Both in Wikipedia and other parts of the Wikimedia-universe there are a lot of jobs that should be done, but are not so popular. Because they are not done, people get tired and backs away from whatever they are doing.
I could give several examples, but lets say spellchecking. It is not fun doing spellchecking, even if you are spellchecking something written by a professor. Instead of doing spellchecking you do something else, like poking around in some code, or write about Pokemon. While you do so the professor gets a bit annoyed over the not so perfect article, and starts to wonder what happen to the crowd in crowdsourcing.
Somewhere along the way the it became so bad to talk about anything except the pure wikipedian sitting on top of his pillar with a book and a computer, writing articles in solitude, that we completely missed the opportunities to get a much larger momentum.
The Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia has over a half a million articles. About 10 % lack sources. Nearly all of them has spelling errors. It is nothing unusual about this.
Could we use bounties to get some momentum?
John Erling Blad /jeblad
Hello John,
I thought about it too, in a slightly different angle, and maybe it is really not a bad idea.
What I thought was more for people who are here for a while (maybe those who have been around for 2+ years, 5000 edits, whatever). More of a motivation for the older worn out contributors.[1]
I don't know what the 'bounty' could be, maybe something tangible or valuable in RL (tshirt, products, cake, draw to win stuff), or maybe something that is more than a barnstar but still digital. I prefer the latter for efficiency reasons, hence let me elaborate a tiny bit on that:
It could be something like an automated point system that is attached to a user account. Something like a scorecard that is not editable by users, but is visible as part of the account, automatically updated in the backend by the system or a special authorised bot. Something of that sort.
Just my thoughts...
[1] I've been around since 2008, and worked in many parts of Wikipedia and Commons. As real life gets more hectic for me, my motivation to edit is starting to vary widely, as while there are sooo many things to do in the wikiverse during my free time, there aren't any solid milestones you could focus on each day. You open a random backlog, and there's an endless ocean of work which if you attend 1 or 10000 requests, it doesn't really matter to the contributor itself. More like starting to mop a vast room-less floor.
Yours truly,
Rehman Abubakr (Roy)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rehman
OTRS agent, Admin (English Wikipedia, Commons), Contributor (Wikidata, Meta) User:Rehmanhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rehman | Talkpagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Rehman | rehman.wikimedia@live.commailto:rehman.wikimedia@live.com | UG-LKhttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Sri_Lanka/English
________________________________ From: Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf of John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com Sent: 25 January 2019 05:25 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Bounties…
Both in Wikipedia and other parts of the Wikimedia-universe there are a lot of jobs that should be done, but are not so popular. Because they are not done, people get tired and backs away from whatever they are doing.
I could give several examples, but lets say spellchecking. It is not fun doing spellchecking, even if you are spellchecking something written by a professor. Instead of doing spellchecking you do something else, like poking around in some code, or write about Pokemon. While you do so the professor gets a bit annoyed over the not so perfect article, and starts to wonder what happen to the crowd in crowdsourcing.
Somewhere along the way the it became so bad to talk about anything except the pure wikipedian sitting on top of his pillar with a book and a computer, writing articles in solitude, that we completely missed the opportunities to get a much larger momentum.
The Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia has over a half a million articles. About 10 % lack sources. Nearly all of them has spelling errors. It is nothing unusual about this.
Could we use bounties to get some momentum?
John Erling Blad /jeblad
_______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
It's interesting that you chose spellchecking as your example. On the English Wikipedia, I tend to see that as an activity that some people actually do find fun (or relaxing). Plus, spelling errors (or perceived spelling errors[1]) are something that unregistered users really like fixing. But maybe that varies significantly across language editions.
In any event, spelling errors are probably the case where eventualism is most appropriate. It is rare that someone will be misinformed because of spelling mistakes, and they serve a useful signaling function in making it clear that a given piece of content has probably not undergone peer review. And rather than driving people away, they tend to draw them in—Cunningham's law[2] never fails.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ENGVAR [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 6:55 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Both in Wikipedia and other parts of the Wikimedia-universe there are a lot of jobs that should be done, but are not so popular. Because they are not done, people get tired and backs away from whatever they are doing.
I could give several examples, but lets say spellchecking. It is not fun doing spellchecking, even if you are spellchecking something written by a professor. Instead of doing spellchecking you do something else, like poking around in some code, or write about Pokemon. While you do so the professor gets a bit annoyed over the not so perfect article, and starts to wonder what happen to the crowd in crowdsourcing.
Somewhere along the way the it became so bad to talk about anything except the pure wikipedian sitting on top of his pillar with a book and a computer, writing articles in solitude, that we completely missed the opportunities to get a much larger momentum.
The Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia has over a half a million articles. About 10 % lack sources. Nearly all of them has spelling errors. It is nothing unusual about this.
Could we use bounties to get some momentum?
John Erling Blad /jeblad
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
In the Basque wikipedia we are doing monthly contests on different topics, and some of them are focused on quality (i.e. adding references and images). There are some prices every month, usually books or thing related to technology. And people usually like to participate for the fun, and for the prize. ________________________________ From: Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf of Benjamin Lees emufarmers@gmail.com Sent: Friday, January 25, 2019 5:14 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Bounties…
It's interesting that you chose spellchecking as your example. On the English Wikipedia, I tend to see that as an activity that some people actually do find fun (or relaxing). Plus, spelling errors (or perceived spelling errors[1]) are something that unregistered users really like fixing. But maybe that varies significantly across language editions.
In any event, spelling errors are probably the case where eventualism is most appropriate. It is rare that someone will be misinformed because of spelling mistakes, and they serve a useful signaling function in making it clear that a given piece of content has probably not undergone peer review. And rather than driving people away, they tend to draw them in—Cunningham's law[2] never fails.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ENGVAR [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 6:55 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Both in Wikipedia and other parts of the Wikimedia-universe there are a lot of jobs that should be done, but are not so popular. Because they are not done, people get tired and backs away from whatever they are doing.
I could give several examples, but lets say spellchecking. It is not fun doing spellchecking, even if you are spellchecking something written by a professor. Instead of doing spellchecking you do something else, like poking around in some code, or write about Pokemon. While you do so the professor gets a bit annoyed over the not so perfect article, and starts to wonder what happen to the crowd in crowdsourcing.
Somewhere along the way the it became so bad to talk about anything except the pure wikipedian sitting on top of his pillar with a book and a computer, writing articles in solitude, that we completely missed the opportunities to get a much larger momentum.
The Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia has over a half a million articles. About 10 % lack sources. Nearly all of them has spelling errors. It is nothing unusual about this.
Could we use bounties to get some momentum?
John Erling Blad /jeblad
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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In Swedish Wikipedia we have Monthly tasks (mostly called monthly because in that interval barnstars are given for completed tasks), where editors gives small tasks for other editors to complete. Very similar to your bounties, but not often spell checking.
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:M%C3%A5nadens_uppdrag
Jan Ainali http://ainali.com
Den fre 25 jan. 2019 kl 16:17 skrev Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga < galder158@hotmail.com>:
In the Basque wikipedia we are doing monthly contests on different topics, and some of them are focused on quality (i.e. adding references and images). There are some prices every month, usually books or thing related to technology. And people usually like to participate for the fun, and for the prize. ________________________________ From: Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf of Benjamin Lees emufarmers@gmail.com Sent: Friday, January 25, 2019 5:14 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Bounties…
It's interesting that you chose spellchecking as your example. On the English Wikipedia, I tend to see that as an activity that some people actually do find fun (or relaxing). Plus, spelling errors (or perceived spelling errors[1]) are something that unregistered users really like fixing. But maybe that varies significantly across language editions.
In any event, spelling errors are probably the case where eventualism is most appropriate. It is rare that someone will be misinformed because of spelling mistakes, and they serve a useful signaling function in making it clear that a given piece of content has probably not undergone peer review. And rather than driving people away, they tend to draw them in—Cunningham's law[2] never fails.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ENGVAR [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 6:55 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Both in Wikipedia and other parts of the Wikimedia-universe there are a lot of jobs that should be done, but are not so popular. Because they are not done, people get tired and backs away from whatever they are doing.
I could give several examples, but lets say spellchecking. It is not fun doing spellchecking, even if you are spellchecking something written by a professor. Instead of doing spellchecking you do something else, like poking around in some code, or write about Pokemon. While you do so the professor gets a bit annoyed over the not so perfect article, and starts to wonder what happen to the crowd in crowdsourcing.
Somewhere along the way the it became so bad to talk about anything except the pure wikipedian sitting on top of his pillar with a book and a computer, writing articles in solitude, that we completely missed the opportunities to get a much larger momentum.
The Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia has over a half a million articles. About 10 % lack sources. Nearly all of them has spelling errors. It is nothing unusual about this.
Could we use bounties to get some momentum?
John Erling Blad /jeblad
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I was thinking about actually bounties, like in bug bounties from larger software vendors. We have some "bugs", like spellchecking, which is pretty easy to quantify, and that can be done as part of bounties with cash. Yes, the ugly word, paid editing! OMG!
