The relationship I see with Wikipedia is our near complete lack of a reward or approval system. There's no official merit ladder, no point-scoring system, no way to trade your edit count in for valuable prizes, no special goodies for the editor of the month. We do have barnstars, but those don't imply a power relationship between giver and receiver, and they're never dangled as bait.
This is my first attempt to reply via a mailing list so excuse any mistakes that I've made and let me know if I have made any.
Concerning the post, I believe that having some actual reward system would indeed cause problems and stifle creativity and motivation for one simple reason. Many individuals who do work for wikipedia would resort to only doing work for the rewards, whatever they may be. I notice currently that a lot of editors seem to have only one goal in mind on wikipedia and that is becoming an administrator. This is perceived as an "award" for hard work and many editors seem to base all of their edits on this one goal, with disregard for actually improving the encyclopedia. This is why reward systems are harmful, people would tend to do the work purely for the specific reward offered by others rather than the actual award of doing good work to help people.
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The relationship I see with Wikipedia is our near complete lack of a reward or approval system. There's no official merit ladder, no point-scoring system, no way to trade your edit count in for valuable prizes, no special goodies for the editor of the month. We do have barnstars, but those don't imply a power relationship between giver and receiver, and they're never dangled as bait.
on 11/5/07 1:53 PM, Wiki Dudeman at wikidudeman@yahoo.com wrote:
This is my first attempt to reply via a mailing list so excuse any mistakes that I've made and let me know if I have made any.
Concerning the post, I believe that having some actual reward system would indeed cause problems and stifle creativity and motivation for one simple reason. Many individuals who do work for wikipedia would resort to only doing work for the rewards, whatever they may be. I notice currently that a lot of editors seem to have only one goal in mind on wikipedia and that is becoming an administrator. This is perceived as an "award" for hard work and many editors seem to base all of their edits on this one goal, with disregard for actually improving the encyclopedia. This is why reward systems are harmful, people would tend to do the work purely for the specific reward offered by others rather than the actual award of doing good work to help people.
Both your first post and your points are well made, Wiki. A person's motivation for editing can also be reflected in the quality and value of the edit.
An "award" for a good post or encyclopedia edit can simply be a compliment: "nice post" or "good edit". This is also at the heart of civility, and should be done much more than it is in the Project.
Thank you,
Marc Riddell