Now, I do think we should try to protect users from bad shit. We can certainly add in some rules for content or bad faith.

Then we are implying that any links that do remain are officially supported/approved, even if we insist on adding a "non official" disclaimer to the links.

The moment we take any action to corral or enforce links beyond a simple boilerplate to state they are unofficial and not in violation of Wikidit's ToS, we are taking an official stance on the quality of said link, and therefore any link that remains is officially approved. There is no real grey area here; either the links are or are not officially supported. If we literally do anything beyond "add this boilerplate and don't violate wikidot's ToS", we are passing a judgement on that link at some point in time, and as such, will officially declare it as good or not.

One, it's a lot of work that we don't need to be doing.

Two, it opens us up to more liability.

See, so long as we're making sure people post that their links are not approved by the wiki staff, are not official, and are in no way affiliated with the wiki, we don't really have much liability. Honestly, we don't even if they don't do that, but it will help make it clear. When a Youtuber posts a link to their Patreon on their videos, Youtube does not become responsible for their Patreon. If you post a link to a Kickstarter on Facebook, Facebook does not take on any liability for that Kickstarter, no matter how it performs.

If we actually do go through each Patreon link, that implies a much greater level of endorsement. Essentially, at that point we're saying each link that remains on the wiki is good. It's better to just give a blanket, "Yeah, you can link them, but add this disclaimer," and then remove ones that violate any rules we set up.

Now, I do think we should try to protect users from bad shit. We can certainly add in some rules for content or bad faith. I think that not allowing Kickstarters is probably a good choice, since those are notoriously unreliable (where Patreons have to produce content before you get money). But we're going to be relying largely on user reports. And I have faith that our users will let us know about any egregious Patreons. We have a good userbase, and they bring us issues all the time.

Here's my input; staff would also have to do a lot of work to not allow donation sort of things. And in fact, I'd be fine with only Patreon links and nothing else. Anything else is too risky to follow through on, but with Patreon you basically have to provide work to get paid. It's work for staff either way, but Patreon links will not doom the site into an eternal doom that we can never recover from, or even pose much of a risk IMO.

I wholly agree with this.

For me, there are four categories of donation that come to mind:

(1) Patreon-style subscription content services created by authors.
(2) Etsy/Redbubble-style online stores.
(3) Individual established projects, usually donated to through services like Paypal.
(4) New projects seeking up-front funding, usually funded through crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter/Indiegogo.

Of all of these, I strongly support 1 through 3 (in that order).

I would tolerate allowing projects in the fourth category, but feel very wary of them. I'd be 100% fine with disallowing any Kickstarter-style project (with the exception of funding an ongoing, established project that just so happens to use a crowdfunding platform).

Kickstarters make me really uncomfortable because so many of them don't follow through, and as a person who's both finished many projects and also let a lot of projects fall through unwillingly, I fully understand how and why that happens.

(There's also a category (5), tip jars and Amazon wish lists, but this category seems to be pretty non-controversial. As mentioned upthread, we already tacitly allow some versions of this. It basically works like category (3).)

If the Donation Links proposal is passed, I would say that a discussion/voting thread on which of these categories to allow would be our next priority (along with creating a system of oversight/implementation).

Honestly, I don't really care that much what people have on their author pages or on specific projects like KaktusKast. It's unobtrusive enough that I don't think it will cause any harm to the rest of the site. I don't think there's anything wrong with making money for creative endeavors, and I don't think having a donation link on a page hurts the site, so long as it isn't on something meant to be read as in-universe. I'd fight tooth and nail to keep these out of mainlist pages, but if Kaktus wants to have it on his podcast page, that seems fine to me. If someone wants to have something in their author page saying "I wrote this cool stuff and made this art, please support me!" I'm personally fine with that. I'm a big fan of artists getting paid for things they make, because it makes them more able to make more cool stuff. It's great that so many of us have been fine with doing this for free. Heck, I've been paying for the privilege. But not everyone is as lucky as me. Some people could use the money, and some other people might be willing to toss in some cash for a creator they particularly like. I don't think it taints the site in any

I should note that I do not intend to create a Patreon, even if this does become policy. But I would love to see some other people be a little more able to spend time doing things they love.

