Team Fortress Wiki:Discussion/Wiki Cap

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Revision as of 23:11, 17 July 2011 by RJackson (talk | contribs) (Closing discussions... moving to votes to conclude them.)
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Bringing back this to life, we need to decide how to proceed on Wiki Cap distribution in the future.


A reminder of some now-established points:

  • Using a list and a scoring system is broken, leads to unproductively competitive behavior from users, and to over-reliance on it from staff
  • While distribution on a weekly basis seemed like a good idea to regulate the number of total Wiki Caps in existence, it had the side-effect of the community having the false expectation for it to happen without fail every week, and proved to be too slow at times, causing frustration
  • The English and Russian parts of the Wiki being complete, there has been an issue of people creating work for themselves in order to get more edits
  • The combination of these things turned the Wiki Cap into a standalone reason to edit, rather than a reward for doing so
  • The Wiki Cap guidelines need to be rewritten


Here are some solutions that have come up in order to address those issues:

  • Using a list and a scoring system is broken, leads to unproductively competitive behavior from users, and to over-reliance on it from staff
    • Pictogram tick.png Done: Delete the Wiki Cap candidates list, and stop using the Wiki Cap scoring script entirely
  • While distribution on a weekly basis seemed like a good idea to regulate the number of total Wiki Caps in existence, it had the side-effect of the community having the false expectation for it to happen without fail every week, and proved to be too slow at times, causing frustration
    • Pictogram tick.png Done: Dispel the notion that drops will happen every week; we did that by not giving anything on June 26th
    • The frequency to give it may be irregular now. However, getting everyone together in order to decide on distribution requires a generally-agreed-upon moment when people are there, which may vary over time in order to keep it irregular
    • Volume/rarity concerns should be disregarded; even if all editors with over 500 edits or so got a Wiki Cap, it would still be considered a rare item
  • The English and Russian parts of the Wiki being complete, there has been an issue of people creating work for themselves in order to get more edits
    • Pictogram tick.png Done The deletion of the list should help this, as edit count matters less now, and is less visible
  • The combination of these things turned the Wiki Cap into a standalone reason to edit, rather than a reward for doing so
    • This needs to be more emphasized into the Wiki Cap guidelines
    • Rewarding users based on other things than editing (e.g. outstanding community contribution, à la Shugo (item icons), Michael (highlander team), or Benjamoose (promo material, graphics, general awesomeness))
    • This should make the "bias towards IRC members" more widely accepted, since IRC is a great way to get involved in more community-related matters other than pure editing. However, it should never be completely mandatory to use it
  • The Wiki Cap guidelines need to be rewritten
    • This can only be done when all of the above is settled


The method most people were leaning towards as of the last discussion was to do it on a nominate-and-approve basis:

  • Staff members (or maybe regular contributions?) can nominate people and explain the reasons behind the nomination
  • The rest of the staff reviews the nomination and approves, or declines, explaining their decision in case of a "no".

Multiple questions arise:

  • When and where does this discussion happen?
  • Can regular contributors see it?
    • If yes, can they also nominate others?
  • Does an approval require unanimity? Does it require a threshold of "yes"'s? Does a nomination expire if nobody says anything?

Last point: Robin said, in the email in which he talked about wiki cap distribution, that we may run any changes past by him. This is such a change, so his opinion should be taken into account before making any decision final. — Wind 11:43, 3 July 2011 (PDT)


Edit as of July 6th: Reformatted to make it easier to answer. Each question has its own section.

Distribution process

Concensus or majority decides recipient?

Should recipients decided by a concensus or majority vote by the discussion attendees?

Pictogram comment.png Majority I'm going with majority here... I don't think any single attendee should be able to stop somebody receiving a cap if the rest of the attendees think that person deserves it. -User RJackson Signature Colon DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.png 16:11, 17 July 2011 (PDT)


IRC logs be visible?

Should the IRC logs of the discussion be public?

Pictogram tick.png Yes The ability for the community to review what we're saying, I think, will add a bit of pressure to make well informed decisions. -User RJackson Signature Colon DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.png 16:11, 17 July 2011 (PDT)

Invite trusted editors to the discussion?

Should trusted editors be able to partake in the discussion?

Pictogram tick.png Yes I think the more people partaking in the discussion would reduce the effects of any personal bias'/"friends of the admins". -User RJackson Signature Colon DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.png 16:11, 17 July 2011 (PDT)


Closed discussions

Discussions that are considered to have been completed will be moved here.