Talk:Wonga.com/Archives/2013

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Political donations.

I've moved an unsigned question to here.

Do we need to mention their links to the conservative party? Alligators1974
If you have any reference to Wonga, particularly from wp:suggested sources, then unless its already been covered you should include a short summary -and the reference. If you don't know how to provide a reference, just give the url and someone will help you. JRPG (talk) 13:29, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Press and political comment

I think the religious group responses are best grouped together as they don't fit into the chronological order used elsewhere in this section. JRPG (talk) 07:59, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Editorialisation of lead.

"The high interest rate charged by the lender, which can exceed more than 5000% per year, has been widely criticised." I really don't like this at all. It's wp:editorialising to say the interest rate is high and the source is poor as it doesn't say who used words like "astronomical interest". As user:Pinkbeast says APR is a well known term whilst 5000% per year is wp:VAGUE. My understanding is that no shareholder has criticised. Feel free to discuss and improve ..I will operate as per wp:BRD but we've been through most of these arguments before. JRPG (talk) 21:01, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

5000% per annum seems fairly high to me and I would think that most people would agree, apart possibly from the owners of Wonga. I pay 3% on my mortgage. It is a statement of fact that they have been widely criticised for interest rates in the 1000s of percent per annum and this is a key feature of the article that is discussed at length in the sections below. I don't understand your comment about shareholders, they own the firm and the higher the rate the more profit they make so why would a shareholder criticise it? Philafrenzy (talk) 22:07, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
hi phil. thanks for a speedy response. Over 20% seems extortionate to me but we're just editors. I'm happy to see "astronomical interest" in quotes if it is attributed to an individual & not to the encyclopedia -see wp:editorial.
You say it has been widely criticized. Of course not by shareholders but by whom? See wp:weasel regards JRPG (talk) 22:50, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Here are three just from the sources in the article:

The word "astronomical" does not appear in our article in fact, it is in the ITV interview but that is not relevant as we are only saying that the rates are "high" which I think anyone would have to agree is true. Philafrenzy (talk) 23:21, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I broke it up a bit as it was unreadable before with just two big sections. It's a start. Philafrenzy (talk) 00:03, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I am not too unhappy with it as it is. The purpose of the lead is to summarise; it is there that a less technical term ("per year") may be used to describe the interest rate, provided that later the details are provided. It's also not necessary to cite in the lead what is cited later; that the interest rate is widely criticised is so cited.
And "high", well, _technically_ it's editorialising, but I think I agree with Philafrenzy that it is frankly undeniable. Pinkbeast (talk) 11:54, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
We may all feel that that interest rates are high ..but we're just editors -our opinions don't matter. Neither Wonga nor the shareholders would think it excessive. All I'm asking is that any reference to 'high' 'astronomical' etc. is included in quotes and is attributable to a specific individual or reliable source, not to the encyclopedia. The ITV article fails this test because it doesn't say who described the rates as astronomical. Find another source -& there are plenty of them -and put in quotes etc. & neither I nor anyone else will object.. JRPG (talk) 22:52, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
I simply removed it, we have 5000% in the same sentence and "high cost" with a source in the first sentence of the article. Philafrenzy (talk) 01:07, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for that. Looks fine to me now. JRPG (talk) 11:25, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

arithmetic

The article says;

"However, he also pointed out that at an interest rate of 4,212%, a £100 loan that is not repaid would in seven years compound to £23.5 trillion, more than the USA's entire national debt."[1]

The figure seems to have been calculated as (principal) * (APR/100%) ^ (number of years) rather than (principal) * (1 + APR/100%) ^ (number of years). I think the correct figure should be £27.7 trillion.

For example, at the end of the first year, one would owe £4212 in interest, along with the original £100, for a total of £4312. The way it was calculated omits the original £100 from what would be owed at the end of the year. —rybec 23:10, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

You are not correct about how he calculated it. He did some rounding (and yes, forgot to include the principle) and calculated each year individually. For year one, he reports £4200 (rounding off the 4212% to "42 times", then forgetting the principle). For year two, he reports £180,000 (this figure takes his erroneous and rounded first year figure (£4200) and multiplies it by his rounded rate (4200%), gets an answer that he rounds up to £180,000). Year three takes his erroneous year two figure, multiplies by 42 and rounds £7,560,000 to £7,500,000. And so on. Basically, he's not looking for precision to start with, makes a few mistakes, etc. Nevertheless, his point stands, though inaccurately. This leaves us with a WP:V problem. I've reduced the text to show what the source says. - SummerPhD (talk) 00:29, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I received an error page when I attempted to view the blog, but 100 * 42.12^7 comes out to 23.5 trillion, so I assumed that was how he calculated his figure. From your description, that is essentially what he did. Do you see an error in my arithmetic? If not, please restore my correction. —rybec 00:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Here's the problem: Your suggestion is that we take a source as reliable for the interest rate it gives (4,212%) correct the math and make the comparison that source made. If the source is reliable, we should report what it says. If it is not reliable, we shouldn't. Is it a reliable source? Apparently not. So why would we accept 2/3 of what it is saying to make the comparison we want to make? Heck, let's see how long it takes to pay for the damage done by WWII or see how much you owe by the time you walk out the door or... - SummerPhD (talk) 01:15, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
The title of the Independent story mentions a similar interest rate. Do you dispute the interest rate? My edit consisted of noting the correct figure alongside what was written in the blog, and you simply removed my note. If you feel the blog is an unreliable source, removing my note doesn't address the problem. My edit was intended to conform to WP:CALC. I didn't change the comparison that was made. —rybec 03:33, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
(Side point: "Basic arithmetic, such as adding numbers, converting units, or calculating a person's age are some examples of routine calculations.") I accept the Independent as a reliable source. The blog? Not so much. Without the blog, however, that whole comparison has to go. Otherwise, it's a complete mess: let's find a source for the interest rate, decide what we're going to compare it to, perform some non-basic calculations so that we can compare them. - SummerPhD (talk) 04:01, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

