked at it, and on mobile, if you're not logged in, it always shows that join for free button regardless of your tiers. They want you to join patreon first.

I really hate patreon, and wish ppl would just use liberapay, as its more focused on developers anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Switched to LiberaPay. Though I dislike the way they try and guilt you into making lump-sum payments.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

You can view the tiers without doing so however on mobile.

Edit: viewable without joining by tapping here:

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

So can I. I would like to ask why special support is cheaper than regular supporter?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

I'm not too good at patreon, but I'll take a look at that one.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you know a catchy name for this series you can also comment it below.

Add "help design lemmy" next to the title? e.g.

Help Design Lemmy: How to improve the Joinlemmy Donation page?

As i said adding a "learn more" section would be really helpful. right now it sounds like you are not really sure you even want donations. if you won't believe people should donate and are not willing to explain why people should do it why should potential donors believe it? . so far i didn't really see a noticeable spike in the patreon and liberapay stats despite many of the largest servers using the newest version (you can enable it to show the version of servers). some projects have a fairly consistent increases in the number of donations for years (e.g. 1 2 3 ) and i don't think lemmy has less potential. even piefed donations have been increasing organically.

Of course A/B testing will be the best way to prove these claims.

Maybe we could crowd source a list of arguments about why people should donate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

"Help Design Lemmy" sounds good, thanks for the suggestion. I looked around for some info about A/B testing but it seems relatively complicated to setup. Do you have any tools to suggest for that? And I can see what you mean about the text sounding unsure. What do you think about this one?

We provide Lemmy as free and open source platform without any tracking or advertising, and work every day to improve it. Yet we also need money to pay our bills and provide for our families. Only 2% of Lemmy users donate, so we need your donation to keep this model working. Thank you for helping to create a new form of social media.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I looked around for some info about A/B testing but it seems relatively complicated to setup. Do you have any tools to suggest for that?

Not really. i know wikimedia foundation did that but it is probably not the best option. googling gives a few results but that's not really insightful.

And I can see what you mean about the text sounding unsure. What do you think about this one?

I don't think this solves the problems i mentioned (including in the pull request). donations and working full time are a means to an end. the average response by average joe might be "well they can just get a regular job like the rest of us".

I don't we should insist on just having a elevator pitch. sure an elevator pitch is very useful but i know that when i wanted to donate to charities I looked for a decent chunk of information to help me make a decision.

this part that appears inside thunderbird (which seems to be doing very well interm of fundraising) is more like something i had in mind (in term of feeling important)

there is some research about this type of messaging (see risk aversion and fear appeals). naturally it does not feel great because i think the thought that a project is at risk and might need donations is a negative evaluation that will probably produce a negative emotion. but i think it is the honest truth for thunderbird and lemmy and any large scale open source project.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I rewrote the text again, have a look and let me know what you think. Also made some more design changes the donation page.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

All those terms, "increasing shareholder value" , "no tracking", "is billionaire proof" , "no venture capital available". would be really hard to understand for anyone that is not a hardcore fosshead . even if they will understand understanding the benefits of these properties is not easy . reportedly the average age of a reddit user is 23, how many 23 year old know what "venture capital" and "shareholder" even mean?

Maybe lemmy needs something like a whitepaper or a manifesto.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

I can replace them if you can suggest better alternatives. Anyway Lemmy users seem to be older than Reddit users, and those who have spare money to donate should know these normal financial terms.