Ultimately, I think this is going to be a mess. However, the version we're voting on has the minimal safeguards I would need to see to support even trying this (strict, clear, mandatory disclaimers on author/project pages only), and I support the Patreon/donation model of artists getting paid to do work.

I'll note that most of my objections stem from it being difficult for staff to handle. I seriously oppose many of the suggested ways of implementing this, but this thread isn't about that.

I haven't been convinced by arguments that the wiki just isn't the place for this. I also don't agree with objections seen so far to authors partially using this as a way to promote their non-SCP work, or the general principle of wanting everything to be free period.

In fact, I support this iteration because it seems to favor Patreon-style "donating to encourage an author creating more work or pay their hosting bills", and gives us plenty of room to move to stop problems that might arise.

I didn't like most of the other suggested iterations, like "support only X specific project" (because projects can fall through, and then you already paid for it — no Kickstarters, please!), or "staff must approve this case-by-case" (opens the door to accidental nepotism, etc — though I would support staff removing some case-by-case with good reason discussed openly on O5). However, I would happily contribute directly to an author in hopes of getting them to keep writing. If they don't, then one can simply stop contributing.

EDIT: To elaborate slightly: I'd rather this be focused on supporting authors who get fans through their SCP work, as well as some projects that in essence function that way (kaktuscast being a good example, since that wouldn't be viable without people wanting to support kaktus).

If it's strictly project-by-project, that smacks of getting paid directly for individual SCP works, which I seriously dislike, if only because it seems much more unfair, and far more confusing to handle.

It also creates a perverse incentive for authors to focus their talents on things that people may not be that interested in, but which we're willing to allow funding for. Suddenly Kaktuskast is a way better use of time than creating an SCP, at least in theory.

Sure, we could require projects only cover their operating costs (I know that was the plan for Kaktuskast), but this would require us to police these things. I do not believe we are capable of pulling that off.

we going to have any prerequisites for this, or mechanism for approval?

I'd imagine that you'd need to offer at least some proof that the donation link is valid and you intend to follow through any projects¹. In my mind, that would just be a one-time deal per user: once the user has done the basic proof, they don't need to have future links approved unless they run afowl of the guidelines and get their links revoked.

But again, this is just my opinion. So long as a system is in place that can adequately enforce the donation link program, I'm happy.

Depends on why they're in bad standing. If it's a case where they're just overall disliked/being a jerk, then we probably shouldn't bar them from posting donation links (lest we get accused of favoritism). If they've regularly been doing the kinds of things that warrants an O5 thread, then maybe we shouldn't let them set up a link until they stop doing the stuff that gets them mentioned here for whatever length of time is felt appropriate.

Follow up question: are we going to have any prerequisites for this, or mechanism for approval? Or is it that as a site member I have the privilege to create donation links that follow X guidelines, until they are revoked for reasons?

Big question: How do we handle people who, for whatever reason, are, so to speak, in "bad standing" with the community/staff putting up donation links?

Depends on why they're in bad standing. If it's a case where they're just overall disliked/being a jerk, then we probably shouldn't bar them from posting donation links (lest we get accused of favoritism). If they've regularly been doing the kinds of things that warrants an O5 thread, then maybe we shouldn't let them set up a link until they stop doing the stuff that gets them mentioned here for whatever length of time is felt appropriate.

What makes people lose donation link privileges?

Banning from the wiki, using the links to run a scam, repeated disciplinary issues, repeated complaints about the donation in question (that's not stemming from general hatedom of the project). At least, that's off the top of my head.

ETA: Oh, and multiple failed/stalled projects.

I fully agree with LurkD on transparency. A small cadre of three users sounds good as far as people directly handling money. We might have more beyond that helping those three but they shouldn't have hands on the funds or management of money.

The main criteria will probably be something like this:

• Being financially independent.
• Having an established career and stability in their personal life.
• Long term investment in the Wiki.

We've already trusted Mann to pay for our pro account so I think these standards are good to apply to other members.

As for the statements that PF 2.0 is not as hard as some have made it out to be, the possibility intrigues me but I'd want to see a specific breakdown of where we've got it wrong in terms of the effort it will take to enact.

Misread but I still would like to see a breakdown so we're all on the same page

Unless someone wants to, like, angel invest a literal lifetime's worth of hosting and backend support and everything else it takes to run a site into the community, PF is bad news.

