Talk:Crowdfunding

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Harkiret. Peer reviewers: Milhouse-the-mighty.

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lsfujiu, Sinumi, Bmraybon, Jessica Boyd, Mason Astill, Amirius1, Cwilliams1988, Brinana8321, Bridgette Edwards. Peer reviewers: Pchileo1, JuliaGuydeychuk, EricJacobson2728, Sierra Turner, Noah Baker.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:38, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Observations

The history section doesn't exactly seem relevant. The introduction defines crowdfunding as a method to raise funds using the internet and yet the history discusses similar fundraising methods in a pre-internet era. The article then confusingly declares only two types of crowdfunding exist but then carries on discussing six types in six sections.

The article does a good job in the roles section of demonstrating relevant statistics regarding how much funds were raised in particular years using crowdfunding means. These statistics could be more relevant in the form of a chart that contains information pertaining to the last 10 years rather than just 2012.

I found the Kickstarter section to blatantly demonstrate this, as it seems unnecessary to have an entire section for one crowdfunding company but not others. The article has a section dedicated to risks and benefits of crowdfunding. I am unsure on whether or not this section belongs in the article, as it does not help define what crowdfunding is but comes off as a section dedicated to advising potential crowdfunding participants.

It does contain too much information on Kickstarter compared to other crowdfunding platforms and even has a whole section regarding a Kickstarter controversy. I believe this has no place on the Crowdfunding page and instead should only be on the Kickstarter page. -- EricJacobson2728 (talk) 23:36, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

I have the same sense about the history section entirely. Marketing campaigns for joint stock investments or donations have existed in one form or another since before the emergence of mass media. (It was not unusual prior to the age of movable print for artists or scholars to go, cap in hand, from one affluent household to another begging for patronage.) What made crowdfunding different was (1) the introduction of the Internet, & (2) influence of the model of distributed production systems (offensively called "crowdsourcing") for content, such as Wikipedia. Honestly: if one strengthens the connection of crowdfunding to practices from the early 1990s & before, one reduced crowdfunding to "marketing, with the Internet added". -- llywrch (talk) 18:22, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

Agreed that the history section makes no sense in light of the definition. I think it should be removed.

Wedding funding to be labelled "begging"?

"Some requests, such as those to pay for optional expenses, such as vacations, weddings, or cosmetic surgery, are widely derided as internet begging or cyberbegging" I do not think that sentence belongs in the lede or in the article at all. If one single Seattle journalist ("BILL LUBINGER") derides weddings financed by crowdfunding, that doesn't mean that Wikipedia should embarrass thousands of people involved in such projects and label them beggars. I will remove the sentence unless a more convincing source can be shown that society in general frowns on the practice and ridicules people involved. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 03:42, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

I'm not clear that the material is even verified from the ref, and seems undue given there's no other mention in this article.

@WhatamIdoing: added it here. --Ronz (talk) 04:23, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

My goal was to WP:Build the web, as this general article needs a connection to the more specific one.

On the question of whether this verifies the content, see the sentence "Cyberbeggars, banking on the viral power of the Web, post requests for help with everything from paying for college and their daughter’s wedding to breast implants." The word begging and beggars appears repeatedly in the article, including in quotations from people who are requesting things. I thought this an appropriate source because it talks about multiple forms, including requests for money from individuals for luxuries vs. requests from recognized non-profit organizations.

Searching GoFundMe's site via Google, I get about 2800 Ghits right now that use both of the exact, quoted words "begging" and "wedding". People who are doing the begging – defined as "asking others to give you money simply because you are needy" – use that term themselves.

I think that any quick trip to your favorite web search engine will provide you with plenty of examples of people asking strangers to pay for weddings and honeymoons as being begging, e.g.:

• "people asking for a vacation, funds for a wedding or their college tuition",
• "begging for money for practically anything -- from breast enhancement to money for a divorce",
• "Having a problem covering your medical expenses? Need money to get out of a bad marriage? Can't afford your next vacation? A growing number of Americans are going online for help, starting a website at which they beg total strangers to fund their cause. Internet panhandling got national attention last June...",
• "we have turned into a nation of beggars — beggars who are far from destitute, but are trolling for luxuries...", etc.

The idea that asking people to pay for your wedding is considering a form of begging is definitely verifiable in multiple sources, and if this article never mentions its relationship to cyberbegging elsewhere – well, that's a failure in the article that should be fixed by expanding it, and not be blanking the only mention. Ronz, as a first step, I think you should restore the information that we've got. Feel free to add any of these sources and expand the article further, if you feel that it needs more.

