A couple of years ago I set up a node at my place in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. It's gotten pretty steady use by a few people in the neighborhood and visitors to the restaurant across the street. About a year ago I moved out but my old roommate is still there. She lets me keep the wireless router hooked up as long as I buy her a pound of coffee every two months. That's been cool with me, but now I'm setting up a new node at my new place across town. This is going to start getting a little expensive. (She likes good coffee.)
I was waiting for someone in the lobby of the Met last week, when their "suggested donation" sign caught my eye. You don't _really_ have to give a donation, but you'd feel awkward not giving it. And the big security guards at the door make a compelling nonverbal argument for donations. Forced donations wouldn't work in our case. Besides being illegal (broadband service agreements), forced donations would fly in the face of our mission. But suggesting that regular users of an access point voluntarily send the occasional kind-hearted anonymous $5 amazon.com gift certificate to the email inbox of the admin of the node that they've used every day for the past year would probably make the admin feel good and make him more likely to put up that directional yagi he's been meaning to buy for a while. I know that there are several users who use my node each day. I don't know who they are and I have no idea if they even appreciate the connection that they're using. A voluntary anonymous donation would be a great way to create a feedback loop between users and admins besides the occasional "your connection sucks" email. Something like this would have to be suggested/implemented in a way that kept it from the slippery slope of Pay-to-Play. Any thoughts? -- NYCwireless - http://www.nycwireless.net/ Un/Subscribe: http://lists.nycwireless.net/mailman/listinfo/nycwireless/ Archives: http://lists.nycwireless.net/pipermail/nycwireless/