The "some" indicates to me that the list of routine calculations wasn't meant to be exhaustive.

Martin_Lewis_(financial_journalist)#Newspapers mentions several newspaper columns that are being written or were written by Lewis. The policy you cited says that "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." —rybec 05:03, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

IMO, there is considerable distance between "adding numbers, converting units, or calculating a person's age" and compounding interest. As evidence, consider that the financial journalist cited seems to have screwed it up. He's such a respected expert that he's a reliable source for whatever pieces we don't find obvious errors in. While I like the comparison (Your payday loan charges rates so obscene that £100 would outpace the U.S. debt in seven years), the calculation seems to be screwed up and the comparison admittedly ignores that you cannot roll the loans over for anything close to the required 7 years. Doing our own calculation -- well beyond "basic arithmetic" -- based on one of several rates given by different sources to compare to a benchmark we've selected (cited in another source) to get the comparison we want is several different kinds of WP:OR. - SummerPhD (talk) 13:33, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Are you saying Lewis is unreliable because he made an arithmetical error? What do you mean by "a benchmark we've selected"? —rybec 16:57, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm saying this blog post is obviously not a reliable source for this discussion. A "reliable source" would have a reputation for fact checking and accuracy. A financial column that botches something as central as compounding does not seem to fit that description. That leaves us without a reliable source for the whole piece. As a result, anything we say in reference to the U.S. national debt is out of left field. We're in a similar spot to a film that a blog compares to an unrelated film. If we remove the blog from the article, we have no basis for comparing the two films. Comparing a hypothetical loan from Wonga that somehow rolls over for seven years is similar to comparing Rocky to ET -- very much an issue of WP:SYN, IMO. - SummerPhD (talk) 18:37, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

You wouldn't normally catch me saying this, but in this case the exact numbers are unimportant. His point is that a naive interpretation of the APR leads to conclusions which could never actually occur in reality. It doesn't make any difference whether the result is £23 trillion or $27 trillion: both numbers are equally ridiculous. In fact, it appears that even £4000 is vastly in excess of what Wonga would charge anyone on such a loan. – Smyth\talk 12:21, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Spurious reversion by User:Lopifalko

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wonga.com&oldid=580469150&diff=prev reverts my edits with the edit summary "You made 3 edits, 2 of which look potentially contentious, yet you only mentioned the third in your edit summary. Reverting as this looks suspicious."

No, I didn't. I made two edits; one a simple copyedit to refer to the APR as an APR, and one to move an external link (clearly inappropriate as an external link) into the body of the article as a reference, adding material to the article to reflect what that reference says.

I intend to revert this to my version. It is not appropriate to put randomly selected articles about the company into "external links".Pinkbeast (talk) 16:27, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I had no suspicion about you moving the link, from External Links, to instead be a ref, which is why I repeated that same edit on your behalf afterwards, my edit summary being 'Moved link from External Links so instead be a ref, as previous editor intended'. I said you made 3 edits, but yes I did notice afterwards that 2 of them were in fact part of 1 edit, moving the text around. However your edit of changing 'The cost of the loans can exceed 5000% per year' to 'The APR can exceed 5000%' looked to my untrained eye as one of the kind of edits that goes back and forth on this article, subtly changing its meaning. Because you did this without mentioning it in the edit summary I reverted just this edit. I was just being cautious, sorry if that offended you. -Lopifalko (talk) 17:36, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
I only put it in external links because I didn't have time just then to work out where it should go. The central sections need reorganising to create a section about financial performance and the legal and tax structure of the firm which is currently split over the History and Press sections, neither of which seem right and both of which are too long. I will try and do it or somebody else can take the lead. Philafrenzy (talk) 20:18, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

The cost of the loans cannot exceed – or even approach – 5000% per year, as my most recent edit demonstrates. The wording must be specific about the fact that the number is an APR, along with all the assumptions that entails. – Smyth\talk 12:27, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

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