A new discussion thread about implementation may be found here

I still feel we aren't organizationally structured for this.

Cautious yes here, for reasons that have been articulated before and better upthread.

I'm largely undecided, but I feel bringing money near the wiki is not a good idea right now. For the most part I agree with Soulless.

I'm more or less undecided, but I feel with that should express my hesitancy, more or less. My main worry is that this will add in a specific dimension to the produce people have related to the site- a monetary dimension to user interaction, user production, and user behavior in general.

Money makes people very ugly, very quickly, and even if we as staff are not affiliated with this, we as staff will be requested and held accountable popularly for what may partially become people's livelihoods as hinging upon their interactions with the community and competing with each other.

So the general idea makes me highly suspicious, as I sure as hell as an admin am not looking forward to potentially having to remove people's sources of income for inappropriate behavior(i.e. banning them or similar), or needing to mediate between people who have monetary risk on the line.

I am willing to change my vote if in the future this is adjusted, but I do not know of such a change that will not ultimately change the way producers will interact with their audience, and in a way in which removing a user or having conflicts will now begin to have monetary weight to it, as opposed to ego or similar.

Looking over the discussion thread, and some of the arguments here, I'm going to weigh in on a very cautious yes.

Solo's vote has not been counted due to voting yes and no. Nusquam's vote has not been counted due to gimme votes for retired staff not being counted yet.

The devil, as always, will be in the details, but I'm not for banning all donation links completely. (So long as staff reserves the right, after research and discussion, to ultimately go "Nah" if a viable plan cannot be developed. But I don't see this vote as saying "donation links will happen come whatever may".)

If this should pass we need to put a hold on any implementation of it until the details are worked out completely. There's a lot of trouble that can come from this, but I think we can definitely head it off at the pass with proper planning.

I'm with Lazar on this one. I've got no problem with linking to offsite projects, especially fanart or merch or things like Kaktuscast, and then there having requests for donations, but I don't like the idea of direct requests/donation links posted to the site.

I still have some doubts, but when I think more about link placement remaining solely on author pages, I find myself worrying less.

I express opposition, ultimately. While I find the proposed restraints within reason, to potentially open financial transactions with the site seeming to be an intermediary (by virtue of having an URL link there)… it does not sit well with me.

That being said, I don't mind if one links to their website or equivalent (wherein a donation link is placed there, and not in the Foundation site itself).

My concerns have all been expressed more eloquently by other folks upthread.

Edit: Whoops, thanks Lily

Given that the vote is a binary, I have to vote against the motion. As with others, the Patreon inclusion makes me nervous.

If the Patreon is removed so that this is solely tip jars/amazon wish lists/other one-time donations, my vote will change to "In Favor".

If It's okay for reserve staff to weigh in on this I'd like to do so. As a couple of people have already said, we already allow many people who aren't writers/active users to profit off the site. To not allow the people who actually create the content to have the same privilege is absurd and grossly unfair.

EDIT: I was going to add something about "I agree we should limit it to author pages" but now that I think about I don't see how much tangible harm letting people say something like "if you enjoy this feel free to donate to my patreon" in the author note if they post a new tale/skip would actually do. I'm all for anything that benefits the people writing for us as much as possible.

As long as it stays on author pages and the like, I'm OK with it. People should be able to support other site member's projects, art work, or anything else if they want to.

I'm still in favour of allowing them.

This is a provisional "in favor" vote, under the assumption that there will be some form of oversight system put into place to protect the interests of potential donators. Officially allowing authors/content creators to post donation fund links directly to the site (even under author pages) is in effect, classifying the donation link destination as officially supported by the site in some manner. As such, we need to basically take steps to make sure that links are valid/non-scammy in nature.

If there is no intention to put such a system in place, or such a system cannot be decided upon, it is better to not have have direct donation links on the site at all. I hate to take an all-or-nothing approach, especially one that can't easily fit into this voting thread, but there's too simply much potential backlash if we don't enforce some kind of minimum standards for "officially-supported" content creators or fail to protect donators from scams. Either we handle this correctly, or we refuse to allow it to begin with.

Some context for future readers: I was the one who essentially forced this vote by linking my Patreon on the Acidverse page and in the comment section of a tale I had posted.

My argument in favour is simple: there are people who make more in a day on their Patreons for just reading aloud the works that we make than most of us have seen total from writing that content. There are people who make more in a day of selling the SCP logo slapped on a shirt than people have seen from years of writing for the website.

People off-site are already making money from SCP creative works and merchandise. Why forbid on-site authors and artists from doing the same?

