Microgrants/Core Contest (prizes)

Overview

• An amount of money for vouchers as prizes for a three week contest in early January outlined here. The idea is that there would be (say) a £75 voucher for first prize, £50 for second, and £25 for a number of "honorable mentions". Vouchers could be for some worldwide digital organisation, such as Amazon, I-tunes or something similar. Amazon is probably the easiest.

Budget

• See above - I guess it depends - £250 would give me a first, second and five "honourable mentions" as outlined above. The rationale for using vouchers is to distance the idea from paid editing.

Timeline

• Three weeks in January. All done by early february.

Expected outcomes

• Hopefully some improvement in core/broad/vital articles on the English wikipedia, much of which needs a good buffing.

Who I am

• I am Casliber on english wiki, and admin, arb and content editor, and very familiar with content in mainspace, which is why I am thinking this is a good idea.

Discussion

I think this is an excellent idea myself, but I will wait for the board's opinions on whether or not we should fund this. If people are concerned about the 'monetary' aspect, bear in mind that this in in the form of book vouchers, and that the money spent is in line with our objectives. We could potentially give donations in kind instead, for example, tickets to exhibitions, or other incentives. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry 02:25, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I feel that users should not be incentive's with money that can be spent for anything, instead we should help support education. I feel that maybe some sort of small scholarship should be given instead or some sort of grant for books (maybe a gift card to a book store?) Thoughts, questions, concerns? Peter.C 03:22, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

This sounds like a great idea to me; going for book vouchers sounds like the best option (Amazon, or possibly National Book Tokens); iTunes doesn't really sound appropriate. We haven't funded something like this through microgrants before, and I know that other people have useful viewpoints about this, so I'm not going to approve it just yet - we can decide in a few days time.

BTW - from what I've heard about the last core topics competition, the stumbling-block was judging at the end of the competition, since it's rather complex (and a bit subjective). That's just something to think about, rather than a blocker here, though. Mike Peel 08:20, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I would like to hear a bit more about how this can be structured to recognize good collaboration rather than just the person who made the most edits. I am also cautious about prizes that are only available for :en rather than recognizing other languages such as Welsh or Scots. A form of prize more neutral than Amazon or iTunes vouchers might be a good idea. -- Fae

I think we need to be relatively cautious about providing competition prizes. There is a risk that if we start doing so, we set a precedent that could scale badly and end up with lots and lots of different Wikimedia UK-supported competitions going on on-wiki, some of which attract virtually no entries and basically result in giving editors cash for articles they might have written anyway. We have used competitions with prizes as incentives before though generally as part of a wider collaboration, and I think that well-designed competitions are a good use of our funds and meet our objectives very well. However, prizes in themselves are only part of what appears to make a successful competition. Wikipedians love recognition, not just Amazon vouchers. So before we agree to this microgrant (or other microgrants of a similar nature) I would prefer to see the competition fleshed out rather more. In particular;

• The criteria by which the prizes will be awarded
• Defined circumstances under which no prizes will be awarded (e.g. if the competition attracts less than 10 entries)
• The (wiki) names of the judges
• A plan to publicise the competition

Regards, The Land 14:42, 3 December 2011 (UTC) (Wikimedia UK trustee)

I think there is a special case here in that the articles are 'core/broad/vital', which are the articles that people don't tend to be interested in getting to a high quality (it's much easier to get a FA on a small topic than a very broad one), but they are very important and accessed by a huge number of people each month. If we were providing prizes for articles on a specific topic, then I would be a lot more worried about this. Mike Peel 15:34, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Good points all - so yes I agree that the prizes have to be vouchers or something (to distance from cash/paid editing). Amazon came to mind as it is (a) literary (one can by a huge range of books, hence the reader can get something they really want...as long as it is a book - it trumps i-tunes here for appropriateness) and (b) world wide. I think collaboration is good and I was tossing up with the idea of sharing prizes for a two- or more-editor collaboration. Regarding recognition, the wikilove templates makes that an easy task, and I've been creative in giving awards out in the past. For instance, see here

Regarding judges, I am musing on the pool of editors that I know and there are several who are intimately familiar with the development of articles from stub to FA and are canny at gauging where an article is on the development treadmill. I can get a group of three or four together (me included) and we'll be pretty good at figuring out which article has made the biggest improvement. Publicity will take place in the signpost and centralised discussion template over three weeks or so, followed by the competition itself. This is a trial really to see what improvement in core material develops. It is short enough and the reward small enough to be taken in a spirit of fun and hopefully no-one will get too serious about it. I'll post some more competition criteria at the contest page itself presently Casliber 13:06, 4 December 2011 (UTC)