Reward merits

I think we all agree that we don't just need any new editors, but subject matter experts and good writers like Spinningspark's sister. Such people don't just participate because they are attracted by the concept of an encyclopedia anyone can edit, at least not anymore, now that the novelty has rubbed off. As Xiong wrote in his excellent, albeit cynical, note: "Those of us who wanted a society based on merit are disappointed." It would be unrealistic to ask for a whole new society, but we should think about the role of merit in our project.

We have barnstars and related rewards, which work as a merit system to some extent, but they have a number of shortcomings: They are generally awarded by individual editors, not by the community, which encourages favoritism, which in turn takes away from their trustworthiness and thus decreases their value to the awarded editor. Barnstars in themselves don't empower users. They may impress some other editors, but they have no effect whatsoever on exactly the worst kind of editors: Those who only care about their own opinion. Every editor constantly runs into these troublemakers, and we react differently: Some try patience, some try to use authority (such as WP rules) or intimidation or other forms of aggression. Of these, patience takes enormous amounts of time away from editing, and ultimately the motivation to keep contributing. I've seen this happen to some of the best editors. WP rules have been discussed elsewhere on this website, such as here, but that discussion is inconclusive with regard to "Resolution: Openness". One thing we can say for sure is that a situation where everyone has to fend for themselves, and where good editors regularly feel the need to assert their status is not good for any community.

Another system that can be seen as a merit system is that of administrator and similar roles and rights. Once a person is an administrator, there is practically no risk of losing that role. Unchecked power can corrupt and lead to groupthink, as in the incident I mentioned in my RfA[1]. Some non-admins react to that by condemning all admins, lock, stock and barrel, or at least by insisting that admins have no more say than non-admins, which undermines the admins' ability to intervene in conflicts. More sensitive editors react by retiring. Neither is good for the community.

In conclusion, I believe that any community project can only deliver results effectively if it has a relevant, functional, and trusted merit system. I don't have a concrete idea for that, but I hope that can emerge from this strategy discussion website. SebastianHelm 21:30, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

See this recommendation for some thoughts on that matter. - Brya 06:26, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. That proposal is unfortunately very vague, and almost describes what we already have, apart from the demand for more teeth. I don't see much use in the distinction between "not be a mere matter of popularity, but a proven track record should be there"; that is already taken into account in current RfAs. (Mike seems to raise this point below, and I will respond to that there.) SebastianHelm 02:26, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

It does not describe what we have, it describes something that does not exist, and, yes, the details have not been filled in (that would be premature). The basic problem is, firstly, that it can be gamed (becoming a popularity contest), and, secondly, that Wikipedia users tend to hate anything that smacks of authority. I suppose it could be made to work, but it will be a time-consuming process. - Brya 06:04, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

More than a novel idea. Incentives for your workforce must be aligned with your strategy. If they are not, people may be motitvated to execute tactics that are completely detremental to strategic success. They may execute those tactics brilliantly and be rewarded for doing so, but because they are not aligned with the strategy, they contribute nothing to strategic success.

For discussion sake, if one does view Administrator tools as a merit reward, then our RFA process should 100% aligned with our strategic goals. In other words, how well has the candidate contributed to the advancement of those goals--expansion of content, improvement of quality and diverse contributor growth. Today, our RFA criteria is so ill-defined, ad-hoc and whimsical that almost any reasonable behavior will succeed, and any marginal behavior (even if it is furthering strategic goals) will cause no end of angst. I suspect there are a great many Rewards in the WP realm that reward behavior that IS NOT aligned with the overall strategic goals of the project.

In any strategic endeavor, workforce incentives must be aligned with the strategy for strategic success.

I generally agree with your post. I don't agree with the demand for "100% align[ment]" with WP's goals, because I think it is illusory to believe that anything humans do could be 100% free of self interest, and I for one wouldn't want to be part of such a totalitarian system, but I agree that improving that alignment would be worthwhile. However, that seems to be the subject for a different topic.

More to the point of this discussion is the question to which degree adminship is perceived as a merit reward. What interests me even more than the average perception is the variance, because I think part of the problem is that the perception is very different from editor to editor. If an admin who believes (even subconsciously) that adminship is a merit reward clashes with a non-admin who believes it isn't, there is conflict in the air. (I am speaking from my own experience; I learned that the hard way when I was closing "articles for deletion" discussions.) This is another area where people's understanding needs to be aligned. SebastianHelm 03:19, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe I was advocating that the WP community demand 100% alignment, but rather that the community should recognize that failure to align incentives (even percieved ones) with strategic goals has consequences. Aligning 1000s of volunteers so that their tactical actions are consistent with and do not impede strategic goals is difficult as best. That said, if basic processes such as RFA, Deletion, Dispute resolution, etc. are not designed to function with strategic goals in mind, then strategic alignment is near impossible. As a community, our processes must be aligned with all our strategic goals in a harmonizing manner and as a community, we must accept the fact that what might seem to be a perfectly acceptable tactic actually impedes overall strategic progress. Even the activity and discussion that would be necessary to harmonize community processes with strategic goals would in itself be an aligning activity. My overall point being that our strategy should be driving our tactics and that our incentives, whatever they may be, must be aligned with that stategy.

