In thinking about Charles's recent "I've got this crazy idea" posting, I came up with a crazy idea of my own. I'd love some feedback.
We've got a lot of cleanup work around here. The people who end up doing it often burn out because they do too much. And from the outside, some of the cleanup areas seem to get taken over by people with much more ardent views than the mainstream, causing a lot of friction. This reminds me of several of the shared houses I've lived in. Could we use the same solution, a chore wheel?
The notion is that we would put together a way for people to say something like
* I can work in areas X, Y, and Z * I can do it for N hours at a time * I'll do it T times a month
And then they get notified when it's their turn to do something.
So for example, I might get a notice twice a month that I'm in for a four-hour shift on looking at AfDs, or RC patrol. Whatever area is in most need of labor gets the help. Perhaps we could include a way for people to report their shifts completed, so that we could list the virtuous.
I'd use something like this. Would others?
Thanks,
William
On 10/12/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
So for example, I might get a notice twice a month that I'm in for a four-hour shift on looking at AfDs, or RC patrol. Whatever area is in most need of labor gets the help. Perhaps we could include a way for people to report their shifts completed, so that we could list the virtuous.
I'd use something like this. Would others?
I think as long as we remain volunteers, most of us will edit whatever we want, whenever we want. If you want to work out some sort of brownie point system for those whom you entice to work in the least glamorous areas of the encyclopedia, it might be fun enough for some people to play along with, but Wikipedians generally prefer to be self-directed.
—C.W.
On 10/12/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
I think as long as we remain volunteers, most of us will edit whatever we want, whenever we want. If you want to work out some sort of brownie point system for those whom you entice to work in the least glamorous areas of the encyclopedia, it might be fun enough for some people to play along with, but Wikipedians generally prefer to be self-directed.
Some self-directed activity is great, and some people prefer to only work that way. But the ability to achieve mutually agreed goals is very important, and we're lacking in that regard. However, Many people enjoy the *freedom* that come from working for someone else, and some prefer to only work that way (though I think we scare away those people).
The notion that volunteerism is somehow incompatible with all forms of structured work is wrongheaded and harmful. If you go an volunteer for other non-profits they don't just give you a CEO business card when you walk in off the street and allow you to start by rearranging the office while the floors remain unswept and the phones remain unanswered.
Do we healthy and maintainable we should find the right mixture of approaches. People who care about the project itself and not just their pet interests should be willing to put in some time on things which are needed even if those tasks wouldn't be their first choices. Furthermore, without being pushed out of your comfort zone a little it's hard to grow personally.
Charlotte Webb wrote:
On 10/12/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
So for example, I might get a notice twice a month that I'm in for a four-hour shift on looking at AfDs, or RC patrol. Whatever area is in most need of labor gets the help. Perhaps we could include a way for people to report their shifts completed, so that we could list the virtuous.
I'd use something like this. Would others?
I think as long as we remain volunteers, most of us will edit whatever we want, whenever we want. If you want to work out some sort of brownie point system for those whom you entice to work in the least glamorous areas of the encyclopedia, it might be fun enough for some people to play along with, but Wikipedians generally prefer to be self-directed.
For what it's worth, I like to be self-directed, too. But there's the self-direction of "what do I want to do this instant?" versus "what do I want to do over the next six months?"
This would be an attempt to support people who are trying to think in the latter mode. Personally, I never really want to clean the house. But every Sunday morning, we clean the house. Because I like having the house clean, I have made the commitment to those Sunday morning cleaning sessions, even though it interferes with my moment-to-moment self-direction.
I'd welcome other ways to map that approach onto Wikipedia; I'm more interested in the spirit and the effect than the particular mechanism I proposed.
William
On 10/13/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
I think as long as we remain volunteers, most of us will edit whatever we want, whenever we want. If you want to work out some sort of
IMHO that's a simplistic, very self-centered view of Wikipedians, prioritising immediate self-gratification over all else. Altruism is more complicated than that: If you've ever seen a good, functioning volunteer organisation, it's not "everyone, do whatever you feel like doing, we won't boss you around", it's "we can achieve something amazing if everyone pitches in. Team A, you will do X..."
It's in the nature of people that we *do* like working, and being told what to do, if there is some reward. There are also plenty of psychogical/anthorphological/sociological theories to explain why the more we work for something, the more we desire that something. So, the harder we work for Wikipedia, the more we will value Wikipedia - and in turn, the harder we will work for it. Presumably the converse is that if we tell people that we don't value Wikipedia enough to impinge upon their personal freedoms, then they in turn are going to value it less.
brownie point system for those whom you entice to work in the least
glamorous areas of the encyclopedia, it might be fun enough for some people to play along with, but Wikipedians generally prefer to be self-directed.
That's a very big generalisation. I think "Wikipedians" are an extremely diverse group. Plenty could be co-opted to "work" in a non self-interested way, if the right approach could be found.
Personal example: I tend to create a lot of stubs. However, I'm stimulated to create them in specific areas when there is a clear worklist to go from, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_arti..., clearly cut out work with definable milestones and measurable progress work well. The "chore wheel" could work, but it would have to be highly visible, and with social rewards. It should also probably not be measured in hours, but in work accomplished.
Steve
I personally work irregularly enough that I dont want to feel an obligation, but I do want to coordinate. I'd like a tracking sheet of some sort where people could if they like say ahead of time what they intended to do when, but then at least record it afterwards so that others could see when and where work was needed. (But if we did use a wheel I'd take a slot.) I do feel an obligation-- not to do all possible mopwork-- but to certainly do at least a fair share of some parts of it. And i would feel better to know that at times i couldnt watch something ,someone else was doing it.
On 10/15/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/13/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
I think as long as we remain volunteers, most of us will edit whatever we want, whenever we want. If you want to work out some sort of
IMHO that's a simplistic, very self-centered view of Wikipedians, prioritising immediate self-gratification over all else. Altruism is more complicated than that: If you've ever seen a good, functioning volunteer organisation, it's not "everyone, do whatever you feel like doing, we won't boss you around", it's "we can achieve something amazing if everyone pitches in. Team A, you will do X..."
It's in the nature of people that we *do* like working, and being told what to do, if there is some reward. There are also plenty of psychogical/anthorphological/sociological theories to explain why the more we work for something, the more we desire that something. So, the harder we work for Wikipedia, the more we will value Wikipedia - and in turn, the harder we will work for it. Presumably the converse is that if we tell people that we don't value Wikipedia enough to impinge upon their personal freedoms, then they in turn are going to value it less.
brownie point system for those whom you entice to work in the least
glamorous areas of the encyclopedia, it might be fun enough for some people to play along with, but Wikipedians generally prefer to be self-directed.
That's a very big generalisation. I think "Wikipedians" are an extremely diverse group. Plenty could be co-opted to "work" in a non self-interested way, if the right approach could be found.
Personal example: I tend to create a lot of stubs. However, I'm stimulated to create them in specific areas when there is a clear worklist to go from, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_arti..., clearly cut out work with definable milestones and measurable progress work well. The "chore wheel" could work, but it would have to be highly visible, and with social rewards. It should also probably not be measured in hours, but in work accomplished.
Steve _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 10/15/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
IMHO that's a simplistic, very self-centered view of Wikipedians, prioritising immediate self-gratification over all else. Altruism is more complicated than that: If you've ever seen a good, functioning volunteer organisation, it's not "everyone, do whatever you feel like doing, we won't boss you around", it's "we can achieve something amazing if everyone pitches in. Team A, you will do X..."
No, I really believe that people prefer to help by doing things they enjoy and which match their interests and skills. I also believe that most people are better able to select appropriate work for themselves (and subsequently perform it) than to select work for others (and/or perform work selected for them by others). I don't believe I'm alone in saying I would react with disinterest (or even umbrage) to anybody's "you do this" list, whether it's hand-delivered or not.[1] "Hobbyist" is, after all, a more comforting identity than "uncompensated laborer".
It's in the nature of people that we *do* like working, and being told what to do, if there is some reward.
There is always a slight reward, but it's usually a deeply personal (and sometimes delicate) one.
Maybe you're doing something that you enjoy, so you have fun while you're doing it. Maybe it gratifies your ego to behold the finished product (be it a featured article, or a decent stub, or a compelling edit count, or victory in a revert war, or Arbcom concluding that you've done nothing wrong). Maybe you get recognized/quoted in a news article about Wikipedia. Maybe you feel less lonely when random people notice your edits, or expand a stub you created (the more obscure[2] the topic is, the greater the reward!) Or maybe just the fulfillment of whatever goals you have set for yourself, or the feeling that other Wikipedians consider you a likable or trustworthy person (particularly if "real-lifers" generally do not).