SergeWoodzing, if you are interested specifically in the subject of asking people to pay for a wedding, then I recommend reading the section "The Wedding as Fund-Raiser" in Martin, Jacobina; Martin, Judith (2010-01-11). Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393077155., beginning on page 74. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:55, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for responding, and providing all the potential sources. Something in the article body is probably due, but without strongly referenced section on the topic, it is undue in the lede.

I'm not sure Wikipedia's voice should be used to shame anyone, and question the encyclopedic value of going into much detail on the topic without better sources.

I'm concerned that "widely derided" may be original research. --Ronz (talk) 21:23, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

I don't know. Firstly, I'm not convinced that reporting the fact that "please pay for my luxuries" is normally called cyberbegging rather than crowdfunding constitutes a case of shaming anyone. Secondly, it's pretty typical to put this kind of classification information in the lead, so that people who are looking for the other thing can find it quickly.

I've not yet found a source that expresses enthusiasm for someone asking other people to pay for their luxuries. Have you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:47, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more, with Ronz. Anyone with a shaming agenda ("someone asking other people to pay for their luxuries") should peddle it elsewhere or find substantial reliable sources that support that agenda. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 12:57, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

How would you two WP:Build the web from this article to Internet begging? Or would you? Do you think that we should consider merging the articles, so that business projects such as this Kickstarter campaign and personal requests such as this teenager's "cyber begging" (his word!) for wedding money should both be covered in the same article? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:31, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing up Internet begging. I should have looked it over earlier. At a glance of the refs, it looks to have serious POV problems of the same nature that I brought up here.

The solution is to find better references, and work from them. While some in Internet begging are much better than the Seattle Times ref, I'd expect that better ones are available now, more than a decade later. Rewrite/delete/merge Internet begging depending upon what the better refs say, and have a brief summary in this article. --Ronz (talk) 21:54, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Adding weddings to the lede in that article, while we're discussing this here, doesn't really create a good faith environment. Perhaps we should create an article called Revenge via Wikipedia to be enhanced with lots of personal POV by users who couldn't afford to go to or have expensive weddings? --SergeWoodzing talk) 15:49, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

I feel like we're fixating on weddings in this discussion, which might lead people to wonder whether some editors here are objecting to the label of begging primarily on the grounds that they did it, or are planning to, and I'd like to avoid that disagreeable picture. So let's set that completely aside. Pretend that the sentence doesn't mention weddings at all and that it's never crossed anyone's mind that the sweet teenager linked above is doing anything that might be considered begging for money from strangers. Do you think that the sources indicate that there is a difference between:

• me asking you to give money to an unrelated third-party beneficiary for a typical charitable purpose, e.g., to donate to the Red Cross to support their work around natural disasters and emergency relief,
• me asking you to give money to my business, with the promise that I'll give you the product that I'm producing if the Kickstarter campaign is fully funded,
• me asking you to give money to me, so I can buy food/water/clothing/shelter, and
• me asking you to give money to me, to buy something I want, but I don't truly need?

Given the information you have at the moment, are these four categories of "me asking you to give money" more or less the same thing and therefore should be covered in the same article, or do you feel like they are different subjects, and should be covered in separate articles (for example – but not the only possible examples – in Fundraising for the first, Crowdfunding for the second, and Begging for the last two)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:05, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

I think it would be much more helpful to focus on potential references rather than use original research to resolve this dispute. --Ronz (talk) 15:32, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Since I specifically asked "Do you think that the sources indicate..." rather than "What's your personal feeling about...", then I think you can safely assume that I agree with that sentiment. We need to have a shared understanding of what the (i.e., multiple) sources indicate about whether these four kinds of requests for money are (more or less) the same or different. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:04, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying.

I don't believe any sources offered are reliable for categorizing and labeling types of solicitation for money. --Ronz (talk) 16:23, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Glancing over the articles, I think Fundraising is the best quality of the four, Crowdfunding is poor, Begging worse, and Internet begging by far the worst of them. --Ronz (talk) 16:46, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Have you found any sources that you think would be useful? We can't very well decide either to merge or to not merge any of these articles if there are no satisfactory sources that say what these subjects are. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:30, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

We can't very well decide... Exactly. --Ronz (talk) 15:28, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Taking an axe - or a scythe - to large sections of basically unsourced article text seems to be an option. Or? --SergeWoodzing (talk) 20:22, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

It's required if there are BLP issues. Otherwise tagging is usually a better option when there aren't other serious problems (eg serious POV or NOT problems). --Ronz (talk) 21:20, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

A section for art and music?

Let's get this entry updated and more full.--A21sauce (talk) 22:40, 8 February 2019 (UTC)