Yes, good point. - Brya 05:51, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Just a small comment on the idea that there is no risk of admins losing their role; On commons they lost half their admins by introducing a policy of desysopping any admin who fails to do two admin actions every 6 months; Whilst on EN wiki we have a desysop rate of 1% of active admins per year - pretty high in my view. WereSpielChequers 15:44, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that 1% is higher than I had assumed, if that was for misconduct. If it was for inactivity, then it would be rather low. But inactivity as a ground for desysopping hadn't even occurred to me. Would you have links to the background for both?

I pray to disagree that without merit system the project is doomed or suffer. Please allow me to draw a comparison with the open source/free software movement.

If you disregard all socialist and hippy proclamations, in a nutshell the goal was extremely selfish: people didn't want to spend huge bucks on software. You either buy or steal or write it yourself. Pretty quickly it became very clear that if you write a program and I write a program and both give theirs away, pretty soon you have 1000x good stuff compared with your own coding efforts. The next step, to coordinate the development is trivial for engineers. Of course, along the road some made a really big buck off the common good (like RedHat and others), but overall all contributors were gratified, and the gratification of the rest was but a byproduct. (Sorry, I don't believe in pure altruism on big scale. Like, Donations are tax-deductible and good for PR :-)

In exactly the same way I am looking at wikipedia: The only gratification I seek is that the whole project is useful for me. Someone wrote something I found useful for my research. To keep this person doing this I wrote something that might be useful for his girlfriend. And this is how it works. Of course, some people have other goals in mind, like promoting their business or political or scientific agenda, etc., but all these spurious (ab)uses of wikipedia are well recognized and fought with. And there are people who have a knack and will to fight the abusers, just as there are people who want to be left alone and just write, write, write.

I see an repeated opinion that facebook and twitter drew many editors off wikipedia. I say good riddance. I've seen plenty of editors whose 80% of editing was socializing, exchanging barnstars, creating userboxes, playing chess and whatsnot. I suspect that it was these who drifted away to facebooks.

Concluding my rant, a Wikipedia's mission must be to retain editors who want to freely give and take knowledge, with no additional strings attached. I have an impression this was so from the very beginning, and I hope this will continue, without any carrot or stick.

Well, people are motivated differently. I agree with you that some people won't need anything more than the satisfaction to see something they wrote help others, and it appears you're one of them. Good for you! Maybe you're right that we should focus more on helping such people. So, what do you feel would be needed to keep people like you? (Please don't describe it here, just link to it, since I'd like to stick to the topic of this thread.)

For me, motivation depends more on the interaction I have with others. I'm not much of a writer, but I think I have been helpful in other areas, such as organizing categories and templates and as a mediator and admin.

But this thread is not just about how people like you or I feel. It is about empowering everybody to help with what they're good at. Ultimately, all of us depend on respect from others. If your edit gets reverted by someone who rather thinks he's right than taking the time to understand others, then it will come at a cost, regardless how you feel about it, because it will take your precious time away from what you're good at. Now, if we had an institutionalized form of empowerment that gives you some authority especially over such thoughtless editors, that would help both you and Wikipedia, wouldn't it?

satisfaction to see something they wrote help others, and it appears you're one of them

Sorry, I was too verbose and probably not clear enough. I don't write something to help others; more precisely, writing to help others is not my goal. My goal was to help myself, by taking part in creation of an infoportal from which I tap various knowledge. Like, today I had a fun to learn from wikipedia that "Mi cucu" is "My toot-toot" from 1985. For me, writing wikipedia is like paying taxes, only voluntarily.

"reverting", "empowerment":

unfortunately this is tough. I am sure you don't think that you are alone who is unhappy with this. But a simple and clean-cut solution is not found yet.

Thanks for the clarification. I see the difference you are making; it's really amazing how differently people are motivated - I think one of the main reasons for failure of organizations is that well meaning people assume everyone is motivated by the same things as they are. So, if I understand you correctly, you're saying while it may be nice to have some solution, it doesn't really make a big difference for you, because you feel you can do your part regardless. Correct?

You are right that finding a solution is tough, especially one that's fair. We could have readers vote on how helpful contributions are, but that only works in systems that prevent sockpuppet and map contributions to individual editors, which both isn't the case for us.

I do think we should be looking for such a solution. Any organization that doesn't work hard to connect their work with their clients' expectation will fail in the long run. That wasn't much of a problem for us in the past when a significant portion or our readers also joined in the editing. But the proportion of editors is shrinking, and readers are increasingly asked to contribute by donations instead. Which leads me to money, our most common (and often misused and and abused) reward system. I think we should openly discuss all these options.

I'm not regularly here, so to anyone who would like to continue the discussion, please alert me at en:user talk:SebastianHelm. Thanks!