Or for some, the escapism is reward enough. Burst that bubble and other pastimes could begin to appear more attractive than this one (and obviously no less lucrative).
—C.W.
[1] Eh, I mean I seriously doubt I'd be alone in feeling this way, even if I am alone in admitting it. [2] (or "non-notable" if you must... grrrrrr)
Hmmm... For people who feel like they have no idea what the hell I'm talking about -- a legitimate feeling, I'm sure -- let me take another swing at explaining. With pictures of actual chore wheels, even.
Charlotte Webb wrote:
I don't believe I'm alone in saying I would react with disinterest (or even umbrage) to anybody's "you do this" list, whether it's hand-delivered or not.[1] "Hobbyist" is, after all, a more comforting identity than "uncompensated laborer".
Right. And what I'm thinking about building would not include anybody getting bossed around. It's entirely voluntary -- just a different sort of voluntary.
The notion is that there would be a list of task categories. Things like:
* Patrol new edits. * Participate in AfD * Clean up articles marked for cleanup. * Categorize pages lacking categories. * Create requested articles. * Merge articles to be merged. * Etc, etc, etc
Then I can declare that I want to put time in on particular tasks. I'd do this because I think *somebody* should do more of it, and that somebody might as well be me. E.g., I can say "I aim to spend an hour a week either cleaning up articles or patrolling new edits."
Then, once a week, ChoreBot says, "It's time! Fewer people have signed up for cleaning up articles and there's a big backlog, so why don't you do an hour of that?"
And then maybe when I'm done, I tell ChoreBot. So that way it can keep some nice statistics that a) show off that I'm doing a mildly unpleasant task, and b) show me that others are doing it too, so I don't feel like one guy trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.
Really, I'm just looking to capture the spirit of a chore wheel. Which I thought was a universal concept, but if it doesn't have a Wikipedia entry, perhaps I should explain. They look like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chinaphotos6/450415330/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/shelbylee/1059314867/ http://www.mommarama.com/essay/chorewheel.html
The notion is that there are a bunch of things nobody wants to do, but are necessary for a tidy household. So you find a fair way to divide up the responsibility, and you all commit to doing something on a regular basis.
The problem it solves is that otherwise the person with the highest standards does all the cleaning. Because they always notice the mess first, you see. And this goes on until they burn out, freak out, and shout at everybody for being utterly lazy bastards with no regard for anyone. Which makes things better for about a week, and then you're back to the neat guy doing all the cleaning again.
Of course, that never, ever happens here, but I'm thinking just in case, ChoreBot (or perhaps ChoreWheelBot) might be a good idea.
William
I'm also concerned about gaps in coverage. To an extent we have some protection built in from the time zone differences and world-wide distribution of editors in enWP, but there are times of the day (or week) when problems tend to accumulate, times when there may be nobody watching AN/I, times when newpages is not being watched as carefully,certainly times when there aren't enough people looking at recent changes --which goes so fast that it needs constant attention to be effective-- and although I try to focus a little attention on this & I know others do, it would be good to have some sort of regular schedule for this.
On 10/15/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Hmmm... For people who feel like they have no idea what the hell I'm talking about -- a legitimate feeling, I'm sure -- let me take another swing at explaining. With pictures of actual chore wheels, even.
Charlotte Webb wrote:
I don't believe I'm alone in saying I would react with disinterest (or even umbrage) to anybody's "you do this" list, whether it's hand-delivered or not.[1] "Hobbyist" is, after all, a more comforting identity than "uncompensated laborer".
Right. And what I'm thinking about building would not include anybody getting bossed around. It's entirely voluntary -- just a different sort of voluntary.
The notion is that there would be a list of task categories. Things like:
* Patrol new edits. * Participate in AfD * Clean up articles marked for cleanup. * Categorize pages lacking categories. * Create requested articles. * Merge articles to be merged. * Etc, etc, etcThen I can declare that I want to put time in on particular tasks. I'd do this because I think *somebody* should do more of it, and that somebody might as well be me. E.g., I can say "I aim to spend an hour a week either cleaning up articles or patrolling new edits."
