Talk:Socially responsible investing/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Failed GA

Please add refernces and remove the link farm per WP:NOT a linkfarm. Thanks --Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 01:16, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

New article, new copyright violation?

I've copied across the links sections from the old page, however someone appears to have cut and pasted other material there already. simonthebold 08:23, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

New article version

There is a new article version at the temp page (Talk:Socially responsible investing/Temp). It's not wikified and it does not cite its sources. I removed a ton of external links from it; as per WP:NOT and WP:EL, articles should not consist of links to other sites. The links did not provide unique information and were not suitable for use as sources, as they are links for investment businesses and therefore not independent of the subject. I've kept the names of the companies as examples, but most of them will most likely need to be removed as well. A few of the most notable examples should suffice. The article still has what I consider to be an advertising tone, as if trying to convince the reader that social investment firms are trustworthy, highly successful, and deserve more business. I've edited it only to the point where it will most likely not be nominated for AfD as spam; it has a long way to go before it would be considered a good article. Kafziel 19:02, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Needs some links

I read around the web to find the sites offering the most objective information about socially responsible investing. I think we need a few links. I included ones that I thought had solid information and score highly for relevance on google and yahoo.

No article "needs" links. Wikipedia articles should be as self-contained as possible. If an article mentions a company that doesn't rate an article on Wikipedia (see:this guideline for the standards) the company name should remain unlinked; providing external links to non-notable companies can be construed as spam. In fact, if a company is not significant enough for its own article, it probably shouldn't be mentioned at all. I've left a few in this article as examples, but the article isn't meant to serve a jumping off point for finding these websites. Kafziel ^Talk 18:13, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense. I hope you don't mind the update to the History section. I found this information on Invested Interests and thought it tied the old religious SRI to the current SRI well. Let me know what you think. Also, I cited the information/site at the bottom and created a reference section. Do you want to include references to SIF?

Why the Article?

I removed the article to the Seattle Weekly a couple times and can't figure out why it is there. Who keeps putting the article in there? Please let me know why you think this is objective and adding to the content of the page.

I don't see what you mean. The source is objective (an independent news source) as opposed to the SRI websites everyone keeps trying to sneak in. Kafziel ^Talk 11:59, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the first comment. There are dozens of other, more comprehensive, more objective articles on SRI.

Cirm 17:43, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The article cited is one of the weakest on SRI I have ever seen, and I've looked at over 650 articles on the subject. It is weak. Kafziel must know the author or be trying to pump him up. Remove, or get other, more comprehensive links. Look at the Christian Science Monitor.

More copyvio

I just listed this article as a copyvio problem, but since the links that were used to create this page are blacklisted by wikipedia, I can't list them on the copyvio tag, but you can find many of them in the previous couple of edit summaries. (Blacklisting, while a good thing, seems to make it difficult for this tag to work properly in this circumstance, eh?).

creativeinvest . com (blacklisted, so not linked)
[1]
[2]

--Rkitko 00:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Not sure why you flagged this as a copyright violation. I put this information on there and had permission from the site administrator. Let me know. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.23.223.202 (talk • contribs)

Permission for use on Wikipedia must be logged. See Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission for more information on that end. The copyright holder must agree to release their text into one of the acceptable licenses, such as GFDL or public domain, meaning that their text can be used "downstream" of Wikipedia, for other commercial uses, even. Most copyright holders don't agree to that, so therefore it is important for them to acknowledge all of that information. Please see the link above for helpful guides to obtaining consent to use copyrighted material and how to send it to Wikipedia for verification. By the way, which website was it? The creativeinvest one? If so, they're on the spam blacklist - so even if permission is verified, it couldn't be linked to for attribution. Hope this helps. --Rkitko 07:46, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

No, I had received permission from Invested Interests to use their History of Socially Responsible Investing article. I sent the forms to m:OTRS system this evening. Please check it and re-allow this content. I actually had heard it myself at a conference at Stanford University a year ago - Invested Interests was presenting on this subject and they are considered very experienced with this subject. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bsmall99 (talk • contribs) 10:45, 7 February 2007

All right, let's wait for the OTRS guys to come here and confirm the permission. Conscious 08:16, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

notes

06/25/08: I think it is time to update the current article dramatically. SRI comes up more and more often in the media. Wikipedia should have a good, up-to-date article addressing the growing interest.--Thelosen 17:46, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