With regards to the whole donations thing in general, I'm fine with it if it's on author pages or special project hubs/pages only, and aggressively seeking donations should be a disciplinary offence. Scams should also, obviously, be an offense.

I don't mind people earning occasional tips from their work here, even """just""" writing, but the site should remain an amateur project to facilitate the collaborative nature of our work. Funding special projects is absolutely fine - ideally, people shouldn't lose money to creating content for the site/community.

Big question: How do we handle people who, for whatever reason, are, so to speak, in "bad standing" with the community/staff putting up donation links?

What makes people lose donation link privileges?

I've expressed this in the past, and I really cannot communicate this emphatically enough, but people vastly underestimate the amount of money it would take to develop PF 2.0.

I would, and I mean this honestly in my capacity as a Professional, outside of the wiki, recommend not including that in any kind of discussion at this point until we can sit down and have a serious conversation about the costs and responsibilities of hosting something like that.

There are other very qualified people who I'm sure could agree with me on this issue.

[…] we'd probably need to have some kind of Treasury Team in existence as a precursor to formal incorporation or organization in some form.

You'd definitely need a treasure team for this. That's just a fact that I've said many times whenever SCP crowdfunding comes into discussion.

As for the larger conversation, I agree with Bright here. Author pages with patreon links should not a big deal and I even think there is some precedence of this if I'm not wrong. But collecting money/advertising donations as a whole, whether it's for the entirety of the site or on the behalf of staff members is something we are really not ready for and really shouldn't be doing at the moment until said treasury team has been established with some method of keeping those funds transparent to the community.

[…] made of long-term adult site members who have demonstrated trustworthiness.

Transparency being a key word here as the so called 'trustworthiness' of staff is not really something quantifiable… or sadly reliable if I can be just plainly blunt about it. AND NOTHING AGAINST MY FELLOW STAFFERS HERE but history has shown us how we've been disappointed in certain people over time, and we don't need to go through something like that with money involved, god forbid. There would need to be a strong, STRONG, system of accountability if 2-3 people are going to be handling potentially thousands of dollars of cash.

I think some combination of the 2 and 3 option would be our best bet there. I'm thinking that people deemed to be credible by staff would be allowed to place some form of donation link or button on their author page or possibly a project page if they've made one. We'd definitely have to audit these projects, even very credible ones might fall through. I remember Lotims video project being so cool looking and seemingly close to completion, but we didn't let them link on the wiki and then they fell off the map. I think we'd probably have to establish some sort of Treasury Team to be in charge of handling these things, made of long-term adult site members who have demonstrated trustworthiness.

If we ever wanted to collect money for ourselves, possibly crowdfunding some kind of Project Foundation 2.0 project or other venture which would require capital, we'd probably need to have some kind of Treasury Team in existence as a precursor to formal incorporation or organization in some form. But for the moment that's all at least a little ways off. We're not even close to having any kind of start on that. But maybe setting up some mechanism for evaluating and handling monetary issues could be that first step.

Randominis post above is null, and the votes are not valid. Apologies Randomini, but this is a Point of Contention for many and deserves a clear individual thread.

I share Cimmerian's concern that this is not ready for voting. If discussion had stalled, why not make a "Hey, this needs attention" post rather than a vote.

When it does go to vote, it should really be a yes/no sort of thing, with the finer details worked out by the administration/staff afterwards.

(The details of the selection process would be left to a future vote, if this category wins.)

(The details of such an implementation would be left to a future vote, if this category wins.)

…I agree?

Further, there's been no additional conversation in this thread for 5 days - and over 48 hours after we were supposed to open up voting for 48 hours. I don't think there's anything else worth waiting for: this vote is for figuring out a course of action so that we actually get to a decision.

As I see it, the three main categories for voting are:

• Do not permit donation links on the site.
• Permit donation links on the site for select projects as audited by staff. (The details of the selection process would be left to a future vote, if this category wins.)
• Permit donation links on specific types of pages (like Author pages or Hubs), with donation links not permitted on normal SCP or tale pages. (The details of such an implementation would be left to a future vote, if this category wins.)

Everyone seems to be in agreement about including a large disclaimer about where the money would be going in any instance of donation buttons. Again, specific details of this should be discussed in a future vote, should either donation option be accepted.

