Vanity promo (invite) code

[azurelunatic]

Title:
Vanity promo (invite) code

Area:
invitations, paid features

Summary:
Pay a small but reasonable fee to automatically create a custom promo code, suitable for printing on business cards and the like. (Regular promo codes would still be available for free at site admins' discretion, by filing a support request in the Account Payments category.)

Description:
Site administrators can already generate promo codes, which can be given to people needing bulk invitations (migrating an entire community, attending a conference, in response to Greater Internet Events). Promo codes are currently issued for free, at site administrators' discretion; individual extra invitations are also issued for free at site administrators' discretion. Promo codes can be preloaded with paid time, and to avoid abuse, are not bottomless, and can also be cut off if it becomes apparent they are being misused.


There are more situations that could be suited to promo codes than there is necessarily staff availability to grant and oversee them.

Perhaps you'd like to hand out cards to friends and new contacts, and would like to invite at least some of them to Dreamwidth. Printing up individual invitation codes is not only tedious, but runs the chance that someone wouldn't use the code you gave them, and then you'd have to make the call to either leave it unused or re-issue the code (and then if the person you gave it to was saving it until they had the spare time and motivation, they're out of luck).

Perhaps you want to migrate the users from that community *now*, and you know that staff are on vacation until a little too late to help you.


Users would be able to spend points to create a custom promo code without needing site admin intervention. This would require a promo code control interface visible to the user, while not limiting site administrators' ability to monitor the activity of user-controlled promo codes to prevent abuse and anticipate site growth.

How many points per invite? There would need to be a reasonable minimum limit needed to create the promo code, and a reasonable maximum number of invitations the promo code may hold at one time. (For development, the price per invite, the minimum, and the maximum should probably be set as a cap, so it may be modified on the back end on other installations. On other sites, site administrators could set the points-per-invite cap at 0 for all users or certain users if they wanted those users to be able to invite their friends freely but without completely open registration.)

Should users be able to withdraw unused invitations that they'd spent points on (decreasing the number available in the promo code), and get points back?

Limiting the number of invites that may be held in a promo code at one time would limit the possible damage if a spammer got their hands on someone's promo code, or if a spammer bought an account and created a promo code.

If spammers did get into a legitimate user's promo code, could the points spent to create the codes be refunded to the user upon the destruction of the spammers' journals? In case of a spammer purchasing a promo code, nuke from orbit.

Users should be able to set their own promo code within certain reasonable restrictions (must be at least a certain number of characters, not more than another certain number of characters); it might be a good idea to allow users to automatically generate a promo code in case they aren't feeling particularly clever about creating one, and/or don't want to claim good namespace.

Users should be able to load invite codes they received (assigned to their account? what about assigned to other accounts under control? If that, then what's to stop someone from wandering about and snagging up other codes people have publicly posted?) into their promo code, and should be able to generate individual invite codes out of the pool in their promo code.

Promo codes could be loaded with initial paid time for the new journals (first month, perhaps) if the user setting it up wants to shell out for that.

There should be notifications that could be subscribed to for various activity -- codes getting low, new account creation, possibly more.

The purchase page should have a link to create a support request in the Account Payments category, and a note explaining that promo codes are also available for free upon request, something like: "Invite codes and promotional codes for group invites, can often be obtained for free by opening a request in the Accounts category and speaking with an administrator about the specific situation. Free invite and promo codes are distributed generously but with respect to keeping current site growth controlled and sustainable."


Advantages:

* Fun
* Revenue for the site
* Automatic - no need to ask for something
* Immediate - no need to wait for an administrator to check the requests and grant more codes/a promo code
* Feature that daughter sites might be able to use


Possible disadvantages:

* Shameless moneygrubbing.
* Could discourage people from asking for free promo codes
* Supposing a spammer got in there, eww

Poll #7848 Vanity promo (invite) code

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 54

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
25 (46.3%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
2 (3.7%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
3 (5.6%)

(I have no opinion)
22 (40.7%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (3.7%)

Comments

[feathertail]

This sounds pretty darned spiffy.

[kerravonsen]

What an interesting idea.

[azurelunatic]

It's the result of a good amount of IRC chatter back and forth with foxfirefey, during a fairly heavy run on invite codes.

[exor674]

I think all user-generated promo codes should either be prefixed ( as to not collide with an admin-created one ) or full-random.

[cesy]

A prefix would be a good idea, I think. Being able to have vanity names makes them more attractive, though.

[jeshyr]

That sounds like a very cool idea and also one that could be fairly easily implemented in a way that let admins easily generate codes using the same interface (magic admin cost of $0 or whatever) so we could keep track of all the codes etc if needed.

[syderia]

I don't know if these kind of invite codes look different from the ones issued to us, but could it be possible (maybe for an additional fee) to get a "vanity" code, which would be formed of letters that mean something to the person buying one.
For example, say I want to move a community, I could ask for a code starting by COMMUNITYNAME.

[denise]

That's already available, and what Azz is talking about when she says promo codes are given out by site admins (me) -- people asking for a promo code for moving their community get the code COMMUNITYNAME, preloaded with X account creations.

[cesy]

For the minimum-fuss version, the cost of a code could be the same as a month of paid time - i.e. in the same way you can buy a month and don't need an invite code, you could do that for several friends at once. So that would be the same as something you can already do, just making it easier.

[arethinn]

I picked "other" because I'm not sure about the spam implications, etc., but I think this is a really nifty idea in general. I'm sure there are community mods out there who might be willing to pay a nominal fee to be able to move a comm at their own leisure rather than having to get in contact with a site admin.

[existence]

This, pretty much.

[eva]

I've read the whole suggestion, and I am having trouble understanding one bit - what does "vanity" mean in this context? I know that it can either mean that people are vain, or that there is a dressing table involved, but somehow I don't think it you are talking about either.

[This comment is brought to you by an utterly confused non-native English speaker who thinks she is pretty good with idioms, but not that good perhaps.]

[azurelunatic]

My apologies! I did not realize the idiom was quite that obscure.

It is based on things like "vanity press" and "vanity plates", the first being a publisher with a particularly predatory business practice of seeking out writers with more money and vanity than critical view of their own writing and sense, and publishes their work without regard for the actual quality while flattering the writer and extracting as much money as possible. (A reputable self-publisher publishes what they are given, without flattery or heinous contracts. They might even recommend a more rigorous editing if they notice it's bad.) Vanity plates are vehicle license plates that instead of the usual numbers and letters, have numbers and letters selected by the vehicle's owner, for an extra fee; sometimes it's the name of the driver or bragging; the idea is only a vain person would pay extra to have their name on the license plate.

So "vanity ___" has come to have the idiomatic meaning of personalization to a routine process for an extra fee. Given modern manufacturing, the vehicle licensing departments of various US states also have teamed up with charities and for an extra fee which is passed along to the charities, one can have a license plate of a different design that shows the support for the charity.

Since one would be able to personalize the promo code, and promo codes would still be freely available through contacting staff, it would be an extra fee for ... well, mostly for immediacy, but there's the element of personalization present, and it supports Dreamwidth.

[eva]

Ah, thank you!