Unbiased Reviews by Real People
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Unbiased Reviews by Real People
A call to action...Jul 16, 2003 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Your participation in this effort is absolutely needed. Your apathy and inaction will kill this effort. Choose to make a difference. .. Greetings all. Ten days ago, fellow user rich2003dm presented a simple idea to our community. The idea that acting as individual users our impact is infinitesimally small on this site. But that acting together, yes . . .as a community, the impact of our time and energies spent here at Epinions.com could provide tremendous value to ourselves, our community, and 'the real world' that we each live in. Rich's idea was simply that individual users be permitted to donate their accumulated Income Share, IS, to pre-selected "worthy and reputable national and global charities." Rich challenged Epinions.com to implement a system which would allow users to direct any future earned IS directly to one of these 'reputable charities'. Rich also advocates the artificial and out-dated $10 and $100 redemption minimums be removed from the system, permitting IS to be donated as accumulated or at periodic times. In addition, Rich challenged his fellow users at Epinions.com—if they truly believe in this idea—to support and promote this idea. What has the community response been? 74 rates applied to his essay, all Very Helpful. Comments by more than twenty users have been applied to the essay: 'A novel idea', 'I wish they had something like that!', 'the best reason to write I've heard in a long time', 'a wonderful idea', 'brilliant!', 'wouldn't that be something if it would really happen!' 'Great idea', 'an excellent idea', 'not a bad idea' . . .these thoughts continuing ad nauseam... It is apparent to this writer that the idea has 'caught the fancy' of the users reading, thinking, rating, and commenting about this proposal. But already this idea has fallen from the radar here at Epinions. Look at the number of rates for this essay from day one to this date: 25 / 27 / 7 / 6 / zero / 1 / 1 / 5 / 1 / 1 / zero... What action might be appropriate next? How can we nurture this idea? Keep it alive? -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- In the tradition of 'tilting at windmills' and petitioning the King, I offer to you an online petition re-stating the thoughts of rich2003dm and offering you the opportunity to support this 'community idea' by reading and signing the petition. Submitted: We the undersigned request and urge the management of Dealtime.com and Epinions.com to establish a system permitting individual users at Epinions.com to donate earned Income Share—past, present, and/or future—to designated charitable organizations. These charitable organizations would be sufficiently diverse to meet the desires of the users at Epinions.com and the needs of the owners of Dealtime.com and Epinions.com Participation by each user would be totally voluntary. All donated Income Share would be managed, disbursed at regular intervals as accrued, and made public by Epinions.com and Dealtime.com. Benefits of this change would include: - increased incentive for users to remain active on Epinions.com, - increased contributions by the Epinions.com community to charitable organizations, and - increased corporate philanthropy with associated recognition of Epinions.com and its writers. We look forward to a positive discourse with you. Sincerely, The Undersigned This online petition can be found at: http://www.petitiononline.com/epinions/petition.html -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- 'What can I do to help promote this idea, this petition?' • How about a tag-line at the bottom of your future reviews and essays here at Epinions? sample: Support the writers of Epinions.com as we seek to create the option of donating our earnings on this site directly to charitable organizations. Please read and sign (if so inclined) our petition at: http://www.petitiononline.com/epinions/petition.html 'How about other ideas to promote this...?' • E-mail you Eps buddies to make sure they all know about this petition drive. • E-mail your favorite Epinions corporate 'power-that-is' the URL to the petition page. • Discuss this petition at your favorite off-site Eps discussion groups/boards. • Get your mother to sign the petition. (Just for you flamepillar, azurely, et al) • Add your positive thoughts as a comment when you sign the petition. • Add your user-name (and real name if you are comfortable doing that) when you sign the petition. The Bottom Line 'Writing for charity' is not my idea. 'Writing for charity' is not Rich's idea. Hopefully it is the community's idea. 'Writing for charity' is a good idea, IMHO. But it will die without your active support. Please, don't let it die. Consciously support the concept of user-choice for accumulated and future Income Share.  |
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