But quite frankly, why should we not? ¢1 per fixed single word typo that leads to one-less spelling error? Perhaps even $1 per spellchecked page? Delayed one week to see if anyone reverts the edits?
On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 4:17 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga galder158@hotmail.com wrote:
In the Basque wikipedia we are doing monthly contests on different topics, and some of them are focused on quality (i.e. adding references and images). There are some prices every month, usually books or thing related to technology. And people usually like to participate for the fun, and for the prize. ________________________________ From: Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf of Benjamin Lees emufarmers@gmail.com Sent: Friday, January 25, 2019 5:14 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Bounties…
It's interesting that you chose spellchecking as your example. On the English Wikipedia, I tend to see that as an activity that some people actually do find fun (or relaxing). Plus, spelling errors (or perceived spelling errors[1]) are something that unregistered users really like fixing. But maybe that varies significantly across language editions.
In any event, spelling errors are probably the case where eventualism is most appropriate. It is rare that someone will be misinformed because of spelling mistakes, and they serve a useful signaling function in making it clear that a given piece of content has probably not undergone peer review. And rather than driving people away, they tend to draw them in—Cunningham's law[2] never fails.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ENGVAR [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 6:55 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Both in Wikipedia and other parts of the Wikimedia-universe there are a lot of jobs that should be done, but are not so popular. Because they are not done, people get tired and backs away from whatever they are doing.
I could give several examples, but lets say spellchecking. It is not fun doing spellchecking, even if you are spellchecking something written by a professor. Instead of doing spellchecking you do something else, like poking around in some code, or write about Pokemon. While you do so the professor gets a bit annoyed over the not so perfect article, and starts to wonder what happen to the crowd in crowdsourcing.
Somewhere along the way the it became so bad to talk about anything except the pure wikipedian sitting on top of his pillar with a book and a computer, writing articles in solitude, that we completely missed the opportunities to get a much larger momentum.
The Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia has over a half a million articles. About 10 % lack sources. Nearly all of them has spelling errors. It is nothing unusual about this.
Could we use bounties to get some momentum?
John Erling Blad /jeblad
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Whatever the reasoning is, I think we should accept that at the moment paid editing is universally regarded very negatively in virtually all projects. Non-monetary prizes for competitions may or may not be ok, everything else is most likely not considered to be ok even if does not explicitly contradict to any policies.
Cheers Yaroslav
On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 5:07 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
I was thinking about actually bounties, like in bug bounties from larger software vendors. We have some "bugs", like spellchecking, which is pretty easy to quantify, and that can be done as part of bounties with cash. Yes, the ugly word, paid editing! OMG!
But quite frankly, why should we not? ¢1 per fixed single word typo that leads to one-less spelling error? Perhaps even $1 per spellchecked page? Delayed one week to see if anyone reverts the edits?
On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 4:17 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga galder158@hotmail.com wrote:
In the Basque wikipedia we are doing monthly contests on different
topics, and some of them are focused on quality (i.e. adding references and images). There are some prices every month, usually books or thing related to technology. And people usually like to participate for the fun, and for the prize.
From: Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf
of Benjamin Lees emufarmers@gmail.com
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2019 5:14 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Bounties…
It's interesting that you chose spellchecking as your example. On the English Wikipedia, I tend to see that as an activity that some people actually do find fun (or relaxing). Plus, spelling errors (or perceived spelling errors[1]) are something that unregistered users really like fixing. But maybe that varies significantly across language editions.
In any event, spelling errors are probably the case where eventualism is most appropriate. It is rare that someone will be misinformed because of spelling mistakes, and they serve a useful signaling function in making
it
clear that a given piece of content has probably not undergone peer review. And rather than driving people away, they tend to draw them in—Cunningham's law[2] never fails.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ENGVAR [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 6:55 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com
wrote:
Both in Wikipedia and other parts of the Wikimedia-universe there are a lot of jobs that should be done, but are not so popular. Because they are not done, people get tired and backs away from whatever they are doing.
I could give several examples, but lets say spellchecking. It is not fun doing spellchecking, even if you are spellchecking something written by a professor. Instead of doing spellchecking you do something else, like poking around in some code, or write about Pokemon. While you do so the professor gets a bit annoyed over the not so perfect article, and starts to wonder what happen to the crowd in crowdsourcing.
Somewhere along the way the it became so bad to talk about anything except the pure wikipedian sitting on top of his pillar with a book and a computer, writing articles in solitude, that we completely missed the opportunities to get a much larger momentum.
The Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia has over a half a million articles. About 10 % lack sources. Nearly all of them has spelling errors. It is nothing unusual about this.
