change the name from gittip to something else

[chadwhitacre]

The word "git" is somewhat problematic because of its association with GitHub and programming. The word "tip" is non-ideal because restaurant tips aren't really gifts. There's a ticket about changing the nomenclature we use from tipper and tippee to donor and donee (#136). This ticket is about rebranding the whole site.

---

The best alternative in my (not large) stable is:

https://whoever.im/

How does that look to you? I think it's not bad, for a personal funding platform. I think it's pretty strong, actually. "Whoever I am" rolls off the tongue easier than "Gittip," and it evokes personhood and freedom. I checked whoeveriam.com, and unfortunately it is taken but unused. Meh.

A bigger deal for me is that with Heroku we can't use https://whoever.im/, only https://www.whoever.im/. That is, "[n]aked domains (also known as bare or apex domains) are not supported." They used to be called IP SSL and cost $100/mo, but that's now deprecated. Here's the details on why. We would have to choose, and my inclination honestly would be to leave the warmth and comfort of Heroku, in order to look more like https://github.com/ and https://twitter.com/. :-(

[steveklabnik]

You can do what I do with my book project: have a home page at whoever.im, click signup, it goes to secure.whoever.im

[jezdez]

Have a look at the ALIAS record from dnsimple for the "naked domains": http://blog.dnsimple.com/introducing-the-alias-record/

[mitsuhiko]

There are more problems with naked domains than just dns. It's the www. prefix really that bad?

[chadwhitacre]

@steveklabnik, @jezdez Cool, thank you for the suggestions.

Is the www. prefix really that bad?

Dunno ... what other problems are there? :)

Also, this is sort of secondary. The main question is whether the Gittip brand is fundamentally flawed.

[mitsuhiko]

CNAMEs not working on that level, very limited cookie control (can't have cookies just for the www. part), it's harder to recognize urls with the scheme removed, wildcard ssl certificates don't work for the naked domain etc. All things considered it's just a lot more hassle for not showing for bytes to the user.

[whitmo]

+1. though I would pick a name that is still tip / gift related.

and... maybe eventually add a way to pay toward an actual gift vs. simply payments (yeah yeah, patches welcome). I make the point because I think it would be interesting to add a complement the BM idea of a currency free "gift" economy. Not exclusively, just as an option.

[mitsuhiko]

What about “periodic” as a name?

[timothyfcook]

whoever.im is okay. not quite right though.

It seems like .do domains are now available.

give.do is available. "Give me support so I can Do xyz"
or giveto.do

Or, similar to your suggestion. whateveri.do is available

Other Ideas:

letme.do
thank.do
soican.do
goodto.do
letus.do

[joeyespo]

What about hinting at open source somehow? http://opentip.com or http://opengift.com. Might even be able to play more on the word 'open' here, even though tips are largely anonymous. Tie it back into the open company you're aiming for.

Now, is the focus on those who want to tip or those receiving them? The latter is a shift. It would be something you the hacker would want to share. Whereas the current name 'Gittip' sounds more for those seeking to give the tip.

I do like the 'periodic'/'recurring' idea. That would make for a good tool to follow Kickstarter with. Kickstarter to get initial funding and demand. Continued with [new Gittip name here].

[joeyespo]

Another one. It's for sale, though unfortunately not for cheap: http://fund.me

Maybe something along those lines though? http://tip.me is also taken, but not actively used.

[chrismdp]

Slightly boring but something like http://openfund.com?

http://freeme.to
http://freemeto.be
http://freemetobe.com
(all available) ?

[chrismdp]

Or something around the word "grant"? Minigrant? Microgrant? Crowdgrant?

[chadwhitacre]

View from Australia (via HN):

Historically, Australians don't tip. During much of the the 20th century Australia had quite a strong (relative to the US) tradition of socialism and unionism, resulting in a strong set of minimum employment conditions. There was very much a view that a decent living wage was an entitlement and a matter of dignity, not something that a worker should have to stoop to collect. People didn't tip, since the common perception was that the potential tipee was as equally entitled to a minimum wage as the potential tipper. Indeed, I'd say that people actively didn't tip as an act of homage to equality.

Tipping is probably more common today than in the past, and the above is being eroded, but I think the above is still generally true. A tip is rarely expected, or let on to be expected, as that is a sure fire way not to get a tip.

