Forum:Rewarding active users

I think it would be great if Wikia could reward the most active users in some way. 21 people have made more than 10000 edits to one of the wikis. 364 people have made at least 1000 edits to one wiki (my stats are wrong for the English and German Uncyclopedias so I've excluded those). One person (GreenReaper) has made more than 10000 edits on two wikis, and 15 people have made more than 1000 edits on two wikis.

I'd be interested to hear views for and against giving the people who edit most some sort of recognition for their work. One reason against it might be that it could encourage what Wikipedia calls Editcountitis.

Sites like Yahoo Answers assign users points, and they claim they're going to give rewards in future for reaching certain levels, but they don't say what those will be yet. Are there other examples of sites that reward activity in some way?

One suggestion for a "reward" might be to allow the most active users to have a personal wiki where they could control who was allowed to view or edit pages. We don't currently allow these since they don't attract a community and supporting community-focused wikis is our main goal.

Another suggestion is sponsorship for attendance at events, such as Wikimania.

Do you have other suggestions? Please add them below.

Angela (talk) 05:02, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Speaking for myself, my personal needs in wiki terms are fairly small. Life is too busy making public edits to be doing private ones! The few I do I tend to get away with as user-page edits anyway (e.g. my con reports or essays). You get a fair bit of slack with your community over personal edits when you're a majority contributor. I have a LiveJournal if I ever want to make private posts for friends only, which is rare enough. :-)


 * Some would say having a wiki that you helped build from the ground up, and attracting a community to carry on your mission is its own reward . . . --GreenReaper(talk) 05:45, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I've started an awards system at Awards, and there are more thoughts on the talk page. It's not a very big reward, and nothing tangible, but I think it's very wiki.... and hopefully fun.  -- sannse (talk) 07:27, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with GreenReaper. If someone contributed over 10000 times on a wiki, that wiki (or Wikia as a whole), must have done something right already to keep him/her interested in contributing. :) Maybe the best reward would be to feature the specific wiki instead of the contributor in some way - at least I know that I would prefer that, but I'm not too interested in any personal award process anyway. -- Cid Highwind 14:50, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Honestly, I'm feeling rewarded right now, just getting your e-mail. It's just nice to know that I'm one of the 21 major contributors, and to get a little recognition for that. I don't think there's any "reward" you could give that would mean more than just giving attention and respect to the active people. We're obviously not in this for major gain; we just love being a part of it.


 * Getting invited to Wikimania is also a huge, huge reward, and I'm really excited about going and meeting other wiki people. If there are any other events -- maybe local meet-ups in major cities? -- then that would also be great. Wikia is community based, and collaboration based, so I think personal rewards are less important than just having opportunities to interact and work together as a big community. -- Danny (talk ) 21:22, 21 July 2006 (UTC)