It definitely seems like IFDB can just let whoever hosts the game deal with payments. IF Archive through IFTF could set up a way to do payments, but they’d have to maintain the payment system and deal with liability. It seems a lot easier (as you seem to suggest) to just only distribute the game on commercial platforms and link to them from IFDB instead of to the free IFArchive.
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Mostly agreed. What I’m trying to get at is the fact that IFDB doesn’t have a highly visible “Support/Buy the Game” button, similar to the “Play On-line” button. At least, not as far as I know.
Personally, I’d be happy to see support for full-fledged Itch io embeddable widgets on IFDB, but I might be in the minority. I think I’ve seen some resistance to Itch io on this board, mostly because of the requirement for accounts.
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Oh shoot. With my usual total lack of social awareness, I had no idea that most IFDB games were free. I always used it as a one-stop shop where I could easily list all my interactive fiction so any potential fans can find more of what they like. Which I definitely still think it worth doing 
So… sort of an apology comment? Or, a thank you to IFDB for being so incredibly accessible for everyone, both devs and players?
I agree with the various votes on “donate button sure, paywall HARD NO”.
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There’s a difference between ifarchive and ifdb. Ifarchive has free games. Ifdb just links to games wherever they’re located. Commercial Games are more than welcome.
Since ifdb doesn’t host games, it can’t directly monetize or make people pay to access, but it could ask for tips by linking to a kofi or patreon (and nothing is stopping people from doing that now). Ifarchive does host games and could directly monetize and make people pay to access or ask for tips.
Since the commercial versions of your game aren’t on ifarchive, you’re fine!
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There’s a tendency for IFDB to get mistaken for a site that actually hosts games, so the main thing I’d be a little bit concerned about is confusion. If you put a donation button, it’d be good to somehow make it clear that the money is not going to the authors of the games–it’s going to the organization that maintains the web site.
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IFDB is publicly editable like a wiki. So if donation buttons were added it would need to be careful. They should probably be linked to a person’s IFDB account (ideally verified by email?), and then only displayed on game entries with a single author. Anyone caught trying to get their donation button on someone else’s game would earn themselves a ban.
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Good point.
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True. And also true of the IF Archive, which could use a similar donate-to-IFTF button.
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also I’m against paywalls, and not only for ideological/ideal reasons…
but I agree on voluntary donations, which is by far the best idea.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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I would have zero problem with having more obvious ways to donate for IFTF on any IFTF related websites. Wikimedia certainly isn’t shy about asking for money when needed, and neither should IFTF. Even if the IFTF isn’t in dire need of money, it never hurts to bank money for future needs.
As far as monetizing IFDB, I think that is an entirely different issue than asking for voluntary donations. I could get behind a “PWYW” button for the games for authors that opt into it and get some portion of anything earned that way. I have no idea if they would actually make anything or not.
I mean, basically that’s how itch.io operates, and while I have nothing against itch.io, it’s about a whole lot more than IF. It would be nice if IF authors had alternatives for PWYW other than itch.io, patreon, hosting their own website, etc. I don’t know how much itch.io takes for hosting and processing donations, so it might be very reasonable. Knowing the people running IFTF and the foundation’s history, I just assume if IFTF did a feature like that on IFDB, they would take the minimum required and give the bulk of the proceeds to authors.
I would definitely be unhappy and disappointed if IFDB had a paywall to access the freely available content that it already has. I think that goes against the spirit of the IFDB when it was built. I would be fine with a separate section of IFDB that has a storefront for commercial IF that was always intended to be commercial IF. I definitely do not see a problem with authors trying to earn money on their creations. But I also know that there are possibly legal issues that may arise from this based on the licenses of the authoring systems, so that could make it rather tricky.
I also would not have any real problem with special features or special “bling” for users that want to pay a very small subscription fee for access to those features as a way to help support the site. Daily users of the IFDB might have no problem spending a little to gain access to “advanced” features or little profile bling, or whatever. Kind of like how they do it on Discord, where the basic core functionality of Discord is free, but where there are some kind of “neat toys” type features that you can subscribe to get.
As long as the core purpose and functionality of IFDB remains free to anyone, I would have no problem with IFTF trying to generate revenue for the authors or for the promotion of the hobby or maintenance of the technology.
-virtuadept
And that’s like, just my opinion, man. “The Dude”
(EDITS: Just fixed some really bad grammar. Glad I didn’t do this in my post about how I didn’t like bad writing. Hopefully.)
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I’ve updated https://ifarchive.org to have a donation button. Donations through this button are tagged as “IF Archive” – we track these donation tags in IFTF’s books.
I’ve also dropped a note on the IFDB suggestion list about doing the same over there.
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IFTF is very much not in a position to run that service! We could add links to Patreon, or links to Itch, or links to Paypal. But we cannot ourselves be a service like Itch or Paypal or Patreon. That takes a much larger organization with a whole lot of lawyers and accountants.
Itch permits each author to set Itch’s cut. It defaults to 10% but you can set it higher or lower, or even 0%.
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On the page that links from that button, would it be possible to be even more specific about what they money is for? Right now, it says
Donate to
Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation
IF Archive support
Could it say something like, I don’t know, “Donations go to the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, the organization that maintains the IF Archive along with other projects”?
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The Paypal page has limited customization. The organization name is fixed, and the “IF Archive support” line is limited to 127 characters.
I could say “IF Archive support” in more words but I’m not sure what else there is to communicate.
I’ve got this text next to the button:
All donations go to support the operation of this web site and IFTF’s other services.
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and if one wants to donate not specifically to the IF archive, but broadly to the IFTF ?
just curious…
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
Text next to the IF Archive Paypal button: //All donations go to support the operation of this web site and IFTF’s other services.
I think the Paypal Button and related text is spot on.
IMHO 
PS. It works.
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Whether donations go exclusively to IF Archive or wherever IFTF wants them to, and possibly what “IF Archive Support” means (the operation of the web site). Obviously, it’s up to you though.
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Go to https://iftechfoundation.org/give/. The Paypal button there gives you a choice for “Use this donation for…” which includes “IFTF General Fund”.
Understand that the money all goes to the same place and we use it for whatever needs doing. We only track the source for planning purposes. (E.g. if people push this button on IFDB a lot, that tells us something about how people use our services.)
However, I think it’s a mistake to try to explain this on the Paypal page. We don’t want people reading an essay there – we want them to type a number and push the button. Distractions bad.
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Yeah. Restricted funds are a big pain, and require lots of additional tracking systems as well as more intensive audits to ensure the money went were it was supposed to go. For a nonprofit the size of the IFTF, it might be worth it for a single big contribution, but for multiple small one-off donations, it’s absolutely a bad idea. Besides, the Archive especially is so intertwined with all the other projects it doesn’t even make much sense to try to support it in isolation.
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On the donor end, the paypal “use this donation for” button leads me to assume that my donation would be restricted for the purposes that I specified (and tracked as part of a restricted fund). To avoid having to track nine restricted funds (a pain, as Mike points out!), might be easier to eliminate the option for donors to “earmark” and instead put all the donations into the general fund.
That said, I fully acknowledge that this might not be necessary in IFTF’s case! I’m currently on a board for an org that’s the size of doing the full 990, and because we receive federal funds, we also get an intense audit every year, so we have to track restricted and unrestricted donations very strictly. But again, this may not apply in IFTF’s case, so please disregard if not helpful 
.
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