I mention the above, in the supposition that it has connotations for a site like gittip that liberally uses the word "tipping". Some cultures don't do tipping. As an Australian, I'd be more inclined if the idea of compensation was being sold on a "equity" (as in fairness) basis rather than a giving basis. I know it's semantics, but semantics does influence decisions.

[chadwhitacre]

Another view from Australia (same HN thread):

The American "I am obliged to give you a tip because minimum wage sucks" doesn't seem to be what gittip is about. In fact, it's much closer to the Australian idea "I am giving you more money because of your impressive performance, and I want to say thanks".

In Australia, I tip when service is awesome. In America, I tip when service isn't absolutely terrible.

Full disclosure: I am Australian

[jturnshek]

Hey Chad, we haven't met yet but I hope to soon...

autograt.com

Servers in restaurants call the automatically included gratuity for large parties an "autograt". I'll leave you to reason through the implications. I actually think it's incredibly well aligned.

I just reserved the domain in case you want it.

[chadwhitacre]

Thanks @turnshek, for the intro, thoughts, and domain reservation. :-)

Was actually coming over here to say that I just bought:

http://www.gfftd.com/

I also reserved @Gfftd on Twitter and GitHub. Has the advantage of probably still working with @dmdj03's design over on #66.

[timothyfcook]

why two 'f' s if gfftd.com ?

autoGrat.com is kinda nice.

You could still have the (G) logo, since "Grat" is the functional word there.

it almost sounds familiar

makes me think of autocrat / autocracy, which is a very different sort of meaning.
also makes me think of autograph, which is irrelevant.

[chadwhitacre]

Two effs because the domain wasn't available in other variants.

[chadwhitacre]

Also, gifted.com is taken but not used. Down the road we could have a shot at it.

[chadwhitacre]

In the mean time there's also http://gifted.im/.

[chadwhitacre]

Oh, well. My latest moment of name-changing insanity has passed. Back to Gittip.com for now. :-)

[psineur]

Few! Saw tweet about gfftd (sounds like pfff), thank god you don't want to rename to it.
Other suggestions:
gifttip
gifthub

[pfrazee]

openwire
freewire
fosswire

[jturnshek]

Hey no problem, you can never have too many domain names. D:

I like that "autograt" is already in the common lexicon and essentially describes the literal function of the service, but it's really the "gratuity" part that I think is worth mulling over. It's likely the closest a single term can come to the spirit of what you're trying to do here.

Whatever you go with, just make sure it makes sense for street fashion photographers, community organizers, font creators, or business bloggers. The foss / programmery stuff is probably the wrong direction.

[johana-star]

opengrant.com is available.

[chadwhitacre]

@turnshek Good reminder re: broader appeal. Could you say more about how {Gittip} can work for non-programmery folks? I want to take it in that direction (#80) but obviously I'm programmery so input from a different perspective is welcome.

@strand I think opengrant.com is pretty strong. The "crowd-sourced genius grants for the rest of us" hook has seemed to work for a lot of people. A grant falls clearly in the category of "gift" without the question mark that "tip" introduces. What I really like, though, is that it emphasizes the aggregate and not the individual contribution. The "grant" is the crowd's gift of $1,000 per week to a person, whereas a "gift tip" is just my $1 per week contribution. The power is in the aggregation.

I bought opengrant.com and opengrant.org.

Perspectives on OpenGrant?

[chadwhitacre]

OpenGrant works for both individuals and groups. An organization or group or project (see #27) can receive a grant as well as an individual.

[ironfroggy]

At first "opengrant" didn't really sound right, but your explanation @whit537 makes a lot of sense.

[steveklabnik]

👍 opengrant.org, I like it a lot.

[chadwhitacre]

65.4% - Proposal Does Not Pass

Phew! Wow. People, what a whirlwind, for me at least. 😳

I want to thank everyone who brainstormed names and bought domains and offered domains and offered to work with Twitter and weighed in and reminded us of various perspectives and in general participated in this thread. In the end maybe it was a bikeshed, but I'm not even sure of that because what I think we can see clearly here is that after two months there's a significant community of people interested in the fundamental idea regardless of what the name is.

As stated, I'm going to close this ticket and stick with the name Gittip.com. Let's take all of the great energy that came out on this thread and transfer it into forward progress on other fronts. Personally my priorities are:

• fixing bugs (forestall hole in payday #160, constrain balance in db to be >= 0 #161, statement gets cropped #207, 405 on card deletion #211, repair paydays table #204)
• landing payouts (implement automated withdrawals / payouts #22)
• landing the visual redesign (change the visual design of gittip #66)
• building out API (implement API for getting and changing tips #208)
• marketing (run a "Back the Stack" campaign #142)

Give yourselves a hand for some unusually fun and community-building bikeshedding. 👏

Now let's get back to building and growing Gittip!

