Donation Pool Idea

Who hates odd money amounts?

I do and it drives me crazy (sometimes) working with random amounts of change in the URPG. It's not hard or really a big problem, just annoying.

Normally when this happens, URPGers either figure out some system to make it easier to track their money, buy a random item, bid a random amount of money in an auction, or simply round down to the nearest desired amount (equivalent to throwing money onto the street).

There probably is a better solution.

What if we had a sort of "Donation Pool" thread where people can "donate" that random amount of money instead of doing one of the crazy solutions I mentioned above? That way the money isn't wasted, but put to a better use.

We could set a goal. Whenever the total amount is reached, a "prize" can be given to everyone in the URPG (or everyone who donated a minimum amount depending on what we'd want to do with it). In this sense, everyone wins (sort of).


It's a simple idea that's relatively easy to implement. If no one likes it, we don't have to do anything.

People can live with their $387 in change.

 

Sounds cool, and since it is for charity, it's tax deductible! Man, my URPG income tax were really adding up and this would be the best way to shave a little off the top.

 

Synthesis likes this post

 

Polaris Approves!

 

One thing. And sorry I have to be a bummer, but adding a donation pool will require a real functional economy, and the URPG doesn't have one. Adding an economy will make things to complicated and could lead to an inflation. Fizzy Bubbles has a functional economy and at some points in it's history, inflation has occured. One advantage URPG has over Fizzy Bubbles is it's simplicity. In Fizzy Bubbles, you must always show proof, and I mean for everything, buying stuff, battling, coordinating, trading, using bathroom (just kidding). While URPG doesn't have all of that complicated foolishness. It's annoying and hard to get things done. The URPG is heavily based on trust, and the moderators, cashiers, referees, etc. take your word for it. This is why I join URPG instead of Fizzy Bubbles.
A Donation pool won't be neccesary since you can just lower you amount (never increase) and get on with it. Also with a Donation pool, who will you donate the money to. Random strangers, moderators, NEW PLAYERS (*lightbulb turn on above head*)?!?

Until, you answer my question, I can't approve, I need to know what is the importance of donating in this trust economy and who are you giving the money to.

 

Well Empire, I'm glad you're concerned about how this might impact the URPG.

Mmm, economic issues in the URPG don't tend to focus around inflation issues because we don't used a closed market system. Money is, essentially, created and destroyed, never really flowing back into the system. People do transfer value to each other, but this is only in the form of story deals and trades. Even trades nowadays must be close in value.

Since URPGers rarely transfer money to each other, there is little risk to inflation. The PokeMart prices will not rise because people have more or less money. Neither will payouts for battles or wages. In fact, the main issue that people raise with money is because Pokemon continues to grow as a franchise (aka new Pokemon, new TMs, new items). As the available "stuff" increases, money seems to buy a smaller fraction of the total.

That's the only real economic factor regarding money that really matters. Sure, auction prices do increase when more URPGers have more money, but I've seen auctions that have sold Pokemon for only a few thousand. The truth is, people don't always pay attention to the other two URPG branches, so Pokemon auctioned there tend to go for lower amounts. It's kind of a bargain really.

To address your other concern, people won't donate money to each other. It would go in a pool that no one really owns. In essence, it disappears from the URPG economy because it can no longer be used to purchase anything. On the flip side, I think that should the amount "donated" reach a certain level, the URPG leadership can award a low-level "prize" to members. In this sense, the money does create value, but not one that would be consistent for each individual (though an average could easily be calculated).

The pool ultimately is here to serve a single purpose: to let people get rid of terrible money amounts. I listed in my first post what some URPGers already do and I feel this is a simpler (or at the very least, a slightly more productive) solution to the issue.

 

Yes, but the donation pool won't be neccesary, because you can lower your amount of money and no one will give a two cents of attention about it. Right now, go to my stats and you'll see that I reduced my money amount by a dollar. And yes, I have an odd change amount, but I can simply take away 9 dollars if I want to.

I don't approve this donation pool idea, since all it will do is take up space on the URPG and can be used for something fun and useful, ... like a TCG corner!

 

Actually, right now you can't do that. Some members are annoyed at their odd change amount. Some denote it as "$[divisible by 500] + $[excess]" to avoid it. But you can't just reduce your own money. Also, it doesn't really "take up space". It would be a single stickied thread, which really wouldn't impact anything else. A TCG corner isn't really something that would be implemented in URPG anyways. If it was just "organizing TCG games between URPGers", you still have the problem of having a way to play the TCG with people thousands of miles away. If it's talking about the TCG, the forums URPG is hosted on should have sections for that, and as it's not a URPG specific thing you're better off just using those.

 

As Ash has mentioned, a donation pool thread is really not all that difficult to implement and won't take up much space. We create new threads all the time for events, announcements, and other random topics. For years we had a thread for people to shoot the wind. I don't think this idea will seriously create any negative impact on the URPG.

 

Just like HKim said, players just delete the excess money, which is then equivalent of throwing of burning money. I lost a dollar, and I did it on purpose. The consequences of odd change will be my shortcoming and I will have to go through the pain. I didn't see no harm in burning a dollar, because I couldn't buy anything with my little amount of money ($2500), and taking away a dollar showed no harm.