Then, once a week, ChoreBot says, "It's time! Fewer people have signed up for cleaning up articles and there's a big backlog, so why don't you do an hour of that?"
And then maybe when I'm done, I tell ChoreBot. So that way it can keep some nice statistics that a) show off that I'm doing a mildly unpleasant task, and b) show me that others are doing it too, so I don't feel like one guy trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.
Really, I'm just looking to capture the spirit of a chore wheel. Which I thought was a universal concept, but if it doesn't have a Wikipedia entry, perhaps I should explain. They look like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chinaphotos6/450415330/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/shelbylee/1059314867/ http://www.mommarama.com/essay/chorewheel.htmlThe notion is that there are a bunch of things nobody wants to do, but are necessary for a tidy household. So you find a fair way to divide up the responsibility, and you all commit to doing something on a regular basis.
The problem it solves is that otherwise the person with the highest standards does all the cleaning. Because they always notice the mess first, you see. And this goes on until they burn out, freak out, and shout at everybody for being utterly lazy bastards with no regard for anyone. Which makes things better for about a week, and then you're back to the neat guy doing all the cleaning again.
Of course, that never, ever happens here, but I'm thinking just in case, ChoreBot (or perhaps ChoreWheelBot) might be a good idea.
William
-- William Pietri william@scissor.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri
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Charlotte Webb wrote:
On 10/15/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
IMHO that's a simplistic, very self-centered view of Wikipedians, prioritising immediate self-gratification over all else. Altruism is more complicated than that: If you've ever seen a good, functioning volunteer organisation, it's not "everyone, do whatever you feel like doing, we won't boss you around", it's "we can achieve something amazing if everyone pitches in. Team A, you will do X..."
No, I really believe that people prefer to help by doing things they enjoy and which match their interests and skills. I also believe that most people are better able to select appropriate work for themselves (and subsequently perform it) than to select work for others (and/or perform work selected for them by others). I don't believe I'm alone in saying I would react with disinterest (or even umbrage) to anybody's "you do this" list, whether it's hand-delivered or not.[1] "Hobbyist" is, after all, a more comforting identity than "uncompensated laborer".
To a volunteer it can be very annoying when others are busy doing nothing but finding work for yet others to do rather than doing it themselves. Finding sources can be an example. I respect a person who shows evidence of looking for sources himself much more than one who just goes around putting tags in articles. Finding references requires a lot more work than putting a tag, even in the easy cases. When the tag comes with an ultimatum to fix it or have the article deleted, the unnecessary urgency gets more people annoyed than articles fixed.
It's in the nature of people that we *do* like working, and being told what to do, if there is some reward.
There is always a slight reward, but it's usually a deeply personal (and sometimes delicate) one.
Maybe you're doing something that you enjoy, so you have fun while you're doing it. Maybe it gratifies your ego to behold the finished product (be it a featured article, or a decent stub, or a compelling edit count, or victory in a revert war, or Arbcom concluding that you've done nothing wrong). Maybe you get recognized/quoted in a news article about Wikipedia. Maybe you feel less lonely when random people notice your edits, or expand a stub you created (the more obscure[2] the topic is, the greater the reward!) Or maybe just the fulfillment of whatever goals you have set for yourself, or the feeling that other Wikipedians consider you a likable or trustworthy person (particularly if "real-lifers" generally do not).
Or for some, the escapism is reward enough. Burst that bubble and other pastimes could begin to appear more attractive than this one (and obviously no less lucrative).
—C.W.
[1] Eh, I mean I seriously doubt I'd be alone in feeling this way, even if I am alone in admitting it. [2] (or "non-notable" if you must... grrrrrr)
Please don't replace "obscure" with "non-notable". Too many dogs have a pavlovian response to the latter term, much to the chagrin of renaissance dogs.
Ec
On 10/15/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Too many dogs have a pavlovian response to the latter term, much to the chagrin of renaissance dogs.
Not really salivating, more like how H.S. Thompson's rottweiler responded to "Nixon"...
—C.W.
On 10/15/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/15/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Too many dogs have a pavlovian response to the latter term, much to the chagrin of renaissance dogs.
Not really salivating, more like how H.S. Thompson's rottweiler responded to "Nixon"...
Err... doberman (before somebody else corrects me).
—C.W.
