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Dear Baldur's Gate 3 fans and wiki enthusiasts,
First of all: Nothing is decided yet. The following is for transparency and to ask for feedback.
I've always hated ads, which is why I promised not to put up any when I set up the wiki. To this day, the main page proudly claims that the wiki will never serve ads. Now I have plans to break that promise, which I'm not proud of, but I believe it may be justified. Please read on. (There's also a TL;DR at the end.)
Why?
Simply put, I never knew just how much money ads can apparently make. It's not clear yet whether the estimates I've been given are accurate, but if they are anywhere near the truth, it means I could have bg3.wiki as my main source of income for a while.
I'm currently unemployed and looking for a new job, and this would essentially become that. I'm nothing close to being rich, but not financially struggling either. I have some health issues that make finding a job a little more difficult right now, but it's not that bad, and programmers are supposedly in-demand, so please don't worry; there's no sob story here.
It's just that I could be self-employed for a while instead of finding a new job, focus on the wiki full-time, potentially making more money than I've done in the past by working 40 hours.
And I could retroactively pay contributors, who made bg3.wiki what it is, for their past volunteer work. Potentially significant amounts, though I don't want to name any numbers yet since I don't want to create false expectations.
I will only do this if it makes so much money that I can fairly pay everyone who had non-trivial contributions to the wiki, and still have enough money left to have it as my main source of income.
I'll make sure not to become completely dependent on this income. If ad revenue drops, I'll just find employment again, not start putting up ridiculous ads. I'd rather do honest work than contribute to the enshittification of the web.
Is this moral, and legal?
Breaking a promise ("will never show ads") is not good, but if the promise was made under ignorance, and sufficient justification is provided to those affected by having it broken, then I think it can be acceptable.
The main thing that I think would make this morally acceptable is that I want to pay everyone who contributed in the past, so everyone who created the wiki benefits, not just me. If you're a contributor to the wiki, please tell me if you have any objections or concerns after reading this page. (My user page lists a few ways you can contact me. Email is preferred.)
Also, the type and amount of ads is never going to be such that it would become an annoyance to page visitors. User experience and design considerations will always be held in very high regard. Logged-in users probably won't see ads. (Maybe it'll be opt-in or opt-out eventually, but probably just no ads shown to logged-in users at all, since it's only a fraction of visitors anyway.)
There won't be any "anti ad-block" shenanigans either; if you're strongly averse to ads, you can use an ad-blocker and that's 100% fine. I'm an ad-block user myself.
The company offering the ad service doesn't do any lock-in contracts, force intrusive ads, or anything of that sort. I will definitely retain full control over the site's appearance, type and amount of ads, etc. and could stop serving ads at any moment, so no worries about that.
Legal stuff
If you're a contributor, I also have legal obligations towards you. When I set up the wiki, I chose the CC BY-NC-SA license to keep myself honest. For those who don't know, here's a brief explanation of how wiki licensing works, and what the CC BY-NC-SA license means.
Note: The following is not legal advice.
When you edit a wiki and write some content of your own creation (be it wiki code, Lua module code, or English text) it means you have created a copyrighted work that is your own property. Even if it's just a paragraph or two in the middle of a large wiki page, the part you wrote is your property if it's your own creation and not copied from elsewhere. When you click the submit button to finish editing, you agree to publish your work under the terms of a certain license. For bg3.wiki, it's CC BY-NC-SA.
Agreeing to CC BY-NC-SA means your work becomes a public good that anyone (not just bg3.wiki) can share, modify, publish and so on. But the "NC" (NonCommercial) part of the license means that people aren't allowed to use your work (or modified versions of it) for commercial purposes.
Though it's not 100% clear, I've personally taken this to mean I'm not allowed to serve ads on bg3.wiki, since it hosts your work licensed under an NC license. (Others interpret NC in a more relaxed way, such as "you're not allowed to charge money for access to the content." But I always assumed it means no ads, and will stick to that interpretation.)
Now, since you're the copyright holder of whatever content you've written for the wiki, you can agree to have that content be released under the terms of an additional license. (A copyrighted work can be published under as many different licenses as the author wants.) So, in exchange for the payment you will receive for your past contributions, I will ask you to agree to your work being re-licensed under the terms of the CC BY-SA which is equivalent to the previous license except for the NC part which is omitted.
This means, from that point on, both bg3.wiki and other parties will have a license to share, modify, etc. the content you had written for the wiki, and use it commercially as well. For example, another website could copy content from us, and also have ads on their website. I don't think this is a big deal, but you tell me.
Another option would be that past contributors only allow bg3.wiki to monetize their past contributions. The content would be available under the original CC BY-NC-SA license to the rest of the world (as it already is), and bg3.wiki would have an exclusive right to also make money from it by serving ads. You as the copyright owner can choose.
You can also decline this. If you don't agree to let bg3.wiki monetize your past contributions, then depending on the size of your contributions, we might decide to simply delete or replace them, or I could end up backing off from the entire plan to serve ads. I don't want to create any friction, and I certainly don't want to hurt the wiki, so I would prefer not deleting any content; please consider accepting the payment to have your content re-licensed instead.
The exact process through which the payments will be processed and the re-licensing agreements signed is not decided yet, since we're not that far into the plan. I also can't say yet how much I would pay people and how I would decide who deserves how much; I have some ideas already but they still need to be fleshed out more.
Past donations
Earlier this year I asked for donations to cover hosting costs. Those will be refunded if we show ads.
Ko-fi supports refunds for up to 180 days after payment. If your Ko-fi donation is older than that, contact me and we will work something out. I will actively try to reach out to such people via Ko-fi if I actually start showing ads.
Future wiki contributions
If we start showing ads, the license for new contributions will probably become CC BY-SA.
An alternative would be a similar situation to that explained above, where the content is published under CC BY-NC-SA to the world, but with an exemption to the NC clause exclusively for bg3.wiki. (This would make sense if you don't trust other websites to monetize your content respectfully / don't want websites ripping off bg3.wiki.) You tell me which one you think is the better option; I think CC BY-SA would be fine and there's no need to over-complicate things; let other websites copy us if they want.
I don't plan on trying to pay people directly for future contributions, since this would create an awkward situation where people put quantity over quality in the hopes of making money. Some may even be so unwise as to try turning this into their main source of income, and end up struggling. We don't want to create any such issues.
I'm not entirely sure yet how to honor future contributors. Maybe there will be sporadic payments for key contributors who obviously make high-quality contributions. But I don't want to make any promises about this, since it might create similar issues to those mentioned above.
Tell me what you think.
TL;DR
- The site isn't getting sold or anything. I'm just thinking of showing ads.
- Because it might make lots of money so I can pay all past contributors.
- If we do end up showing ads, they will be very non-intrusive and clean.
- Avoiding ads will be very easy: create an account or use an ad blocker.
- Ko-fi donations would be refunded if we start showing ads.
- Past contributors would be paid in exchange for re-licensing their content.
- New contributions would be licensed under CC BY-SA.
- No payment for future contributions; too big a can of worms.
Give me your feedback. Contact details on my user page. Email is preferred.