See you on another thread! 🚀

[jezdez]

Oh, hm.

[hansent]

In the end maybe it was a bikeshed, but I'm not even sure of that because what I think we can see clearly here
is that after two months there's a significant community of people interested in the fundamental idea
regardless of what the name is.

I don't think it was just a bikeshed discussion. Yes, they name ultimately, as a string of characters, is not that important, but I think this was more about the identity / fundamental idea behind gittip.com, what it is, it stands for, and what it's vision is. With that perspective, and seeing how many people contributed and are just as excited about this; I think the energy was well spent and shows that we are on to something that can really make the world better :)

[johana-star]

If we revisit this discussion in the future, I hope we can have a data-driven discussion. I asked my friend Lauren how she might go about finding the right name to brand an organization with, and she directed me to the article How to Hack a Dominating Domain Name for Your Website, which documents the process she was a part of for finding the right name for PlaceFull.

UPDATE:

The very relevant portion of that article is:

1. Clickthrough Rate Test

I took the top 10 contenders from 1-4 and created an Adwords campaign with 10 individual ads. The keywords related to our market. Each ad was identical except for the company name in the title and display URL. The ad led to a generic “coming soon/sign up” page. For $100 we generated over 100,000 impressions and measured the CTR for each ad, trying to keep all other variables equal.

Surprisingly, the CTR test resulted in a clear winner: the original name we paid the agency to develop. This cinched it.

[domenkozar]

HI guys, I'm wondering who has fundhub account on github? I would be really happy to have it :)

[chadwhitacre]

Sorry @iElectric, that was me. I just added you as an owner. Feel free to take me off as an owner.

[domenkozar]

Thanks!

On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 5:15 PM, Chad Whitacre [email protected]:

Sorry @iElectric https://github.com/iElectric, that was me. I just
added you as an owner. Feel free to take me off as an owner.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/138#issuecomment-11535929.

[chadwhitacre]

We'll reopen the name discussion when either GitHub or Oprah complains.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4943242

[abnor]

I propose the name getfund; getfunded; getfunds

[chmullig]

-1, it sounds like a kickstarter knockoff to me.

[ceboudreaux]

SendTip.com and SendTips.com are taken, but not developed.

These would change the focus from receiving tips to giving tips.

[domenkozar]

BTW, fundhub.org is free now :)

[patcon]

I know this subject is closed for now, but I'd suggest we consider how gittip could franchise it's infra at some point. For example, HiveWire operates on a similar premise with offering branded Kickstarter clones to organizations, like the Centre for Social Innovation's Catalyst crowdfunding service.

Certain groups are always going to need different messages to appeal to their user base. Perhaps its best to allow that to develop organically by facilitating branded mini-gittips. After all, I get the impression that gittip wants to be results-driven (ie the more people using the platform, the better), so we don't have the normal concerns about brand dilution, right?

Disclaimer: Skimmed this issue :P

[whitmo]

+1 to subgittips

-w

On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 3:27 PM, Patrick Connolly
[email protected]:

I know this is done for now, but might make sense consider how gittip
might want to franchise it's infra at some point. For example, HiveWirehttp://www.hivewire.ca/operates on a similar premise with offering branded Kickstarter clones to
organizations like the Centre for Social Innovation's Catalyst
crowdfunding service http://www.csicatalyst.org/.

Certain groups are always going to need different messages to appeal to
their user base. Perhaps its best to allow that to develop organically by
facilitating branded mini-gittips. After all, I get the impression that
gittip wants to be results-driven (ie the more people using the platform,
the better), so we don't have the normal concerns about brand dilution,
right?

Disclaimer: Skimmed this issue :P

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/138#issuecomment-26942498
.

<=>
david "whit" morriss

"If you don't know where you are,
you don't know anything at all"

Dr. Edgar Spencer, Ph.D., 1995

[patcon]

FYI, if anyone else is partial to .do domains: make sure you search here:
http://nic.do/whois-hin.php3

(They have terrible seo, but it's the official. Deceptive third-party whois providers sometimes put client holds on domains you search for.)