I just noticed that there is a 5 boosts per creator limit, and I am baffled. I thought the whole point of boosts was to support niche creators with small communities. I follow a creator who makes accessories for very niche board games and, as a result, gets very few downloads. I’ve already boosted him 5 times this year, which means that for the rest of the year, I can no longer show my support. This seems counterproductive. Am I misunderstanding the purpose of boosts?
That limitation is there to help prevent scammers from funneling boost into one account.
I don’t think you’re misunderstanding anything. They’re just trying to put stops in place to slow scammers, and unfortunately that doesn’t always play nicely in the real world.
Might I suggest, if there’s a creator with work you find such high value, that maybe you seek out a way to make a donation to them? Eh, it’s not as free personally, but I bet it’d give 100x the emotional encouragement.
I wonder how often others hit up against this limitation with their favorite creators. I support stopping scammers, but I also think people should be able to use their own discretion when giving out boost, without limitation.
Those are all really great points @Josh-3D. I can also see your point @LightBulb, it would be great if there was a way that the threshold of 5 can increase throughout the year so that you can continue to support the creators via boosts.
It really comes down to MakerWorld ensuring that there are less bad actors on their site through other forms of account verification, via phone numbers or MFA, but it’s a tough battle to fight. Cheers,
as tough as it is to earn them i wouldnt think it would be too easy to abuse it, but the system is still in the works to be improved i think they are improving it a step at a time but cautiously making those decisions so they dont make a mistake that will again require them to dial it back. Hopefully it improves… i personally spread my boosts out to the community even the small guys like myself deserve some love, but i agree it should be at users discretion
Thanks for explaining, @Josh-3D. Preventing scammers does indeed help justify the limit, but like @VictorLagina mentioned, I believe it’s quite hard to abuse. You need a Bambu Lab printer and would have to print extensively each week.
@ozarkexpeditions, you’re right. That’s a good suggestion, and I will reach out to see if they can provide a way to support them directly. However, I doubt many people will do the same. In a small community, I can see the creator receiving 5 boosts from main supporters in the first few months and then not getting any other incentives for the rest of the year.
I hope BL figures out a way to stop scammers without penalizing small creators. The boost system is a great solution to the small creators’ problem and can give MW a unique opportunity to set themselves apart from other platforms.
It’s difficult, I imagine. Most of the gains small time creators can get early on are also the sort of gains scammers are trying to capitalize on. I imagine some of the limitations were implemented without fully knowing how the system would be used/abused, so maybe it is going further than it needs to in light of the system’s actual usage.
There’s steps they could take, like ozarkexpeditions mentioned, but I think they are also aiming to make things as accessible as possible. So, there’s a balance between accessibility and security they’re trying to play. I think most designers would prefer the accessibility toned back a little; things like not having to register to download…
The reason is completely legitimate, but 5 tokens per user per year is really few.
I would increase that for those who are clearly good users (check ranking level, downloads/prints over time, profile info, etc.).
I would say new users or users who aren’t very active get 5, while others get at least 10.
perhaps 5 per month from same contributor would be more fair