Could we use bounties to get some momentum?
John Erling Blad /jeblad
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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I believe this kind of statement ("at the moment paid editing is universally regarded very negatively in virtually all projects") hurt the movement more than anything else for the moment, as it blocks progress on a lot of important fields without any real arguments to back it up. It is the fundamental flaw behind "Terms of use/Paid contributions amendment"[1] It is just a bunch of feelings and hearsay. We have shot ourselves in the collective foot by blocking the most useful tool we have.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use/Paid_contributions_amendment
On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 5:28 PM Yaroslav Blanter ymbalt@gmail.com wrote:
Whatever the reasoning is, I think we should accept that at the moment paid editing is universally regarded very negatively in virtually all projects. Non-monetary prizes for competitions may or may not be ok, everything else is most likely not considered to be ok even if does not explicitly contradict to any policies.
Cheers Yaroslav
On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 5:07 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
I was thinking about actually bounties, like in bug bounties from larger software vendors. We have some "bugs", like spellchecking, which is pretty easy to quantify, and that can be done as part of bounties with cash. Yes, the ugly word, paid editing! OMG!
But quite frankly, why should we not? ¢1 per fixed single word typo that leads to one-less spelling error? Perhaps even $1 per spellchecked page? Delayed one week to see if anyone reverts the edits?
On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 4:17 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga galder158@hotmail.com wrote:
In the Basque wikipedia we are doing monthly contests on different
topics, and some of them are focused on quality (i.e. adding references and images). There are some prices every month, usually books or thing related to technology. And people usually like to participate for the fun, and for the prize.
From: Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf
of Benjamin Lees emufarmers@gmail.com
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2019 5:14 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Bounties…
It's interesting that you chose spellchecking as your example. On the English Wikipedia, I tend to see that as an activity that some people actually do find fun (or relaxing). Plus, spelling errors (or perceived spelling errors[1]) are something that unregistered users really like fixing. But maybe that varies significantly across language editions.
In any event, spelling errors are probably the case where eventualism is most appropriate. It is rare that someone will be misinformed because of spelling mistakes, and they serve a useful signaling function in making
it
clear that a given piece of content has probably not undergone peer review. And rather than driving people away, they tend to draw them in—Cunningham's law[2] never fails.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ENGVAR [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 6:55 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com
wrote:
Both in Wikipedia and other parts of the Wikimedia-universe there are a lot of jobs that should be done, but are not so popular. Because they are not done, people get tired and backs away from whatever they are doing.
I could give several examples, but lets say spellchecking. It is not fun doing spellchecking, even if you are spellchecking something written by a professor. Instead of doing spellchecking you do something else, like poking around in some code, or write about Pokemon. While you do so the professor gets a bit annoyed over the not so perfect article, and starts to wonder what happen to the crowd in crowdsourcing.
Somewhere along the way the it became so bad to talk about anything except the pure wikipedian sitting on top of his pillar with a book and a computer, writing articles in solitude, that we completely missed the opportunities to get a much larger momentum.
The Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia has over a half a million articles. About 10 % lack sources. Nearly all of them has spelling errors. It is nothing unusual about this.
Could we use bounties to get some momentum?
John Erling Blad /jeblad
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Hi Yaroslav,
I'm not aware of such wide consensus against paid editing in general. Wikimedians in Residence, for example, often seem to be paid contributors, and I can't recall the last time that I heard criticism of the concept of Wikimedians in Residence. However, you may know more about the consensus on diverse projects than I do, and I would be interested in reading a representative sample of links to policies and discussions about this topic on various projects.
Personally I am against undisclosed paid editing, and I would like to see WMF do much more to detect, penalize, and deter undisclosed paid editing. But there are also people and organizations such as well-intentioned WiRs and their sponsoring institutions who are willing to contribute usefully to the projects with paid time. I think that paid benevolent contributions to the projects should be encouraged, for example from organizations like the American Psychological Association and Stanford University.
I think that the professionalization of Wikimedia is likely to continue over time. The learning curve is steep for many on-wiki tasks, and we have a limited supply of knowledgeable volunteers who cannot possibly fulfill all of our readers' wishes and the needs for behind the scenes support (such as responses to OTRS tickets, conflict of interest investigations, translations, and personalized help for new contributors) with the limited supply of time from knowledgeable volunteers. If results from increased professionalization are good and there aren't problems with conflict of interest or noteworthy conflicts between populations of volunteers and well-intentioned professionals, then I'm okay with this trend and in some ways I would encourage it because the projects benefit from having more knowledgeable and well-intentioned participants.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 4:28 PM Yaroslav Blanter ymbalt@gmail.com wrote:
Whatever the reasoning is, I think we should accept that at the moment paid editing is universally regarded very negatively in virtually all projects. Non-monetary prizes for competitions may or may not be ok, everything else is most likely not considered to be ok even if does not explicitly contradict to any policies.