Let's make the voting period 3 days.

woops never mind

EDIT: To clarify, this was suggested specifically to help authors who want to have tip jars, but don't have big visible content hubs to do so. It's currently far easier to find the hub page for a series than it is to find the author page for an article.

2. If you haven't submitted at least three successful pages to the website, then it's not especially likely reasonable to ask for money on the basis of your site contributions. If anything, this would be yet another bar to jump, preventing newbies from begging for cash indiscriminantly.

• They are not present on individual article or tale pages
• They are standardized
• They are worded to make it crystal clear that donations/"tips" are optional, not expected.

I'd like to see them collapsed by default, but I'm willing to be swayed on that point.

The above is for individual contributor-level "tip jars". If someone wants to put up a donation link on a hub for a shared project, I'd like to be sure that all parties agree to it before it's allowed.

@Randomini's comment above:

As an additional/alternative suggestion: we should design an optional alternate voting module with an unobtrusive link in it to the author's page. This would connect all their pages to that hub, and make it easier for users to find tip jars of authors they like, should they want to ask for money on their author page.

I'd be strongly against this for SCP Articles, as it could "contaminate" voting with early knowledge of the author. I, for one like not knowing who wrote an article until I get to the end. Tales are a different animal. If someone wants to link their author page (with a tip jar) in the first comment of the discussion, I have no issue with that.

All that being said, current rules require 3 successful non-hub pages to get an Author Page. How would we reconcile that with allowing tip jars?

Your money is going to the author of this page, XXXXXXXX. Their author page is available at XXXXXXXX. You will not be donating to the SCP Wiki website. You will only be donating to the author of this page.
(Standard Paypal Tip Jar Link)

I would also like to agree that such links shouldn't be permitted on normal SCP or tale pages (since begging for money on every damn page would get tiring), but be permitted on hub pages for larger bodies of work. This would include art pages, author pages, or other larger hubs of a single author's work, like tale hubs. Putting donate buttons on multi-author hubs is more questionable, and should only be done in instances where all contributing authors agree to the addition of the link - and they should all be allowed to add their own donate buttons, too. Obviously for hubs that are open to contribution, like GOI hubs, this should not be permitted.

I think this is doable, but to prescribe "staff discretion" to such things both makes extra work for us in having every newbie ask if they can beg for cash, as well as leaving us open to accusations of bias. I think it's better to think of general, mostly unambiguous rules which can be applied uniformly.

As an additional/alternative suggestion: we should design an optional alternate voting module with an unobtrusive link in it to the author's page. This would connect all their pages to that hub, and make it easier for users to find tip jars of authors they like, should they want to ask for money on their author page.

EDIT: On continuing consideration, remaining concerns, which could potentially be mitigated:

• People adding donate links to pages that aren't theirs for any period of time. (Of course, let's not forget that users can do this right now until someone realises, anyway.) This could potentially be prevented by using a lookup of the current page's author and some kind of magic inside the module to only associate one donation key to that author.
• Hiding donation modules on pages with an "scp" or "tale" tag, or without an "author" or "hub" tag. Again, not sure how easy this would be to implement, but (quoth Rimple) there's probably some listpages bullshit that'd do it.

I've laid out some of the problems I see with donations. If you are in favor of having donation links on the site, please lay out your reasons, and explain how you would mitigate those issues. If you against donation links, please lay out any issues I haven't covered. Let's get this hashed out so we can make an actual decision.

EDIT: On Decibelle's advice, I'm pushing the deadline two days ahead to Sunday, so we can discuss it over the weekend as well. After that, we will have 48 hours to vote.

WrongJohn does bring up a good point about liability. I feel like that's an issue we can solve with the right verbage, but we might need to run it past a lawyer to be safe. I also worry that there's a good chance this could end up defaulting to only projects run by staff or former staff. Generally, people we trust enough for this and who are passionate enough to make SCP-based projects are going to be staff. However, that's going to seem unfair to people outside of our bubble.

I'm still tending towards no, but I want to hear more arguments for this. Like Moose said, we need more actual discussion. That means stating why you think it's a good/bad idea and how you'll mitigate the arguments other people have made.

