Commissioned writing. What is it? Should we allow it to be posted? Many such questions have been posed and discussed in staffcord.
Let's try to iron that out.
To an extent, many currently believe that the Donation Policy's current intent is to disallow commissions, even if it's not written explicitly.
That's apparently not actually the case, but nonetheless from various previous discussions it seems that a majority of staff members are for banning the posting of commissioned writing on the wiki.
Recently there'd been a minor update to the Donations Policy to explicitly disallow commissioned writing on the site, I strongly opposed that after the fact because I believe it is important we define what we see as commissioned writing, and explicitly lay out a grandfathering clause, if applicable, as there is currently commissioned writing (depending on your definition of commissioned writing) existing on the scp wiki.
So, a few questions I want to ask to get us started on trying to craft an intentionally scoped policy.
1. What counts as commissioned writing, for our purposes?
Is it any writing in which the author is monetarily compensated? What about if they're paid in some other way, such as gift cards or games or something else? What if it's for a charitable cause and they do not directly get compensated? Would this definition encompass contests (such as Memecon) where there are rewards? If an author works for a company creating SCP material, would they be able to post related works?
2. Should we ban commissioned writing from being posted to the SCP Wiki?
Why or why not? What differentiates it, if anything, from commissioned art? What should differentiate it, if anything, from rules concerning other commissioned works? Should we allow someone to commission writing, like a poem, and incorporate that into their works? And if so would the author of the poem receive co-authorship?
3. If choosing to ban commissioned works, should we grandfather existing works on the wiki?
There's no requirement for anyone discussing to try to answer one or more of those questions, but I think those are good starting points for a discussion.
This discussion will be open for 1 week.
(Might ask for an extension if deemed necessary/helpful)
edit: was requested to add a prior clarification by a former staff member who previously made edits to the donations policy
So, people can commission works. But what you cannot do is, as a seller, "promise" anything performance based, like guaranteeing it'll get +100 or more, et cetera.
You also, as a seller, cannot allow someone to dictate the article and then you essentially ghost write for them. As that is vanity publishing.
So you could do a commission for "Dr. X goes to space" and leave it up to the seller what happens.
You cannot do "Dr. X goes to space and meets Joe and they talk specifically about past childhood trauma. Then they visit moon base 12 where they meet Timmy the Enchanter and they share cafeteria food together …etc…" and then you also review and respond to drafts during the editing process. Because that would just be rewriting your article through someone else.