would kill both the A/B tested options. Bringing in people's psychological need to be above average is great, but I might do that by putting a nice 37Signals style yellow highlight on one of the expensive options (for some value of expensive which would pay for more than a Big Mac) and say "24% of people went for this"
I'd love to see your variation tested too but the data-driven "above average" feels much less accusatory and supportive than subjective labeling of "poor student" and "valued contributor". Makes me wonder if poor students are less valued?
Also the fine-grained payment distribution scrollbar controls make me feel empowered and better about my participation in this cause. Getting rid of them would disappoint me.
This reminds me of someone's donation button on some open source project, it was something like:
Donate [$5 — buy me a beer] [$20 — buy me dinner] [$100 — buy me a gadget]
http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/deep-disc...
would kill both the A/B tested options. Bringing in people's psychological need to be above average is great, but I might do that by putting a nice 37Signals style yellow highlight on one of the expensive options (for some value of expensive which would pay for more than a Big Mac) and say "24% of people went for this"