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)


 * Recognition:Is there somewhere where the 21 and the 364, and / or (maybe some number in between, say who's done 5,000 edits?) and the wikis they're making most of their contributions to, can be seen? If not, could there be? Philralph 07:42, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I am not sure that ranking is such a good idea . . . but perhaps Wikia could automatically send out a message to people when they reach certain levels of edits? This could be a neat way to introduce them to an ever-wider series of wiki topics - for example, the first edit might result in suggesting simple edit advice, while messages sent at 1000 or 10000 edits (or perhaps when sysop status is granted?) might be more related to promoting your work and organizing other contributors. --GreenReaper(talk) 08:00, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Recognition: I think best form is recognition by the whole community or communities rather than just by Wikia - if it's real recognition doesn't it have to be 'public' in some way? Not sure how to do this, but a simple listing for 2 or 3 broad (or very broad) categories doesn't have to be too much like ranking. Philralph 08:19, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Giving little medals (like the Wikipedia Barnstars) works really well to make people feel rewarded. If people feel rewarded, they will contribute to the community more. Otherwise, in a large multi-user environment, the effect of Social Loafing can be very detrimental (believe me, I'm a psychologist) .  Have a look at one of our contributors reaction when I gave her this medal.  She was really happy :) Mostly Zen  [[Image:Baby_tao.jpg]] (talk ) 13:54, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The following is just about recognition, (irrespecitive of what may or may not happen re other forms of reward): - another idea is to see if  if's possible to devise a system which balances human judgement with the 'bean counter' approach (so discouraging or mitigating against Editcountitis). So maybe start with broad categories e.g. 10k or 5k plus edits, publish these (or make more visible if they're already somewhere), but add a note something along the lines of: "It's recognised that it's perfectly possible for half a given number of edits to represent a better (higher quality) overall contribution" (or expand, improve re the Editcountitis article).
 * Then use this (the edit count) as a basis (only) to make something like Wikia Academy Awards. To start off, have an election to form the basis of a Wikian Academy who would then judge / assess nominations, perhaps yearly, (clearly looking at overall contribtuion not just numbers). This approach could adopt different categories e.g best overall contribution, best interwiki collaboration, best cross wiki contribtuion (eg number of wikia contribtued to) even something like best newcomer? (Hopefully by now you're getting the picture!). Then you could either just repeat this process annually or Academy Award winners could join in the assessment process in future years as a further reward. Could also be balanced by some statement somewhere that this all all primarily about recognition and Academy Award winners get no special priveleges, etc (I do though like the idea of sponsorship to get to events) Philralph 20:15, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


 * That seems like a long way to go just to give people a friendly pat on the back. Recognition doesn't have to be public to feel nice. Just knowing that somebody thinks you're a good contributor is kind of enough.


 * I think the idea of "competing" with other Wikia contributors for an award runs counter to the wiki spirit. We're not campaigning against each other to see who's the best writer, or the best administrator, or the most prolific editor. It's a collaboration, not a competition. My edits are better because of your edits, and vice versa.


 * I think a simple acknowledgement that a contributor has reached an interesting benchmark is enough. It's just stepping back and saying, hey, check it out, look how much you've done. Thanks for working so hard, and for caring so much. Anything else, in my opinion, takes it away from the collaboration, and into a more selfish area. -- Danny (talk ) 02:01, 23 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm with Danny on this one, dont make people compete, just say thanks, a lot :) Mostly Zen [[Image:Baby_tao.jpg]] (talk ) 19:39, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Personal wikis are useful IMO - I've got one at editthis.info already. I'm in the 1000 to one wiki category, and I personally am not fond of counting edits or competition... I like the idea of Wikimania sponsorship for particularly active contributors, more the 1000 to multiple wikis and 10000 groups than just people who work on small wikis.  Although I don't really know much about Wikimania and aren't really that involved in Wikia or Wikimedia to go, I'd be willing to bet that a lot of really prolific contributers would love a chance to experience it.  Scott ch 02:01, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Rewarding communities by investing in them
Maybe the discussion above is mostly about ideas for reward at the personal level, but what if we look at possibilities for reward for communities? My take on this at the moment follows on from the Forum:Do you prefer ads at the top discussion, and the possibility that there are maybe wider options - in essence that the relative importance (including position) might, to a certain extent, be variable and up to 'local' Wikia community choice.

So my question is - is it possible to think of rewarding wikia communities by investing in them? At first not individual wikia, but maybe groups e.g the more serious subject type wikia such as those included in Society Gardens. As the discussion there notes some topics do not have a ready community of computer savvy users, and for these perhaps establishing and sustaining viable e-communities is harder. So what I'm wondering is if there is a way of diverting some of ad revenue streams to democratic determination of the 'more serious stuff' / Society Gardens wikia community, including for example, the campaigns wikia recently set up by Jimmy Wales? Or setting up some process that would make this a possibility for the future? Philralph 14:50, 30 July 2006 (UTC)