Let contributors receive voluntary donations for their work

I've been an editor for seven years, and one of the main reasons I've slowed down a lot is because of a lack of remuneration for my time. After a while, the self-satisfaction of my contributions to human knowledge wore off. I need some money for my time. Just being honest.

Let us set up a PayPal donation link. 74.132.52.207 19:05, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I am aware of several persons offering their services in writing wikipedia articles about businesses, people, events, etc. The main perceived problem with them (at least in English wikipedia) is suspected conflict of interest (suspected loss of neutral point of view).

Your suggestion impliess less direct depence "money"<-->"text". However to implement this, you don't need to involve wikimedia. You may set up payment arrangemets on your own website, provide a link from your wikipedia user page, and let us know what happens.

Yes, I am not meaning that I want to be paid to write something for somebody. I just would like to see Wikipedia provide a donation mechanism that anyone can easily drop money into for contributions/contributors that/who are valued by others.

Also, I can set up a donation button on one of my sites, but the problem is that I don't want it to be an ethical question mark -- I want Wikipedia to clearly endorse contributors receiving donations for their work. And there's no better way to make giving/receiving donations a part of Wikipedia itself.

No.

You edit Wikipedia because you want to, not because someone is paying you. Otherwise, don't edit.

Do you have a family & bills to pay, Mono?

Some people can't afford to donate their time to a Wikimedia project, no matter how much they believe in it, because time spent on one is time taken away from their employer & family. Some of these projects -- such as Wikipedia -- have evolved to where the odd scraps of time spread over a week or month won't allow an editor to accomplish as much as if they were combined into a day or two, or even one afternoon. Obtaining a block of time that large might be achieved with a donation system along the lines IP 74.* suggested.

Allowing established editors to have some way to afford to volunteer helps to retain them. a donation system wouldn't work for everyone, but saying that volunteers either contribute out of the goodness of their hearts or quit, is heartless & indifferent. And established editors endure a lot of heartless & indifferent treatment right now -- which is one reason they quit.

I am sympathetic to both perspectives here.

It really sucks to have to give up a hobby like Wikipedia because of a lack of time. But having free time is a major prerequisite to lots of Wikipedia editing. And I think it's a good thing we don't pay editors. There are all kinds of practical and motivational complications that come along with paying people to do things (including legal ones), and thus we managed to build the largest encyclopedia in history with the goodwill and spare time of people who want to give it to the projects.

Perhaps ironically, I understand exactly how you feel Llywrch because working at the Foundation keeps me from having time to write the articles I have in my personal queue. I think the first step to solving this is not punishing longtime contributors who have to not edit as much for practical reasons -- for example, I've seen really, really experienced editors get ragged on just for having opinions about things even though they don't edit as much now, and I think that's not kind considering how much sweat and tears they've put into the project.

I don't think there is a single answer. Somebody proven trustworthy and with much useful contribution to make might be sensibly paid to keep them going. But in general, any less personal payment system would be abused. We already have editors rewriting history to suit their companies, politics, etc. We don't want a new crop measuring their income by column inches and bickering over payments for reverted yardage. Steelpillow 16:29, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

This is a very serious question that should not be dismissed lightly. You go to work because you wont to, not because someone is paying you. Otherwise, you don't work there. If you don't wont, it does not matter how much someone is offering to pay you. Most people are not mercenaries or turns tricks for free. This complex issue ties into recognition, compensation and the Wikimedia Foundation business model. The first two topics are addressed in different threads on this discussion page. The Wikimedia Foundation business model has been the object of much discussion elsewhere, maybe even here on some thread that I haven't read yet.

The type on monetization suggested might not be very successful, but I guess we'll never know until a significant number of editors try it. The two options seem to be: a) you do it on your own; b) you do it within some Wikimedia Foundation framework. It would not hurt to try both and monitor their success. Nothing can stop you from doing it on your own, and you're under no obligation to report back. The Foundation has established its own reward and incentive system which includes employment and scholarships, that involve its own set of conflicts of interest. Foundation staff edit and participate in community affairs as they see fit. This whole discussion is an example. Some other cases are legendary.

It has been reported and I have first hand knowledge of the fact that some people would not contributed to any Wikimedia Foundation project without adequate monetary compensation. Of course, no one knows how much of the Wikimedia Foundation projects content is produced by paid editors[1], and everyone is entitled to believe in whatever he or she wants. Full disclosure: Most, if not all content that I have produced directly or indirectly for Wikimedia Foundation projects, being in my area of expertise, has been done as part of my job for which I am paid. No one pays me to participate in discussions like this or of any other kind in Wikimedia Foundation projects. In case you are wondering and to save you the trouble of visiting my user page, I teach at a university and my students produce content for Wikimedia Foundation projects to satisfy their course requirements.