On 10/16/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
No, I really believe that people prefer to help by doing things they enjoy and which match their interests and skills. I also believe that most people are better able to select appropriate work for themselves (and subsequently perform it) than to select work for others (and/or perform work selected for them by others). I don't believe I'm alone in saying I would react with disinterest (or even umbrage) to anybody's "you do this" list, whether it's hand-delivered or not.[1] "Hobbyist" is, after all, a more comforting identity than "uncompensated laborer".
Let's try a concrete example: you're a WWII aviation enthusiast. You sign up for a chore wheel in that field, accepting tasks of proofreading, categorising and adding references.
On a certain day, you get a list of tasks to do, that look like: - Please proofread [[Heinkel He 112]] - Please check if [[Lavochkin La-5]] needs more references - Please check whether [[Messerschmitt Bf 109]] is in all the right categories.
Are you really going to react badly to this? You love WWII planes, and here's someone directing you to spend more time reading about them!
Maybe you're doing something that you enjoy, so you have fun while
you're doing it. Maybe it gratifies your ego to behold the finished product (be it a featured article, or a decent stub, or a compelling edit count, or victory in a revert war, or Arbcom concluding that you've done nothing wrong). Maybe you get recognized/quoted in a news article about Wikipedia. Maybe you feel less lonely when random people notice your edits, or expand a stub you created (the more obscure[2] the topic is, the greater the reward!) Or maybe just the fulfillment of whatever goals you have set for yourself, or the feeling that other Wikipedians consider you a likable or trustworthy person (particularly if "real-lifers" generally do not).
Providing a bit of opt-in direction to people is not going to change that.
Or for some, the escapism is reward enough. Burst that bubble and
other pastimes could begin to appear more attractive than this one (and obviously no less lucrative).
So let's be careful not to burst the bubble.
Steve
On 10/12/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
This reminds me of several of the shared houses I've lived in. Could we use the same solution, a chore wheel?
Past attempts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiwork_Brigade
Please find a variant that works for us. I think labor assignment is the most important gap we have, even more important than stable versions.
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 10/12/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
This reminds me of several of the shared houses I've lived in. Could we use the same solution, a chore wheel?
Past attempts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiwork_Brigade
Please find a variant that works for us. I think labor assignment is the most important gap we have, even more important than stable versions.
Ooh, that's interesting. Anybody familiar with it enough to say why it went wrong?
Looking at it, it seems to be another work queuing system, and really we have a number of those. Also, you have to go look at it; the work doesn't come to you.
What I'm thinking of instead is some sort of subscription or commitment thing. I've always wanted to build a Wikipedia bot, so likely I'd take this opportunity. Suggestions welcome!
William
On 10/12/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
What I'm thinking of instead is some sort of subscription or commitment thing. I've always wanted to build a Wikipedia bot, so likely I'd take this opportunity. Suggestions welcome!
Yeah, that's what I want, a bot bossing me around! ;) Just kidding, the idea sounds sort of fun. I'm sure a lot of us work only in a particular niche, it might be beneficial to move out of that occasionally.
If this would work it might solve a serious problem I think we have also. Let's call it the magical-wishlist-effect. For example, you *wish* articles were cleaned up, so you make a list of articles that need cleaned up. Then make an easy template so everyone can slap it all over the place, then add awesome parameters like date, then have a bot auto date things, all the while the list gets longer and longer.
This happens because the people that DO cleanup articles are many less than the number who slap that template on, and the time it takes to completely reformat an article is not the same as the time it takes to add a template at the top. There is a complete decoupling of the queued work amount with the resources available to do it.
So, here's my pie-in-the-sky suggestion completely lacking implementation details (naturally) :D
I think somehow we should link these. If cleanup has a huge backlog, {{cleanup}} should stop working until it's fixed. This will serve as a message that, at the time, people's resources would be better spent cleaning articles rather than tagging them. Likewise tasks that are not sustainable are recognized early rather than after the backlog is completely unmanageable.
We need to learn a little more from biology I think, bossing people around probably won't work. Better to make obvious with signaling what needs to be done, and make the act of inappropriate signaling (flagging things for processing without the required resources) less possible.
cohesion wrote:
On 10/12/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
What I'm thinking of instead is some sort of subscription or commitment thing. I've always wanted to build a Wikipedia bot, so likely I'd take this opportunity. Suggestions welcome!
