bg3wiki:Payment: Difference between revisions
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Note that, technically, only contributions up to August 2024 are considered. (More precisely, up to July 20, when the license switch to CC BY-SA for new contributions happened.) In practice, I tend to look at slightly later contributions as well, but there's absolutely no promise of paying editors for any future work, since this opens a huge can of worms: Firstly, we don't want to encourage quality | Note that, technically, only contributions up to August 2024 are considered. (More precisely, up to July 20, when the license switch to CC BY-SA for new contributions happened.) In practice, I tend to look at slightly later contributions as well, but there's absolutely no promise of paying editors for any future work, since this opens a huge can of worms: Firstly, we don't want to encourage quantity over quality or other ways of trying to game the system to receive more payment. Secondly, payment for ongoing work may end up being considered an employer-employee relation, which brings with it many responsibilities on my behalf that I'm not prepared to take on. | ||
=== Why the license switch? === | === Why the license switch? === | ||
Latest revision as of 14:30, 14 December 2024
In August 2024, bg3.wiki decided to begin serving ads. Part of the justification was that all significant contributors up to that point would be offered a share.
To apply for your share, please read the following Terms of Agreement and then proceed to the application form below.
Feel free to apply even if you think your contributions were rather small. You may still get a small share.
Please contact me at bg3.community.wiki@gmail.com or on Discord if you have any concerns or questions.
Terms of Agreement
By submitting the Payment Application form linked below, you (the reader) agree to the following terms.
This is an agreement between you and the owner of the website bg3.wiki, WikiWiz UG (haftungsbeschränkt), hereby referred to as WikiWiz.
Re-licensing of past contributions
You agree to the re-licensing of all your past contributions to bg3.wiki under the dual-licensing model CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 + CC BY-SA 4.0 as explained in Copyrights.
This means the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license on contributions remains in effect. In addition, your contributions may also become available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
Payment amount
WikiWiz will pay you an amount depending on the ad revenue of the website bg3.wiki and the significance of your past contributions to bg3.wiki.
Depending on the significance of your past contributions up to August 2024, as judged by WikiWiz, you will be allocated to one of several Brackets. Members of each Bracket are entitled to a certain portion of the ad revenue generated from the display of advertisement on bg3.wiki during the months from August 2024 up to and including November 2026. The portion you are entitled to is calculated as follows.
At the end of each month, a flat sum of 6,000 EUR is deducted from ad revenue of that month, to be put aside for business expenses. The remainder is added to a shared pool, referred to as the Surplus Revenue. Depending on which Bracket you fall into, you will be entitled to a certain percentage of this Surplus Revenue.
The percentage you are entitled to will be notified to you per email after you submit your Payment Application. Should you be unhappy with your share, see Cancellation.
Addendum (December 13, 2024): For minor contributors, WikiWiz may offer a flat one-time payment instead of a percentage share, so as to reduce administrative overhead.
Payment conditions
WikiWiz will grant you payouts from the aforementioned Surplus Revenue twice per year, beginning in 2025.
Invoices addressed from you to WikiWiz will be created on your behalf by WikiWiz every December and June. The first invoice will be created in December 2024, representing your share of the Surplus Revenue that has accumulated from the months up to and including November 2024.
Each subsequent invoice will represent your share of the Surplus Revenue that has accumulated over the subsequent 6-month period. For example, the June 2025 invoice will represent the sum of your shares from the months December 2024 up to and including May 2025. The last invoice will be created in December 2026.
If your Payment Application is not filed at least 14 days before the end of a month in which an invoice would be created, then WikiWiz will instead create that invoice within 60 days after the filing of your Application. For example, if you submit the Payment Application on January 10, 2025, then the invoice you would have received in December 2024 will instead be created no later than March 11, 2025.
Invoices will be paid within 60 days after the creation of the invoice. During each payment, WikiWiz may deduct an amount to cover part or all of the transfer fees.
Addendum (December 13, 2024): For minor contributors, who are offered a flat one-time payment instead of a percentage share, a single invoice will be created within 60 days after confirmation, and the corresponding payment will be made within 60 days of the creation of said invoice.
Cancellation
You have a right to cancel this Agreement before receiving your first payment, but not after that. However, if you already receive your first payment within 14 days after receiving the email notifying you of your percentage share of the Surplus Revenue, then you have a right to refund that payment and cancel.
The cancellation must be sent in writing via email to bg3.community.wiki@gmail.com and sent from the same email address that was entered in the Payment Application form.
Later amendments to this Agreement
WikiWiz may make minor amendments to the language of these Terms of Agreement over time, to clarify unintended ambiguities or correct mistakes which lead to unreasonable requirements on behalf of either party. Such amendments will not affect the core premises of the Agreement.
Non-legally-binding notes
The following are clarifications in lay terms, and not legally binding.
I'll try to pay the invoices faster than 60 days. That's just the legally binding deadline I'm setting for myself. Same for the 60-day deadline for creating invoices.
Regarding the 6,000 EUR set aside each month: This consists mostly of my gross salary, which is a "business expense" of my company from a legal perspective. Note that I'll be paying income tax, social security, etc. from that. I will not be receiving anything remotely close to 6,000 EUR net per month. Taxes are high in Germany!
The original plan was to distribute up to 60% of the total earnings, but that would get me into financial trouble if the earnings drop so low that the remaining 40% is too little. As such, there's going to be a flat deduction from the earnings to ensure a baseline of personal income for myself, plus the ability to cover actual business expenses.
