Lex, there is a crude form of what you're thinking already in place. Users have a checkbox that turns their account on/off for use as an intermediary. You can stick with one-hop payments, allow no pass-throughs, and set up individual trust relationships with everyone you do business with. On one hand you have to maximize the "it just works" factor, on the other hand you don't want to freak anyone out by playing voodoo with their money.
The idea of manual path selection is interesting, and I can see how if some are charging a pass-through fee and some are not, you'd want to select the cheapest route. Or if you see someone you don't trust come up as a possibility, you could avoid them altogether. But if the system showed you a bunch of paths for you to select from, that would create a privacy issue.. you could deduce who trusts whom and know that their respective credit limits are at least as high as the payment you're attempting.
As it is, Ripple will just go with the shortest path that has sufficient credit throughout the chain. It will start with direct 1-1 trust, then look for a path with only one intermediary, then two, etc. but only the link closest to you shows up on your balance sheet. That's the person who's house you should egg if the deal goes bad. In turn, the egg-ee could either accept the punishment, or if not at fault he could look at
his balance sheet and egg the next guy's house. He still has the choice of revealing his other trust relationship to you or not.
If Russell were to start charging for payments going through him while Kat is still doing it for free (or vice versa) then I would definitely want to see both of the paths to decide if I'm willing to pay the transaction fee and gain certain benefits as far as assuring that I will either get my product or money back or if I want to not pay any fees and go strictly on trust.
I'm not sure what you mean by gaining benefits.. as in, Kat would insure transactions for a fee? I guess transaction insurance would be good if you trust the insurer more than the person who's supposed to supply the goods in the first place. And since Kat and Russell probably live in the same house, that would simplify the egging justice system
If I may make a suggestion, send out a newsletter to your users, even if the "newsletter" is an email saying "Hi! We're still here! We gained X new users last month." I know I have an account, but to be honest, I haven't logged in in so long, I remember nothing about it. Embarrassed
Also, ask for donations in every newsletter. Can't hurt.
Yeah, I just never was a sales-y, promotional mass e-mail kind of guy. We'd still be at what, 8 users? if not for Jack. But I'm confident that Shirehours will tickle my palms again and I'll do something to give it a boost. I generally prefer working on the quality of things and just letting people gravitate to or from my stuff. Right now I'm focused on fixing a rent house and it'll be 3 months before I dare advertise it