Hi David,
A couple of thoughts on this, based on Kerry Raymond's earlier post to the WMAU list:-
- What is the purpose of this competition, other than to celebrate the
10th anniversary? Is it to attract new users? Is it to get some key works transcribed very quickly? Is it to distribute movement-funded prizes to long-term contributors? The purpose of the competition will drive how it is structured.
- As has been pointed out, an e-Reader, at least in Australia (and
probably most other developed English speaking countries) is not all that impressive a prize, especially if you already have one or don't have an interest in having an e-Reader. I think a slightly better prize would be a gift certificate to somewhere like Amazon or Fishpond, so at least the winner can choose something they know they'll like. This may be different in other countries, of course.
- A point-based system like what you propose is easy enough to
administer, but if the approach is to attract new users, they'll probably notice that anyone that doesn't get in within the first couple of days is probably at a massive disadvantage to getting the prize. In turn, this will make the motivational aspect of the prize disappear for anyone that comes late. If we're counting on the prize to get users to do some work, I think we'd be disappointed. This can be solved a bit by having a prize pool that can be broken into smaller pieces, so rather than a $100 e-Reader you can distribute a $20 voucher every day (for example). This would mean that those who arrive late still have a chance of getting something.
- My experience with running competitions like this is that if you
approach it with a "build it and they will come" mindset, the only entrants you'll get are people who are already contributing in that fashion anyway. There needs to be some hook to get people who have not previously heard of or contributed to Wikisource to contribute. Otherwise they're never going to hear about it and we're never going to get our new users. Is there some mechanism to advertise this widely beyond just existing Wikisource users?
- WMAU's experience with the "Pitch In!" project, where we did have the
support of a major public institution as a hook to get those new users in, is that it's actually quite hard to get new users to Wikisource to 'stick'. I think we can expect a lot of users to do a single page, and a lot of new users to vanish once the contest is over. If recruitment is the goal, then there needs to be a strategy to continue engaging with users who arrive for the competition so that we retain them.
I don't want to be the one that pours cold water on the whole idea (I do think it'd be wonderful to do *something* for the 10th anniversary), but I'm not clear on what we're actually trying to achieve with this competition.
Cheers, Craig Franklin
Hi Craig, thanks for the suggestions. Our idea is that, right now, every community can organize the constest as it will. The main problem is that there is one interested user for community, in this ml :-), so it is hard enough to make the contest happen, let alone make a very good and succesful one. In this regard, I'm more perfect is the enemy of the good: our people resource are scarce, so if there is a little contest with a little prize, I'm happy :-)
Your points, especially 3 and 4, are really good insights and I'll take them in the Italian Village Pump. I would say that the sitenotice is a good place to promote and advertise the contest. It.wikisource also has a "window" on the Wikipedia main page, and we can put it there too. Moreover, we have access to Facebook and Twitter wikimedia pages, so we can boost it on those.
If someone of you is willing to write a blogpost in the Wikimedia blog, both for the Wikisource Community User Group and the Wikisource contest, is welcome to :-)
Aubrey
On 7 November 2013 09:40, David Cuenca dacuetu@gmail.com wrote:
Since this is the first time we do it and we don't have enough organizational capacity, it will be easier to hold independent contests.
For the Catalan edition we are planning to do as follows:
- the contest will be open from Nov 24th 00 UTC till Dec 1st 23:59 UTC.
- 2 organizers select 3 books in secret (more will be added if needed).
The books have OCR of acceptable quality and they are not too hard to format. The books chosen will be disclosed when the contest begins. One sample page will be offered, plus links to relevant help pages. We are putting it all together here: https://ca.wikisource.org/wiki/Viquitexts:Viquirepte_10%C3%A8_aniversari
- the participants get 3 points for each completely corrected and
formatted page, if they validate someone else's page, they get 1 point
- the organizers can disqualify a participant if they mark pages as done
without actually working on them
- the prize will be an ebook reader (model TBD)
KRLS has told me that he will try to have a counting script ready, if not, we will count it manually.
So how many contests are we going to have? Italian, Catalan and, maybe WM-DC or WM-AU organize the English version?
When everything is clear we should prepare an annoncement and publish it next week on the Wikimedia blog.
Cheers, Micru
On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 1:34 PM, Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.comwrote:
Regarding the cotest: how do you like an international contest, with both local wikisource and single user chart?
Something like Wiki Loves Monuments, like this: https://toolserver.org/~emijrp/wlm/stats.php
The real problem is that we *don't* have a way (right now), to associate clearly proofredings and validation with single users. I don't know how phe's tools count them, but I'm sure something could be done. toolserver.org/~phe/statistics.php?diff=1
Aubrey
On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 2:12 PM, Craig Franklin < cfranklin@halonetwork.net> wrote:
Well, that would be well within the realm of what the WMAU "Volunteer Support Programme" would be able to fund, if one of our members were to apply:
http://www.wikimedia.org.au//wiki/Volunteer_Support_Programme
Cheers, Craig
On 4 November 2013 22:18, Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.comwrote:
Well, I'd be 100 dollars/euros, something low budget (like a Kindle or a Kobo).
Aubrey
On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 1:16 PM, Craig Franklin < cfranklin@halonetwork.net> wrote:
Hi John,
What sort of cost are we looking at to buy some nifty gadget as a prize? Is it something that could be done through our Volunteer Support Programme?
Cheers, Craig Franklin President - Wikimedia Australia
On 1 November 2013 16:55, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
> Great concept. > > I think this would a great little project, and worth the expense for > the WMAu chapter. > > I helped run a small wikisource competition with Wikimedia Indonesia > (esp. Ivonne & Siska) to transcribe a 550 page dictionary, and found it to > be very successful, but does require quite a bit of time to run and help > newbies. > > Ill write up a proposal if another WMAu member is willing to second > and help organise the competition in Oz. > > -- > John > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: "David Cuenca" dacuetu@gmail.com > Date: Oct 31, 2013 10:09 PM > Subject: [Wikisource-l] Wikisource 10th aniversary proposal : > Proofreading contest > To: "discussion list for Wikisource, the free library" < > wikisource-l@lists.wikimedia.org> > Cc: > > Talking with some members of Amical Wikimedia about how to celebrate > the 10th aniversary, one of the proposals was to organize a proofreading > contest. > > Basically, we would select some books for the participants to > proofread and validate and they would gather points for each page without > errors. The person with the most points would win a Kindle donated by > Amical Wikimedia. > > However, we have been thinking that with the help of some members of > the Wikisource User Group and other Chapters, then we could escalate it to > an international proofreading contest, instead of being just regional. I > guess ideally we would need 3 kindles and at least a volunteer from each > community to organize it. > > What do you think of the idea? Would you or any chapter that would > like to get involved? > > Micru > > _______________________________________________ > Wikisource-l mailing list > Wikisource-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikisource-l mailing list > Wikisource-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l > >
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