I said at the beginning of this that I'd be willing to comply with whatever decision staff made. I won't pretend that I didn't think it wasn't going to go my way, nor will I pretend like I'm not disappointed in this, but policy is policy. I maintain that I don't believe this issue is out of staff's grasp, nor do I think that the possible issues of something as simple as linking off-site donations pages are as numerous as they have been said to be several times in this thread. As a result of this, I'm in the process of pulling the embedded audio plays on the hub page, and replacing them with links to the site. I think this is a friendly enough compromise.

This said, I still think a thread to vote on it should be done, since staff seem to be divisive on the issue.

This is a site as a hobby and for the sake of writing first. If people want to be paid for writing they can get published in a periodical or whatever.

I'm leaving wifi now. Goodnight friends.

However, it might be time to start thinking organization. Certainly, there's a lot more that could be accomplished if there's a nonprofit or somesuch legal entity set up to describe what the website and its members are capable of. But that's beyond the scope of this request.

For the sake of future reference to this thread when the topic eventually comes up, count me as at least one other person who fully supports a motion like this (and has for a while).

Once we start evaluating and approving donation links, we are offering a form of official stamp of approval to these projects. By doing so, we are assuming a certain modicum of liability for projects resident beyond the wiki itself. Yes, we have official social media accounts, but so far, these projects have all involved no monetary transactions. Opening it up for donation links changes that involvement, and thus that liability. If we start engaging in sanctioning ways to accept payment, we should have a structure in place to accept the liability inherent in the responsibility of approval. The last thing anyone would want is for one of us to be by surprise on the hook for $5 they can't afford. For things like KaktusKast and scpper, the risk is minimal, but not nonexistent.

However, it might be time to start thinking organization. Certainly, there's a lot more that could be accomplished if there's a nonprofit or somesuch legal entity set up to describe what the website and its members are capable of. But that's beyond the scope of this request. For right now, we're not set up to be in the business of approving donation links on the wiki, so we shouldn't.

e: hate my phone

I really want to see desperately poor artists (who are also people I care about) get paid for their work.

FWIW I would like this as well but if we do that I would want it done for people producing the articles and tales that are the lifeblood of the wiki, done in a manner in which we are purchasing their work i.e. like a publishing company. I don't think that conversation is here though.

I would recommend instead Kaktus state in his podcast something along the lines of "if you are interested in helping fund continuations of this project feel free to find me on <website> or <discussion page where link is>".

My opinion of the matter is this. No donation occurs on the site, but it can be done off-site. I mean, the kaktuskast does have its own site now.

• Who are the staff who actually select projects? Is it any full staff member? How do we get consistency? (Even guidelines tend to be subject to interpretation.)
• How do we deal with staff saying yes to a friend because they don't want them to be upset or angry if they say no?
• What do people actually have in mind for guidelines? Anqxyr suggested some good ones, but they don't feel (to me) like they go far enough, especially with regards to the approval process.
• What about requirements, such as transparency rules?
• How do we deal with people donating to projects that then don't get finished because someone gets depressed and abandons the project? (Let alone scams, etc.)
• How do we deal with the chaos that will arise when a project ends up being terrible or a scam or whatever?
• Are we prepared to deal with the pretty high amount of bad blood that's likely to arise the moment a project is not approved by an established community member, even for valid reasons — that they don't think are valid?
• What about possible protests over people getting donations only for side projects and not the actual SCPs/Tales that make up the lifeblood of the wiki, just because staff felt less comfortable with that, and not for any actual legal reason? (This is less relevant if donations are only ever asked to cover tangible costs, like for kaktuskast.)
• What if people demand their money back from the person they previously donated to?
• What happens if we ban someone with a popular project — where the loss of donations would actually have a serious impact on their life? Several of our most popular authors have also been our most problematic users, and the least likely to act reasonably about being banned. Now imagine money being involved.
• Might people be more inclined to sue the wiki if there are actual monetary damages to sue for? (What if they have actual grounds, due to our — untrained and non-professional — staff making an understandable error?)
• How familiar are we with possible legal complications from allowing money to be sought on-site? What's Wikidot's ToS say about this?

As for my own personal thoughts, I'm unlikely to vote one way or another on this issue, because I can't think of any way to make this work well for the wiki, but I really want to allow it because I really want to see desperately poor artists (who are also people I care about) get paid for their work.