I was initially going to vote No, due to similar concerns like those ARD voiced. However, after reading moose's and Mann's posts in the discussion thread, I agree that there's no point in restricting this to things that literally only feature SCP related works. At that point we might as well not do it at all, since barely any projects would qualify and I'm all for supporting artists. Also, as moose suggested, I'm definitely for explicitly excluding Kickstarter from being eligible for this rule.

I am perfectly fine with authors or other creators to link things like personal webpages to their author or artwork pages, and soliciting donations that way indirectly. I think cutting out this middle step and instead allowing users to pass liability (real or not) onto the wiki is at best going to be a headache and at worst a total disaster.

Money changes things. Money changing hands, via this site, even indirectly, I think has a lot of potential to go wrong.

I think supporting things like Kaktuscast and other works is great - allow them to link their own websites etc. on their author and artwork pages, which may then contain a donation link.

TL;DR At the current time and with the current organization/management style we have now, letting money get anywhere near the wiki, I think, is a bad idea.

I second ARD's opinion in regards to the content you would be donating to. If someone is soliciting donations from the SCP Wiki it should be strictly for projects which help our community, and not a patreon page with the occasional piece of SCP art. If the parameters about what you could ask for donations for were narrowed, I would be more comfortable voting for this measure.

I say go for it, says the guy with an amazon wish list on his profile page.

But, I'm also really only ok with putting the link on the one page, and not, you know, pimping it. Like, no "Hey, thanks fo reading my scp, if you liked it, go to my profile page for my patreon, don't forget to like and subscribe!"

For the reasons I just posted in the discussion thread, I now feel more comfortable with this idea. Moose's arguments are also fairly persuasive.

I'm not specifically for any one idea or proposal but I think we should try to find a way to make donation stuff work. It's wrong to shut out opportunity for content creators because of our own insecurities regarding money handling.

I've elaborated further in the discussion thread.

Noting also (since ARD mentioned it) that I would be less likely to support this if it were limited to a project-by-project basis.

To many grey-areas means it just isn't worth the future headache, in my opinion. I'm all for supporting our creative community, but this is not the way to do it.

Simply put, the wiki is not a place for donation links or advertisement like that.

On a separate site, or social media, go nuts. This is a collaborative writing project, and should stay that way, in my eyes.

If the donation links were only allowed for projects that were exclusively SCP-related, such as KaktusKast, then I would be in favor. I believe that giving people the opportunity to support SCP-related work outside the main wiki is a good thing. As it is, however, I am worried that people have too much leeway with the current Patreon terms.

If a Patreon, it must be related to the author's SCP-related work (an art Patreon that sometimes produces SCP-related art, a podcast that sometimes features content related to the wiki), though it does not need to be exclusively related to SCP works.

By this benchmark, someone need only produce 1 piece of SCP-related content for every x unrelated pieces of content to be considered related to the author's SCP work. Furthermore, by only putting this restriction on the Patreon method, we are implicitly enabling an anything-goes proposal for any kind of donation that isn't Patreon. That's not good enough for me. If we're going to allow donation links on the SCP Wiki, then those donations had better be going to SCProjects.

Obligatory disclaimer, technically not staff and shouldn't vote here. Given how strongly I feel about this issue and how potentially far-reaching its consequences, if my time has earned me a gimme, this is where I use it.

Should we be voting on this?

The issue, again, is whether or not to allow donation links to sites like Patreon or Paypal on the site. For the sake of this discussion, these will only be in non-fictional pages (author pages, some project pages like artwork hubs). They will be clearly marked as such. If a Patreon, it must be related to the author's SCP-related work (an art Patreon that sometimes produces SCP-related art, a podcast that sometimes features content related to the wiki), though it does not need to be exclusively related to SCP works.

Of necessity, the links will also state that they are not endorsed by the Wiki, and are not officially affiliated with the Wiki staff. Even if the person with the link is a member of staff, they will be required to include a disclaimer.

Further details can be worked out afterwards. Expansion beyond this (other commerce links, less stringent rules) can be voted on at a later date.

Voting will take place over the next 48 hours week. If we have difficulty reaching enough staff on short notice, I may increase the deadline. I would prefer not to.

Please also let other members of staff know.

Code Snippet:

||~ In Favor||~ Against|| || X || X ||

EDIT: I have extended the time on the vote. I am still going to keep the thread up and the timer going, but I am going to allow more time for people to add new input. You can change your vote so long as you do so before the deadline is up. However, I want to make sure we have a solid deadline now so we do not drop the ball again. The users deserve better than that. The people waiting to know if they can have donation links deserve better than that.