 

What Ash was saying is that deleting money for no reason is against URPG Rules. The problem could arise that someone needs the money again later and they might want to add it back but can't remember how much they deleted. There is just no reason to delete money. You say deleting $1 is not detrimental to you at all, but there are several things you cannot afford with $2,499 that you can afford with $2,500. (Such as some TMs, items, and even going on a Park Run) With HKim's idea, instead of deleting money for no reason, you would be able to put any money you don't want to good use and give it a purpose.

 

You know what, I am going to shut up right now. I contribute to this section, because of two reasons: I was bored, and I wanted to contribute to the URPG. My vote was a simple yes or no.
Once again, let me suffer through the consequences. What I did was my decision, and yes it was a dumb decision, but I will learn from it.

 

It's not a big deal lol I dont think anyone would object to you putting the $1 back into your stats. What we dont want is for everyone to go around deleting money. There's no reason to feel bad; we value your contribution to the discussion. We just wanted to correct some of your misconceptions about the way URPG works so that you can form an opinion based on the right information. No reason to feel bad about that! =]

 

I'm going to agree with Swift here. Since deleting the $1 wasn't supposed to happen anyways, there's no reason not to add that $1 back. It's easy to tell the amount it was and that it just came from a simple misunderstanding. Also for the record, deleting that $1 might as well have been deleting $500 for the purposes of what can be bought, outside of a few specific items in National Park shop.

As far as the Donation Pool, I thought it might be worth doing the prizes as a sort of raffle as such:
Say the goal is set at $10,000 and the prize is a Simple (or Easiest? Numbers and exact prize value can be altered without messing up the general idea). Each person gets one 'ticket' per $1 donated. So it might look something like this:
Trainer A donates $100. Gets tickets 1-100. Trainer B donates $250. Gets tickets 101-350. Trainer C donates $780. Gets tickets 351-1130. And so on. Once it hits the desired number (or perhaps time frame instead, and base prizes on the total amount entered), a number of dice will be rolled to determine the winner. For the case of 10,000, use //roll-dice2-sides100 on AIM, which will give ## ##. If both are two digit numbers, then just read it out and that's your winner. If either is 100, turn it to 00 (unless both are 100, which is 10000). Any one digit numbers just add a zero. If that sounds complicated, trust me, it's really not. Basically, "88 77" becomes 8877, "8 7" becomes 807, "9 100" becomes 900, "100 73" becomes 73, and "100 100" becomes 10000.

Any thoughts on this idea? I'm thinking maybe open for two weeks or a month at a time, at the end all donations are tallied and the range it falls into determines the size of the prize. For example, $4,000-$7,500 might be Easiest, $7,501-$15,000 might be Simple, etc. Numbers subject to discussion.

 

^ no because then fair play issues come into account

just be glad you potentially get a free whatever

 

Why not just go to random.org instead? That way you avoid that whole double number thing that you're trying to do.

 

I'm going to agree with Synthesis on that one. The more rich and experienced players will have more chances to win than poor newbies (me). There should be a $100 limit to the raffle, since everybody has at least $100 and if they don't than a $100 dollars can be easily won in any battle or contest. Each ticket should cost $10, making each person having a 10 ticket maximum. The $1 ticket idea is too low with the URPG funds system.

 

$100 isn't likely to fix money and will probably mess it up even further. I would say either $250 or $500 max, as those numbers are both easily obtainable and should help readjust money.

 

The point was to ensure witnesses. No one can witness it if you do it in browser. For free Pokémon, it makes sense to force the roll to be watched.

The idea of a $1 ticket is that it is the lowest possible denomination you could ever end up with under any conceivable circumstances. To most people, the donation pool is a way to eliminate ugly numbers in their money, so I would have to disagree with any maximum less than $500. Most people would take their $250/other ugly amount and dump it all into the pool at once, earning a nice, clean money amount and a chance at free stuff. Getting 250 tickets out of 10000 or 25 out of 1000 is mathematically identical. In either case, you have a 1/40 (or 2.5%) chance of winning the prize. The difference is that it gives the OPTION to get rid of $1 increments if you end up with such a thing. A $500 or $1,000 maximum is perfectly reasonable though and I have no objection to adding that, to go with your point, $500 is also the lowest you can ever earn in URPG from a single event (battle, contest, profession, etc.).

When I was initially writing it, I realized the problem of "I'm just going to put $10,000 in and automatically claim a Pokémon", which is why I changed from "when it reaches X amount" to "after X amount of time". In the latter case, there is a chance for others to put stuff in as well and you're no longer guaranteed anything, meaning that even putting $100,000 in has a chance to get you nothing in return (exaggeration to prove a point, no one would really put $100,000 into this). Maximum amount allowed per person per pool or per time window also solves this problem and I don't mind doing that instead.

 

But richer players will still dominate the raffle, and I have an idea for that no less than 500 maximum idea. The tickets should cost $100 (how do you like them apples) with a 10 ticket maximum. No one, and I mean NO ONE will be willing to give away $1000 dollars from their account to loose odd change. Most items in the URPG are above $250, so it's basically impossible to have $9 as odd change (unless your an idiot like me, which by the way, can I get my dollar back :XD. In this system, everyone will have a fair chance of winning.