Sincerely,

Virgilio A. P. Machado

A traditional, commercial encyclopedia buys articles on a market. If a graduate student can write a good enough article on the history of Napoleon, there is no need to hire a more expensive professor to do the same job. The publishing deadline might increase the price. Wikipedia does exactly the same, with the only difference that there is no publishing deadline and the current bargaining price is zero. If it would turn out that absolutely noone would write for free in Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation might have to pay for articles being written. But so far this has not happened. The Foundation also pays very little for software development, which is largely carried out on an unpaid volunteer basis. Only a few dozen developers are salaried by the Foundation.

If you can write good articles about the history of Napoleon, or whatever, and want to get paid for your work, you should offer your services to several publishers of encyclopedias and pick the one that pays best. Wikipedia is not the only one.

My point was, & remains, that some of us can't contribute because we have to make a living; this becomes more the case the older the would-be contributor, for example. And in many scholarly endeavors, key contributors do receive an income -- like James Murray, chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. If we were to enforce the ban on paid editting consistently, academics & other professional experts would also be banned from contributing in their area of expertise.

The Foundation pays programmers & other IT support people, all of whom like to work with computers. Why is it such a hard logical leap for people to understand that there are situations where we should pay contributors?

Work based on personal rewards (money) typically generates even more anti-social behavior, as advised by Quality Control guru en:W. Edwards Deming. Any pay-for-text scheme would need to be limited to large groups; otherwise, it would be like the Golden-Editor-of-the-Year award:

• "Your edits to this article are ruining my chances to win The Award", plus
• "Your edits to this article are lowering my click-to-pay totals".

Even worse, numerous systems have reported internal "poisoning of wells". Imagine a group of new editors come to some valuable articles and start making repeated-tiny-hacks to lower quality (those suspicious new editors couldn't be meat-puppets, could they?). Suddenly, the great User:WriteForMoney, like a miracle, is able to untangle all the hacked articles at the last minute, and quickly update them to current data, when other editors were always thwarted by those pesky newcomers who made the articles slightly worse, day after day. "Oh, Great User:WriteForMoney, we reward you $1,000 for fixing those articles and making those pesky people leave." Numerous other examples abound, where the Top-customer-helper got a big cash bonus, for being the hero, to solve so many unusual problems which mysteriously occurred recently (typically when other employees were not around). No matter, because the hero was well paid for fixing those hideous problems which he was able to pinpoint so quickly - an amazing performance: it was almost like God told him exactly where each problem was hidden(!). Hence, do not allow that; any reward systems should be focused on several large groups, where each group receives some resonable portion of the similar reward, such as: 29%, 26%, 24%, 21% (not 97% to three at 1%). -Wikid77 20:09, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

A possible solution would be to set up another wiki, call it Wiki-paid-ya, which works just like Wikipedia except it has Google AdSense enabled, with revenues distributed to contributors who opt-in to be paid. The licensing would be compatible with Wikipedia, with the aim of mirroring all the content to Wikipedia, after it has been up long enough on Wiki-paid-ya for Google to recognize it as original there. If enough people are interested in reading the content on Wiki-paid-ya, they will generate AdSense revenue to compensate the contributors there. The content will still be available on Wikipedia (after a delay of a few days or weeks), and won't create any problems with advertising on Wikipedia. All the potential problems from advertising should remain isolated on Wiki-paid-ya.

This would have the added advantage of keeping all contributions beyond the reach of Wikipedia's deletionists. They could delete the content from Wikipedia but not from Wiki-paid-ya where it appeared originally.

The drawbacks would of course be all the usual drawbacks of starting up a new wiki - porting a kazillion templates and help files, attracting a critical mass of contributors, etc. There would be the additional problem of dividing up the AdSense revenue. (If we think there are editing disputes on a free site, try throwing money into the shark pool.) However, I suspect a lot of people who want to contribute content to Wikipedia, to be distributed freely and edited mercilessly, wouldn't mind putting their work first on a site where they could get paid for some of the views.

The original request was much simpler than these complex scenarios. It was a request to have a simple way for users/readers to reward one another. "[I] would like to see Wikipedia provide a donation mechanism that anyone can easily drop money into for contributions/contributors that/who are valued by others."

That sort of system is not going to make anyone a lot of money; it also is not associated with poisoning wells. It sounds more like a Wishlist/Gift link associated with a userpage.