Donation button added

When earlier this week I said that I think that a Paypal donation button on this blog would not work because nobody would use it, pretty much every commenter disagreed. After pondering comments like "might be fun to watch" and "Think of it as an experiment", I realized that at least it was worth a try. Taking into account comments of "In any case, it should be 100% clear where the money goes to" and "A donate button would be fine as long as you made sure to make it even more clear (? Somehow?) than it is now that you don't owe people anything, even if they donate, that it is totally optional and they get nothing but the satisfaction of helping you out", I'm writing this post to introduce the new donation button, which you will find at the upper right of the page.

As the button itself says, it is there to donate money, which by definition means a "gift given without return consideration". You are not obliged to donate anything, nor does accepting your donation oblige me to anything. Think of it as a tip, something you give for past services received, to express your consideration for my writing.

I will not pass on your donations to charity, because that would be rather complicated if they come in a trickling stream over a longer period. As far as possible I will use the money directly or indirectly for the blog, for example to pay for the domain registration, but most likely to pay for games. I checked that for example Steam accepts Paypal, so your donation could serve to buy games for me which I could blog about. Currently I can't use your donation to pay for my World of Warcraft subscription, Paypal is only accepted for that in the USA, not in Europe. I am *not* a starving writer who needs your donation to pay for food and rent, the donations are really just for leisure expenses.

Your donations will remain anonymous. However you can expect occasional blog posts of how the donation experiment is going in general, reporting whether I get any donations at all, or maybe the average amount donated. Given that Paypal keeps $0.50 from each donation, the minimum donation amount is $1.

Thank you very much for your donation, I appreciate the gesture regardless of the amount.