12/1/05: For a far less detailed view of SRI, check out the Nov. 13, 2005 and earlier versions of the wikipedia entry on Socially Responsible Investing. With great kudos to whoever made the effort to start the article, moving it from that point to the Nov. 15th stage of development required an input of several hours. I think the 11/19/05 additions are sound and entirely worthwhile, and I will still push back some on the 11/19/05 comment below. I see 'old school' as screening, whereas community investing and shareholder activism represent the more highly engaged levels of SRI. While it's superb that more institutional investors are awakening to the financial value of social (and in particular environmental) screens/analysis for their usefulness in helping avoid potential liability, I think it is safe to assert that rarely can one look to large pools of money for the most innovative and cutting-edge ideas. As SRI concepts become more mainstream, there will still be leading-edge thinkers and practitioners, and in my view they will likely not be the largest investors who do things when they are deemed to make financial sense, but rather will be those who lead with concepts of environmental integrity, social cohesion, and spiritual balance (in the least-religious sense of that word) and see economics as a means of supporting or advancing these fundamental values, rather than the other way around. BTH www.newground.net

11/19/05: I have made a few edits to reflect developments in SRI practice in Europe and elsewhere, particularly relating to 'investment integration' and efforts to mainstream SRI in the financial community. Previously the site was fairly old-school-US-SRI heavy.--86.133.100.254 13:23, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Merging ethical and investment into SRI probably makes sense - ethical investment (In the UK at least tends to be used to refer to screening-based SRI, so may be considered a subset of SRI).--Drcrm 13:17, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Permission granted via Marc J. Lane President of Marc J. Lane Investment Management, Inc. Please refer to: Dwoods1113 18:34, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Page Revision Proposal (07/15/08)

07/15/08 - Currently, the structure of this article is confuses SRI with the SRI sub-set of "screening" investment in funds. Much of the information presented here about socially responsible investing is in fact applicable only to "screening," not to the two other major approaches to SRI.

I propose to correct this confusion with a new structure based on the Social Investment Forum's explanation of socially responsible investing. The Social Investment Forum explains on their Socially Responsible Investing Facts page that there are three approaches to SRI:

Screening (positive and negative)
Shareholder Activism
Community Investment

Example of the current confusion: The article's second sentence reads: "In general, socially responsible investors favor corporate best practices that promote environmental stewardship, consumer protection, human rights, and diversity. Some (but not all) avoid businesses involved in alcohol, tobacco, gambling, weapons, the military, and/or abortion." This is a definition of screening investment funds. It is inapplicable to community investment and is a poor explanation of shareholder activism. The 2.5 year old entry by BTH below (12/1/2005) points to the history of the problem in this article. BTH writes: "I see 'old school' as screening, whereas community investing and shareholder activism represent the more highly engaged levels of SRI."

I propose that this article is re-ordered to give the clarify the three approaches to SRI, rather than incorrectly include shareholder activism and community investment as sub-sets of screening.

Recommended changes:

Delete the above-quoted second sentence, and replace with a new explanation drawn from the SIF Socially Responsible Investing Facts page.
Merge ""Modern applications" with "Investment Strategies," forked into "Screening (positive and negative)", "shareholder activism," and "community investment."
Include "Ethical investment in the UK", "Mutual funds", "Separately managed accounts", and "Satire and pro-market response" under the entry on the "screening" investment strategy, as these apply to screening, but not to community investment and generally not to shareholder activism either.
include new content on community investment from The Community Investing Center
include new content on shareholder activism from the Social Investment Forum.

