<p>I’d be curious to hear CCers’ thoughts on this.</p>
<p>I am a frequent visitor to a website on which artists post content and then get paid for the number of page views they get for each piece. Because of this pay structure, there’s usually no obligation to produce new content, other than hoping that doing so will get more page views.</p>
<p>A moderately popular artist had her pet become critically ill about 6 months ago. She had gone on a hiatus from creating new content for about 4 months before this due to personal issues, and she promised her fans that if they raised X money to pay her pet’s vet bills, she would end her hiatus, both finishing a long-lingering project and complete a new one that was voted on by her fans. She vaguely indicated that the fan-selected project would be completed in the summer but didn’t outright promise any timeline. In the end, her fans ended up raising six times X, and her pet (thankfully) recovered.</p>
<p>At first, she made some initial progress on the long-lingering project but hasn’t posted any new content for it for about five months. She never started the fan-selected new project and hasn’t uploaded any new content at all for 4 or 5 months. Based on her social media postings elsewhere, she’s had even more personal issues as of late (nothing life-threatening, thank goodness!) and seemingly has no intention of completing the promised projects anytime in the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>Do you all think she has an obligation to complete the projects she promised, or does the fact that the fan donations were primarily for her vet bills and not direct commissions for the work change matters? FWIW, knowing the community, I believe she could have gotten X dollars without promising new content but probably not the 6X she did get.</p>
<p>Ps. I didn’t donate, so I have no tangible dog in this fight, other than thinking that her social media postings portray her as a generally nice, likable person but that I’d probably be quite bugged if I donated at least partly in hopes of seeing this promised content.</p>