Member Value

part of the ArsDigita Community System by Philip Greenspun

---

• User-accessible directory: none
• Site administrator directory: /admin/member-value/
• data model : /doc/sql/member-value.sql

The Big Idea

If we're commercial, we want to know how much to charge each user at the end of each month. If we're non-commercial, we want to use pseudo-dollars to track those members who are imposing a burden on the community (e.g., by posting off-topic questions in a discussion forum).

Rates, etc.

Rates and policies are kept in the "acs/member-value" section of the /parameters/ad.ini file. I'm not 100% happy about this because I think that some Oracle-based accounting software might need to check rates. It also keeps simple Oracle triggers from adding charges. But on balance, I thought it was more important to be consistent with the ad.ini religion of the ArsDigita Community System. None of the pages that use member value depend explicitly on rates being stored in a .ini file. Instead of using ad_parameter to check a rate, they use mv_parameter (defined in /tcl/ad-member-value).

A non-commercial site

A site like photo.net that is non-commercial but wishes to keep track of who has cost the community how much needs the following tables:

• users_orders (because users_charges references it)
• users_charges

---

philg@mit.edu