Ideas and feedback? Thanks!! (Pu'erEditor (talk) 17:15, 15 July 2008 (UTC))

Social finance

I wonder if this shouldn't be redirect here? It's a pitiful stub, but in theory it is a broader topic than socially-responsible investing (which is only a part of it). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:17, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Criteria

I came looking for a list of criteria that are used for ethical investment. It sounds from the introduction to this article that there is universal agreement on what criteria are to be used. Is that really true? I find that hard to believe. The introduction states "In general, socially responsible investors favor corporate practices that promote environmental stewardship, consumer protection, human rights, and diversity." There is a lot of reasonable disagreement over what constitutes human rights, and what some people call diversity other people call racial discrimination. Some ethical investors might use only some of these criteria, and some others might use criteria that conflict with other ethical investors. Some religious people consider companies with health plans that cover abortions to be immoral, while others consider companies whose health plans don't cover abortion to be morally wrong. Bostoner (talk) 05:08, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

SRI providers in "See Also" section

I removed links to SRI providers from the See Also section, which were confusingly mixed in with other more general links. Ultimately I think something like going to the USSIF site or the Social Investing Forum is a better place to find providers; but perhaps a section or article on SRI providers could be useful. Thoughts? Statisfactions (talk) 15:36, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

further link

I'd suggest that the link section at the button of this wiki-page is reviewed and some links are added. I think it would be great if links to information portals could be made available for readers, e.g. www.sri-connect.com (expert discussion platform) or e.g. www.yoursri.com (neutral database for responsible investing)...

What do you think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Csspoliver (talk • contribs) 11:44, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Both sites are Links normally to be avoided and fails Wikipedias specific inclusion requirements of our External Links policy, Verifiability Policy and Reliable Source guidelines.--Hu12 (talk) 19:12, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

External links modified

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need 2016 update?

I just wanted to say that I really appreciate the information provided in the table, and think that if the author could update the 2014 data to the latest (2016) data that would be great. also, definitions for the key to the table would be helpful, specifically -- P = Positive investment; R = Restricted investment;

thanks. 24.215.166.115 (talk) 23:58, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Relation to Impact investing

The Impact investing article says Impact investing is differentiated from Socially responsible investing in that an investor will proactively seek investments that generate both financial as well as specific social and/or environmental returns. But the first sentence of the Socially responsible investing article says Socially responsible investing describes an investment strategy which seeks to maximize both financial return and social good. So where is the difference ? Could it be made more explicit (if there is any) ? Please note that I also added this discussion element to the Impact investing discussion page... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.172.128.32 (talk) 19:22, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree this is confusing; this article both says that impact investing is something distinct yet simultaneously presents it as a sub-category of SRI. There seems to be some controversy around this, actually: proponents of impact investing seem to say that socially responsible investors only do the negative screening, and in response the SRI folks are saying they've been more proactive measures all along. And third-party folks seem to use the terms in overlapping ways. I've revamped the last paragraph of the lead to describe this controversy and have added sources. Statisfactions (talk) 17:32, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the confusion comes from how the article conflates SRI and green investing, driven by the intro and the picture of wind farms. Socially responsible investing doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the environment, but the impression you get from that summary is that SRI is mainly about environmental issues, and maybe there's a tiny group of rogue upstarts tackling other social ills. That's not how SRI is talked about in the financial press, or even this article's own history section. The history section is clearer, and has a far more NPOV. The confusion with Impact investing is someone split off the general topic into its own article, when they should have split off the specific subset into an article on green investing and refocused this one to be more broad.--Thomas B♘talk 12:52, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

What's socially responsible?

I don't suppose anyone here would consider not investing in Facebook, Google or Amazon a matter of social responsibility. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.48.74.9 (talk) 03:12, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

A Trillium exec was just on TV. She said they don't invest in any firm that has more than 10% of its business in porn, guns.... all the bad stuff. I expected her to say 0%. It appears that there are few if any investments that don't make money off porn, guns.... all the bad stuff. It's nice to see Trillium hold the line, kind of. 2601:181:8301:4510:74FF:5B3F:E533:DB60 (talk) 14:17, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Vice fund

Why not have Vice Fund in see-also? If something sets out to be the antithesis of Socially responsible investing, I think that makes it a good see-also. bobrayner (talk) 16:23, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Bob, You have a point. Thanks & Kind regards, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 18:09, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

Klbrain (talk) 20:35, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Proposal to merge Social finance into this page

The Social finance page is a stub that covers the same theme as this article. I suggest it be merged into this. Clean Copy^talk 21:39, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Weak oppose. I note the same proposal from 20009 failed (stale) and this one looks stale too. Perhaps social finance should be removed as a synonym from the list at the top of Socially responsible investing because I can't see that it's supported by references, and the description of social finance seems to more closely match impact investing; perhaps it is those which should be merged instead. Klbrain (talk) 20:44, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

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