Cheers Yaroslav
On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 5:07 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
I was thinking about actually bounties, like in bug bounties from larger software vendors. We have some "bugs", like spellchecking, which is pretty easy to quantify, and that can be done as part of bounties with cash. Yes, the ugly word, paid editing! OMG!
But quite frankly, why should we not? ¢1 per fixed single word typo that leads to one-less spelling error? Perhaps even $1 per spellchecked page? Delayed one week to see if anyone reverts the edits?
On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 4:17 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga galder158@hotmail.com wrote:
In the Basque wikipedia we are doing monthly contests on different
topics, and some of them are focused on quality (i.e. adding references
and
images). There are some prices every month, usually books or thing
related
to technology. And people usually like to participate for the fun, and
for
the prize.
From: Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf
of Benjamin Lees emufarmers@gmail.com
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2019 5:14 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Bounties…
It's interesting that you chose spellchecking as your example. On the English Wikipedia, I tend to see that as an activity that some people actually do find fun (or relaxing). Plus, spelling errors (or
perceived
spelling errors[1]) are something that unregistered users really like fixing. But maybe that varies significantly across language editions.
In any event, spelling errors are probably the case where eventualism
is
most appropriate. It is rare that someone will be misinformed because
of
spelling mistakes, and they serve a useful signaling function in making
it
clear that a given piece of content has probably not undergone peer review. And rather than driving people away, they tend to draw them in—Cunningham's law[2] never fails.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ENGVAR [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 6:55 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com
wrote:
Both in Wikipedia and other parts of the Wikimedia-universe there are a lot of jobs that should be done, but are not so popular. Because they are not done, people get tired and backs away from whatever they are doing.
I could give several examples, but lets say spellchecking. It is not fun doing spellchecking, even if you are spellchecking something written by a professor. Instead of doing spellchecking you do something else, like poking around in some code, or write about Pokemon. While you do so the professor gets a bit annoyed over the
not
so perfect article, and starts to wonder what happen to the crowd in crowdsourcing.
Somewhere along the way the it became so bad to talk about anything except the pure wikipedian sitting on top of his pillar with a book and a computer, writing articles in solitude, that we completely missed the opportunities to get a much larger momentum.
The Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia has over a half a million articles. About 10 % lack sources. Nearly all of them has spelling errors. It
is
nothing unusual about this.
Could we use bounties to get some momentum?
John Erling Blad /jeblad
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On Fri, 25 Jan 2019 at 16:07, John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
I was thinking about actually bounties, like in bug bounties from larger software vendors. We have some "bugs", like spellchecking, which is pretty easy to quantify, and that can be done as part of bounties with cash. Yes, the ugly word, paid editing! OMG!
But quite frankly, why should we not? ¢1 per fixed single word typo that leads to one-less spelling error? Perhaps even $1 per spellchecked page? Delayed one week to see if anyone reverts the edits?
You've just created a financial incentive to include spelling errors.
The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reward_board does exist, but it doesn't seem to get much attention.
On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 1:29 PM geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, 25 Jan 2019 at 16:07, John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
I was thinking about actually bounties, like in bug bounties from larger software vendors. We have some "bugs", like spellchecking, which is pretty easy to quantify, and that can be done as part of bounties with cash. Yes, the ugly word, paid editing! OMG!
But quite frankly, why should we not? ¢1 per fixed single word typo that leads to one-less spelling error? Perhaps even $1 per spellchecked page? Delayed one week to see if anyone reverts the edits?
You've just created a financial incentive to include spelling errors.
-- geni
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There was also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiMoney before that but it never really worked either.
Le dim. 27 janv. 2019 à 08:10, AntiCompositeNumber < anticompositenumber@gmail.com> a écrit :
The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reward_board does exist, but it doesn't seem to get much attention.
On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 1:29 PM geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, 25 Jan 2019 at 16:07, John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
I was thinking about actually bounties, like in bug bounties from larger software vendors. We have some "bugs", like spellchecking, which is pretty easy to quantify, and that can be done as part of bounties with cash. Yes, the ugly word, paid editing! OMG!
But quite frankly, why should we not? ¢1 per fixed single word typo that leads to one-less spelling error? Perhaps even $1 per spellchecked page? Delayed one week to see if anyone reverts the edits?
You've just created a financial incentive to include spelling errors.
-- geni
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