Component Triedintelligencespacetime

Sliding Scale of Belonging

Every amount lands somewhere you can name.

On a page that asks for a gift, holding the tension between tiered asks that sort people into worth-classes and blank fields that lose the tangible, the design grounds every position on one range in a named local outcome and mixes rather than sorts the givers. People can then contribute at any scale and discover what the place needs, and the place gains dignified, gift and equitable.

Context

The input form of Magnitude Without Rank: the moment someone chooses how much to give. It grew out of ReVillage's Contribute page in April, where its source called it "probably the strongest candidate among the six". Its sibling Two-Strand Thread (TrustFlow) is the display form of the same parent.

Tensions

Tiered asks ($25 / $100 / $500 / $1k buttons) sort visitors into worth-classes.
A blank amount field loses the tangible-impact connection that gives small gifts dignity.
A gift is a relationship with a place, and a form tends to treat it as a transaction.
Hidden: the organization wants its largest gifts named and seen.

Forces the design applies

ground on abstract ↔ groundevery position on the range, named as one specific local outcome
mix on sort ↔ mixthe giver: no tier buttons, no worth-class to pick
expand on expand ↔ contractthe range, from coffee for the build crew to a founding gift, with a custom amount beyond it
relax on pressure ↔ relaxthe ask: one quiet control, and a way to manage or cancel a monthly gift

Solution

One range from very small to very large, spaced logarithmically, where every position names a specific local thing the gift does. A custom amount is always there, and nothing on the form sorts the giver.

The generative parameter is the ladder of outcomes, which each place writes from its own ground. ReVillage's runs from "Coffee for the build crew" through "A bench at Town Square" to "A founding contribution". The pattern fixes the shape (log range, a named outcome at every position, a custom escape), never the content.

 $10 ─────────────●───────────────────────── $10,000+
          A bench at Town Square
          "Funds materials and time for one of the long
           communal benches that holds the village together"
 [ ] Or enter a custom amount

What changed since April. The prototype was continuous (positions 0 to 100, mapped by Math.exp from $10 to $25,000), and the monthly toggle re-anchored impact to the year (amount * 12). The shipped widget has eleven fixed stops (STEPS = [10, 25, 50, 100, 250, 500, 1000, 2500, 5000, 10000, 25000]), and monthly now only adds "/mo". It gained a real checkout and a way out: "Already giving monthly? Manage or cancel your contribution →". The code still calls the outcomes TIERS; visitors never see the word.

Acts

Strengthens: contribute (at any scale, including small), discover (sliding is a way of learning what the place needs).
Weakens: buy: giving shaped as purchasing a tier.

Qualities it gives the place

DignifiedGiftEquitable

Refuses

Tier-Sort Tiered options that require users to publicly declare which worth-class they belong to.
Abstraction pull The pull toward abstract framings that lose tangible local impact.

McLuhan check

Enhances: a small gift's dignity, and a large gift's specificity.
Retrieves: the sliding-scale fee and the pass-the-hat.
Obsolesces: the $25 / $100 / $500 / $1k button grid.
Reverses into: tiers through the detents. Eleven stops about 2.5 times apart are close to buttons on a line, and the brief's own micromoment idea, "a slider thumb that resists at tier boundaries", would make the tiers felt. At the top, outcomes turn into recognition ("Names a room", "a named gift"): Humble Bundle's reversal.

Required companion: the custom amount stays. A recurring gift carries its own exit (Permission to Leave).

Connections

Completes: Magnitude Without Rank
Siblings: none yet
Completed by: none yet
Not yet written: Two-Strand Thread

Seen in

ReVillage: "Pick your scale." "Whatever you give lands somewhere specific in the work. Slide to see what your contribution does." The April brief's read: "The Contribute slider gives full agency: continuous range, custom-amount available, frequency toggle, no confirmshaming." "Continuous range" no longer holds (the shipped range is stepped), and neither does the April solution's "A frequency toggle re-anchors annual impact."

Elsewhere

Precedents sliding-scale fees (community clinics, therapy) · pay-what-you-can theater tickets · Humble Bundle's pay-what-you-want slider, and its top-contributor list (the reversal)

Tried. (ReVillage only). All three front-ends are wired to live checkout; which one ships on revillage.earth is an open question in revillage-backend/README.md. Not yet grounded: nobody who gave has been asked how it felt.