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.

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

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.

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.

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: 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 -- William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Too many dogs have a pavlovian response to the latter term, much to the chagrin of renaissance dogs.

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".

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).

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.

On 10/12/07, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: 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.

On 10/12/07, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: 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 _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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.

I'm sure there are hundreds of odd backlogs that almost no one knows about