That said, in the interest of full disclosure, I have had a link to my amazon wish list on my Author profile page since april of this year… It hasn't gotten me anything, but I put it there just in case anyone wanted to gift me anything.

I am extremely uncomfortable letting staff pick case-by-case basis on who gets to monetize their work directly on the wiki pages. There is far too much leeway here for essentially staff buddies and friendos be allowed to monetize their works directly through official channels where those who aren't rubbing elbows with staff don't get the same direct access.

And yes, concerning that kaktuscast's main audience is on wikidot- that will hold true for any derivative work of the scp foundation. That doesn't mean any derivative work of the scp foundation should monetize their media directly on the official pages of the site purely because it's the most direct way to monetize their work.

Nobody on the wiki may make money from their articles directly, because nobody has singular rights over the titanic universe we have created and we write for the sake of writing itself.

I'd like to clarify if you're solely referring to putting donation buttons on wiki pages, because the way this is currently phrased is… untenable, as far as our license is concerned.

I will staunchly and completly reject any personal donation lroposals for users on the wiki, or stuff for authors who just write articles.

Nobody on the wiki may make money from their articles directly, because nobody has singular rights over the titanic universe we have created and we write for the sake of writing itself. If they want to be paid for short stories get it published in a magazine or similar publication.

However, reading this thread, I am partially open to discussing a policy for wiki derived works like kaktuskast. It would require extremely clear discussion about costs and such, and should never be just for writing or editing or whatever.

I am apprehensive as all hell but I'll deal with this when I'm home.

Full disclosure, I know I'm biased about this (in a "I'm one of kaktus's podcast network to-be podcast hosts, and I'm fuckin poor and the idea of getting even one donation makes me cry" way) but I've also tried to weigh both sides of the issue.

I'm of the opinion that donation links should be allowed for SCP-related projects, with staff oversight. Beyond the stipulation that users need to be ok'd by staff before posting donation links, I feel like a method of "verifying" that links are ok'd by staff would also act as a second layer to ward off scumminess. Links need to be accompanied by a clear explanation of it being a donation (not mandatory payment) link, that it is a project fund, of who the recipient is, and that the link has been cleared by staff. Information about donation links (like the fact that donation links for personal, non-project funds, or the wiki itself are banned and not valid) could be inserted in the required reading that outlines all of this clearly. If someone doesn't read the explanation accompanying the link, or doesn't read the part of the required reading covering donation links, that's on them. "I didn't know because I didn't read the rules" isn't a valid defense for not following wiki rules, and neither should it be for this kind of thing either, if donation links are allowed.

I see why non-SCP related donation links or personal donation links on, say, author pages are a problem. However, the projects we're talking about are derivative work, not source material. Writing SCPs is making more source material, making podcasts about the Foundation is making derivative works. If we as the maintainers of the source material have decided we're not accepting any money for it, that's that, but derivative works are allowed to ask for donations as outlined by the CC license we use. If people aren't attempting to scam money through trickery, they're not actually breaking any rules of licensing or the rules we have about derivative works (which as it stands is basically "just follow our CC license").

The thing is, producing content for the wiki generally doesn't cost money. It takes time and effort, which are things worth being paid for, and I suppose technically you need money to write an SCP since you'd need to buy a computer or a phone or something to do that, but you wouldn't even be on the site in the first place without it. Contribution to the wiki doesn't require anything other than what you've already got. Things like podcasts and off-wiki websites, those do cost money in addition to time and effort. That money comes out of the creator's pocket, and while the creator knows how much that they need to spend to keep their project going, asking for donations from people who want to and can donate to something they consume or use isn't that unreasonable of a request. It also kind of pushes derivative work creators away from cross-posting their stuff (like uploading podcast episodes directly to the site or linking pdfs of a board game in the forums) since they're losing the opportunity for potential donations, and it makes more sense then to link their project page, essentially keeping the content off-site. I dunno if you guys think of this as an issue, but having a stumbling block that might deter people from directly sharing their derivative stuff on the wiki doesn't sit well with me. It's not a huge, earth-shattering issue, but an issue nonetheless.

My problem with this stuff is that I'm not sure where we draw the line on donation links and what we do if we find out we're funding someone/something incredibly distasteful by way of an actually legit podcast or whatever. It doesn't have to be a scam to be terrible.