On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 12:21 PM, Michael Siepmann
<m...@techdesignpsych.com> wrote:
On 09/20/2016 08:40 AM, Aaron Wolf wrote:
On 09/20/2016 01:04 AM, mray wrote:
On 20.09.2016 02:25, David Thomas wrote:
What about dropping "fund"? "Crowdmatching for public goods"
What about dropping "for"?
"Crowdmatching for public goods"
"Crowdmatching public goods"
You could say we ultimately crowdmatch for everybody, not for public
goods. Omitting "for" also makes Crowdfunding more of verb than a
noun,
which is a good thing; more active and less static.
Michael rightly notes that "fund" clarifies what we mean without
depending on new words. Mike rightly notes that it implies some
sort of
funding. I think when we introduce a new word we also need to let
it do
some lifting, otherwise we shouldn't introduce it. Redundancy in a
slogan is bad. Short is good.
I find "crowdmatching" as a noun is a little easier to parse when it
has
no context (i.e. isn't in a clear sentence). Also "crowdmatching for
public goods" works if you parse it as a verb or a noun, whereas
"crowdmatching public goods" makes anyone who starts parsing as a
noun
do the mental work of shifting it to a verb.
The main reason I'm hesitant about (but not totally opposed to)
"crowdmatching public goods" is that the matching isn't matching of
public goods to one another, but it could read that way. It's patrons
who match each other.
If we were to do without a preposition, we could use:
"public goods crowdmatching"
To me, that's a nice effect but feels more dense and jargony. Of all
the
options proposed "Crowdmatching for public goods" feels like the
least
mental work to read and parse. The preposition helps me chunk it into
two clauses. It's a noun (or maybe a verb) with a preposition clause.
That's easier to process than parsing one jargony, heavy verb clause.
"Crowdmatching for public goods" works for me. I'm persuaded by this
recent discussion that it's probably OK to omit "to fund" and I like
this less wordy version.
The main (only?) job of the slogan are to peak the interest of someone
who does not already know what we are, preferably by succinctly
communicating the essence of what we do. Therefore, I don't think
anyone on this list can use their intuition to judge whether
"crowdmatching" (or "public goods") does that job effectively. Of
course "crowdmatching" has the right connotations in the context of
Snowdrift!
On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 1:54 PM, Aaron Wolf <aa...@snowdrift.coop>
wrote:
On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 1:03 PM, Denver Gingerich <den...@ossguy.com>
wrote:
Overall I like that slogan.
There is one point I haven't seen come up in discussion (apologies
if I missed it) but should be highlighted. I don't have a strong
personal opinion on how important this point is, but because of
whose point it is and the projects Snowdrift.coop aims to support,
it should at least be mentioned:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#DigitalGoods
Now the slogan doesn't say "digital goods", but it does use "goods"
in a way that to me felt slightly confusing initially (and would
probably be more confusing to most people, since they spend less
time thinking about software than the majority of us).
I don't know if there are good alternatives, though. "Public works"
isn't an option since it has its own meaning (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_works ) and "public works of
authorship" feels a bit long to me.
Anyway, I just wanted to highlight this. To me, the current slogan
shouldn't be rejected solely on the basis of this, but it at least
warrants a review by people more connected to the project than I.
Thanks for the thoughts, Denver! To address the concern: Yes, the
metaphor of "goods" inherently causes problems in terms of thinking
about non-rivalrous works, but actually "public goods" is the precise,
accepted term in economics for non-rivalrous, non-exclusive works. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good
So, it's not just a sorta-good description, it's *the* correct term
for
precisely what we're focusing on.
Continuing the line of reasoning above: let's take a hypothetical
situation where "public goods" is doing a less effective job at peaking
people's interest by communicating the general idea than another option
would be, despite being the technically precise term. (I suspect this
is the case, but don't trust my intuition on this, either). Is being
technically correct worth the cost, or should we consider other options?
There are three parts to the slogan: Crowdmatching, public goods, and
(optional) filler words that tie them together. Mix and match:
[crowdmatching/crowdmatched]
[to/for] [fund/funds/funding]
[public/digital/unrestricted/FLO/post-scarcity] [goods/works/economy]
I am not sure how to turn it into a good slogan, but I like the idea of
not talking about goods specifically but talking about the
post-scarcity economy more generally. That's a concept that people are
already familiar with (although it's slightly more of a buzz word than
I'd like), and talking about the economy as a whole communicates the
scope of the change we would like to create. It also implies funding,
so we can drop that word. "Crowdmatching [for] an unrestricted economy"?
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