From what remains after that deduction, a portion will be distributed to the contributors. In total about 80%, because based on the current monthly revenue, that comes out to be a bit above the "up to 60% of total" that was originally planned. The remaining 20% will stay in the company for future use, like if I want to expand operations to other venues due to a shrinkage of the BG3 player-base, though it's possible that it will ultimately be paid out to contributors as well if revenue remains high.
Addition on December 13, 2024: Minor contributors with few edits will be offered flat one-time payments, using part of the remaining 20% of the Surplus Revenue of 2024.
Who can apply?
Of course, I don't intend to pay every single person who ever made an edit, like if all you did was fix a typo here and there occasionally. But don't undervalue your work either. As a rough guideline, check whether you're in the All time (Top 200) table in the following page and have a value of 100+ in the "Changes" (fourth) column:
This auto-generated table uses very crude metrics (it doesn't try to weigh the significance of edits) and is therefore not what the decision will be based on. So, even if you fall outside of the above criteria, feel free to apply if you're anywhere in the top 200 list, or if you're not on the list but only because you had a small number of large edits, or if you contributed to the wiki in some significant way other than editing. If in doubt, feel free to contact me and ask, or just apply and wish for the best.
You can see the list of your own contributions here:
Note that, technically, only contributions up to August 2024 are considered. (More precisely, up to July 20, when the license switch to CC BY-SA for new contributions happened.) In practice, I tend to look at slightly later contributions as well, but there's absolutely no promise of paying editors for any future work, since this opens a huge can of worms: Firstly, we don't want to encourage quantity over quality or other ways of trying to game the system to receive more payment. Secondly, payment for ongoing work may end up being considered an employer-employee relation, which brings with it many responsibilities on my behalf that I'm not prepared to take on.
Why the license switch?
The terms ask you to re-license your past contributions to a dual license, adding the BY-SA license (allowing commercial use) on top of the existing BY-NC-SA license (Non-Commercial only). Some may wonder why this is so, if the website is already showing ads before this license switch has actually happened for all content on the wiki.
I've done a lot of research before beginning to display ads, and came to the conclusion that it's fine from a legal perspective to serve ads beside content under BY-NC-SA, so long as I'm not asking for payment in exchange for access to the content. However, some people are of the opinion that this is not so clear and creates a legal grey zone. Asking for the re-licensing to the BY-SA + BY-NC-SA dual license is a way of clearing up any remaining ambiguity over this, and ensuring that no disputes come up in the future over the serving of ads on the wiki.
Further, if bg3.wiki is allowed to financially benefit from the contents by serving ads, then I believe other people should also have possibilities to financially benefit from the contents in various ways. For example, someone may develop and publish a mobile app that's based on the contents of bg3.wiki, but adds some convenience features such as offline access. If this person then asks for payment for this app, they would certainly be breaching the BY-NC-SA terms, since they're asking for payment in exchange for access to the contents of their app, which includes offline copies of the bg3.wiki contents. I don't want to be "hoarding" the contents of bg3.wiki for myself like that. If I'm benefiting financially from these contents in some way, others should be able to benefit as well, even if in slightly different ways, including direct payment for access. Hence the addition of the BY-SA license.
Aren't those two licenses incompatible?
The incompatibility of BY-SA and BY-NC-SA is only with respect to derivative works, not dual licensing. It's a bit difficult to explain the difference, and this isn't the place for it, but you can read bg3wiki:Copyrights and bg3wiki:Licensing to learn more. See also the Wikimedia Commons multi-licensing essay which has very nice explanations.
Payment Application
Before proceeding, make sure there is an email address configured in your bg3.wiki user preferences: Special:Preferences
By submitting this linked Payment Application form, you confirm that you've read and agree to the Terms of Agreement above:
Some further details about the required fields are explained in the following.
Username
The username must be the bg3.wiki username that you used for the edits which you're requesting payment for.
If you've edited the wiki with multiple accounts, please only apply once for payment and notify me of the second account via a separate email or a message on Discord.
The email address must be configured as the email address for the corresponding bg3.wiki account. There will be a further confirmation step at some later point to verify that you're indeed in control of that email address.
Legal name
A legal name is unfortunately required, since I'm obligated by German trade and tax law to be able to prove where I'm making payments.
Payment methods
If your country supports SEPA, please fill in the IBAN for SEPA and leave the rest blank.
In other cases, feel free to fill in the details of multiple payment methods, as their fees can vary and I will choose what's best at the time of payment.
SEPA
If you reside in a country that supports SEPA, please choose this method, because the costs are extremely low and I will cover them.
In this case, you must provide the IBAN of the bank account to which you would like to receive the payment. (Note that having an IBAN doesn't mean your bank supports SEPA. But if it does support SEPA, you will definitely have an IBAN.)
Wise
This is a fair option if SEPA isn't possible. The transfer fees are acceptable and proper exchange rates are used.
Creating a Wise account should be free of charge for private individuals, and you should be able to transfer received funds to your bank account at no or little cost.
PayPal
PayPal applies a significant margin to the exchange rate, leading to exorbitant fees on large transactions. Avoid it if you're a major contributor!
If you're a smaller contributor, or you're fine with PayPal taking a significant cut due to the convenience it provides, it's fine to use.
Wire transfer
This is similar to Wise in terms of fees and exchange rate. But I will need more personal details. All the fields must be filled.
For major contributors, this is the best option after SEPA in terms of fees. For smaller contributors, Wise and PayPal may be better.
Other
If none of the options seem good for you, talk to me and we'll work something out. For example, Western Union is also a possibility.