Forum:A second look at wiki achivements

We — and by that, I mean me included — have been cool to implementing wiki achievements, a system whereby people get little rewards when they complete certain tasks on the wiki. As was pointed out in the succinct, but determinative wiki achievements discussion about a year ago, they were thought of as clutter, and a system that could be easily "gamed", or cheated.

The proposal
However, Ausir has informed me that they've made a tremendous improvement in the volume of traffic at his primary wiki, w:c:fallout. And, indeed, w:c:fallout is usually ranked as the busiest wiki in the gaming division.

We've lost a lot of our volume of traffic over the summer. Most weeks of July and August, we've not even broken the top 10 in our division. It should be a goal of ours to remain in the top 10 entertainment wikis year round — not just when DW is transmitting new episodes.

I'd therefore like to propose a "beta test" for the feature here at Tardis. I think we should switch it on now, just as we approach the return of Doctor Who for the second half of the series. Then we see if it attracts and retains new users.

If no one has any objections, I'd like to turn it on in 72 hours — that is, roughly Thursday (Friday, if you're over the dateline from North America) so that I have time to "skin" the badges so they look appropriate to our wiki. The default badges are dead ugly. 16:54:40 Mon 22 Aug 2011

Discussion
If it helps people keep this wiki in shape, then go ahead. It might give self importance to some users, maybe, but it could be used to keep the editors motivated. -- Tybort (talk page) 17:06, August 22, 2011 (UTC)

If you think being in the top ten is worth suffering such a gimmicky feature, go for it. Personally, I don't think being in the top ten wikis is of any importance whatsoever. It's not a competition after all, despite what these "achievements" say.-- 17:12, August 22, 2011 (UTC)
 * I hear ya. I don't think that being in the top 10 is important for its own sake.  The reason that it has some relevance is that it gives us free advertisement.  It means that we're on the front page of the entertainment section.  So, somebody coming to wikia for the very first time might see us there.  I personally don't care whether we're first or 240th, but I do care about our profile being high enough that we're easy to find.   19:30:42 Mon 22 Aug 2011

Sounds like its worth a try, I can't see any reason for it not to be a useful feature. --Revan\Talk 17:13, August 22, 2011 (UTC)

I think it's worth a try, but with a trial period. My jaundiced view is that we may wind up with people competing on sheer volume. As someone who views himself as sweeping up around here, I am concerned about the sheer volume of poor changes that might result. I am likely anticipating trouble, so give it a try..... but be ready to turn it off. Boblipton 17:31, August 22, 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh i very much share the concern that this might lead to a stream of "garbage" revisions. However, we do have the ability to determine the nature of the badges awarded.  I won't be able to say exactly how flexible the customisation is until we turn it on, but I think we will be able to target things better than just "total number of edits". From what I've seen of the menus in screenshots, thoguh, it looks quite flexible. And if we find people trying to game our award tracks, we can just block that person and they're outta the game entirely.  When a person is blocked, they lose their badges.   19:30:42 Mon 22 Aug 2011

The only things that are customisable are the icons and achievement titles. For example, we would be stuck with "Add 500 images to pages", but you would be able to change the name from "Curator" and the image of a painting to something a bit more DWU. At least on the surface these are the limits, I have no idea if you can do some magic via CSS.-- 19:49, August 22, 2011 (UTC)


 * After actually checking what the hell I'm talking about, I've found that you can actually create articles around edits to a specific category. For example, you could create a series of achievements rewarded for editing the articles in Category:European nations. This gives you the likes of "make 100 edits to European nations pages". The individual achievements still remain unalterable though.-- 19:59, August 22, 2011 (UTC)