[WikiEN-l] Could we use a chore wheel?

[William Pietri]

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



-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri