By jsbthree on

Bounty: USER Tipping Module - $150 Minimum

First I read the very long post here http://drupal.org/node/20301 and still can tell you what we decided so I'll just call it a bounty and hope its clear enough. Okay Okay Ill call it a MWB (Module Wanted Bounty) which sounds negative and foreboding enough to gain some attention especially if we drop the Module and just say "Wanted Bounty" :) . Anyway what I'm doing is guaranteeing the $125 (onehundredtwentyfive) and anyone else who needs this can chime in with any amount. Even $10 will help. So to be clear if anyone decides they are interested in this they can add to this post and their pledged amount will become part of the total. So if 5 additional people want this and each pledge $20 the total bounty would be $225 USD>

Now to the module itself. You can see a simple graphic example of what I mean by going to http://johnbransford.net and looking at "Mock up of Micropayment Buttons" .

Upfront I believe that the tools to do this are already written and part of Drupals core and committed modules base for 4.6. It seems to me that by using some combination of Paypal Framework, Tip Jar, Ecommerce, Profile and Subscription you have the basis for being able to knock this out fast. While it is all there for 4.6 if a developer felt that it would be better to write code against head or 4.7 there is not compelling reason not to.

At the very simplest it is just allowing users to sign up and add to their profile a pay pal email account. This will give the the ability to both give and receive tips or Micropayments in a set amount.(I propose three set amounts and the exact number can be set by the website NOT THE USER but we should have defaults. I adamantly oppose complications of any sort and anything that makes it where the user has to "configure" anything in this arrangement other than inputing the email address and that is a one time thing). I would require the Pay Pal base as a starting point but if some other payment processing engines can be added later that would be ideal. NOTE that the process has to go from user to user and not provide for a third party (other than the payment processing company) rake. Thats not trustworthy nor is is inherently simple in my opinion. We have Pay Pal lets use it and then worry about the instances that it doesn't work in later.

The email address would ideally be authenticated as a legit pay pal account and then and only then would the user be allowed to use the buttons. However if the functionality isn't implemented by the user (totally optional) the tipping buttons should show however but with a fade out or some other indication that their is a step required to use their functionality.

The content provider would have the option of requiring that users have this function enabled in order to see their content whether they -- the user -- choose to tip is a another matter. Of course later this can become a pay per read or pay per view function but that is not the intent here.

The micro payments (tips) will be sent to user who provide the content and it is assumed they have that right.

So the idea would ideally be that every content provider could come and setup a store or something but at its simplest they would be offering their stuff and can be tipped by the users.

Going a bit further I want to say that in my minds eye I see a use for this together with the Aggregator2/NodeAgregor module that allows for elevation of feeds to first class nodes.

The idea would be that the site can set certain feeds to elevate automatically while others -- less trusted would require moderation of some sort. What you would have here is a way for video/audio/text/other producers to offer their content FORMATED for DISPLAY the way they want it. By aggregation they come together to create in essence a network where users can come and find information or entertainment on a large scale and stumble across similar types of content due to the aggregation . This and the ability to be paid would give the content provider the incentive to 1. provide feed(s) and 2.Maintain the content and availability of the content on the other end of the feed. It allows for media aggregation on the part of the website without having to house gigs and gigs of video and audio and text and flash. So in a sense its an RSS enabled distributed media system.