Yeah, that's what I want, a bot bossing me around! ;) Just kidding, the idea sounds sort of fun. I'm sure a lot of us work only in a particular niche, it might be beneficial to move out of that occasionally.
If this would work it might solve a serious problem I think we have also. Let's call it the magical-wishlist-effect. For example, you *wish* articles were cleaned up, so you make a list of articles that need cleaned up. Then make an easy template so everyone can slap it all over the place, then add awesome parameters like date, then have a bot auto date things, all the while the list gets longer and longer.
This happens because the people that DO cleanup articles are many less than the number who slap that template on, and the time it takes to completely reformat an article is not the same as the time it takes to add a template at the top. There is a complete decoupling of the queued work amount with the resources available to do it.
So, here's my pie-in-the-sky suggestion completely lacking implementation details (naturally) :D
I think somehow we should link these. If cleanup has a huge backlog, {{cleanup}} should stop working until it's fixed. This will serve as a message that, at the time, people's resources would be better spent cleaning articles rather than tagging them. Likewise tasks that are not sustainable are recognized early rather than after the backlog is completely unmanageable.
We need to learn a little more from biology I think, bossing people around probably won't work. Better to make obvious with signaling what needs to be done, and make the act of inappropriate signaling (flagging things for processing without the required resources) less possible.
Judson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion
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I'm not sure that disallowing the tags is a great idea. It's better to have an article tagged to be gotten to eventually than to languish forgotten. We're not working on a deadline here, if it takes an article years to get cleaned up, well, so it does. I like the idea of BacklogBot much better, especially as opt-in. I'd certainly sign up. Quite often, just giving people a concrete suggestion ("This area is backlogged. Go work on it.") rather than a more vague one ("There are a lot of backlogs. Help out.") is enough of a push to actually get something done.
It also helps with -knowing- what's backlogged. Sometimes I drop by AfD, see that it's hideously backlogged, and close a few discussions, but other times I just forget to look for a while. Other areas I never even look at.
On 10/12/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
We've got a lot of cleanup work around here. The people who end up doing it often burn out because they do too much. And from the outside, some of the cleanup areas seem to get taken over by people with much more ardent views than the mainstream, causing a lot of friction. This reminds me of several of the shared houses I've lived in. Could we use the same solution, a chore wheel?
I don't think you could assign jobs to people, but some kind of voluntary javascript job jar might be interesting. Say I'm bored and feel like taking on a small cleanup task. Give me page where I can click on a button and get a randomly selected chore or backlog to do. (Maybe two buttons, for general and admin-restricted chores.) I'm sure there are hundreds of odd backlogs that almost no one knows about (like the subcategories in Images for cleanup, say) and a random generator might be an interesting way of learning about and tackling a few.
On 12/10/2007, Thatcher131 Wikipedia thatcher131@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think you could assign jobs to people, but some kind of voluntary javascript job jar might be interesting. Say I'm bored and feel like taking on a small cleanup task. Give me page where I can click on a button and get a randomly selected chore or backlog to do. (Maybe two buttons, for general and admin-restricted chores.) I'm sure there are hundreds of odd backlogs that almost no one knows about (like the subcategories in Images for cleanup, say) and a random generator might be an interesting way of learning about and tackling a few.
Sounds like a good prospect for a toolserver job, that.
On 10/12/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Sounds like a good prospect for a toolserver job, that.
Not even.. so long as the task list is small enough the tasks could just be listed on a wikipage and the script could be entirely in-browser. :)
On 10/12/07, Thatcher131 Wikipedia thatcher131@gmail.com wrote:
I'm sure there are hundreds of odd backlogs that almost no one knows about
The most complete directories (afaik) are at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Maintenance and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dragons_flight/Category_tracker or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dragons_flight/Category_tracker/Summary
Stick any of those templates on your userpage, and have at it!
[[Wikipedia:Maintenance]] could perhaps use a little cleanup/clarification itself.
Quiddity
On 10/12/07, quiddity blanketfort@gmail.com wrote:
The most complete directories (afaik) are at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Maintenance and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dragons_flight/Category_tracker or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dragons_flight/Category_tracker/Summary
Please note that [[User:Dragons Flight]]'s category trackers haven't been updated since half-past August.
--Darkwind