How about creating a Club 200 and a Club 500?

Question

Looks like a Club 200 and a Club 500 would motivate a lot of people to make more contributions.  Why not do it?

Comments

When I am sourcing profiles I often make six or eight corrections, deleting Gedcom lists of names, expanding location abreviations, adding dates, typos, etc., plus the new source.   I don't feel motivated to save after each action and only fill in the save for once at the end.  Maybe if there was some way for each action to be counted individually it would encourage more contributors.  I personally don't care how many contribution points I have.

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Great idea! If it motivates more people contributing, I'm all for it. I imagine it would be easy to see if it increased participation.

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Hi Gillby, I've added this to the list of suggestions.

Answer 1

I'm all for motivating the membership. However, it isn't that hard to knock out 100 contributions in an hour or two if you use the search tools provided by Wikitree.

To accomplish this, just go to the unsourced profile list & start researching.

Answer 2

I think Gillby means for those of us who can easily get the 100 badge but end up often between 100 and 900 and struggling to make the 1000 quality contributions in a month to get the 1000 badge.

 

I think it would be great to have a half way 500 badge, because some most months it is a bit of a push to get to the 1000 in time!

Answer 3

I would rather see quality than quantity rewarded, but how to measure it?

Comments

Quality is its own reward ;-)

Answer 4

I consider the Club 100 and Club 1000 badges to be geared more for new users to WikiTree, much like a progress tracker.

As Juha Soini mentioned, we should be more dedicated to quality profiles and contributions, rather than quantity. For instance, if a user adds 5 profiles (or modifies 5 profiles) to WikiTree and they are heavily sourced with a great biography and images, I see that as being much more valuable to WikiTree as a whole rather than a new user dumping in 100 profiles that are unsourced and contain no meaningful information in the text.

So while your suggestion for a Club 200 and Club 500 may motivate newer members to participate more or encourage new membership to the site as Doug Lockwood mentioned, is this really the type of motivation that we are looking for? And where would this stop? If we are adding Club 200 and Club 500, why not also make Club 300, Club 400, Club 600, etc.

Answer 5

I see far too many "contributions that are just clicking on the certainty buttons and adding categories but not adding any sources so I would rather see a quality badge and not just a contribution badge, as Doug points out it is very easy to get the 100 or 1000 badge if that is your only goal.

Comments

I agree with this answer. slow Quality over racing Quantity.

Answer 6

It should be "Club 500" and "Club !000". 500 in a month shows a lot of hard work, and for an active wikitreer it is usually what you hit 500-800 in a month. Not gonna lie if your researching hard and not just data doctoring, then 1000 in a month is a bit steep and time consuming XD.

Answer 7

I too would like to see a 500 badge added. I used to be able to obtain 1,000 but it was with a lot of time dedicated to doing things like correcting errors from the suggestions report etc.  

But as others have mentioned, when you are working with various projects that require creation of a profile other then someone you are directly related to, then a lot of research time is needed and slows down the speed once had by just doing errors etc or things more familar with like one's own ancestry history. Or trying to connect profiles to the overall WikiTree which means creating profiles of missing family members of other member's ancestry. And also integrating profiles with G2G questions takes a bit of time and creation of new profiles required. 

I too get stuck between 500 and 800 and can't make 1,000 mark any more as quickly as I used too. Maybe I am just getting older!!

Answer 8

> it isn't that hard to knock out 100 contributions in an hour or two

Doug, I really respect you, and all the work you've done here (your point total is ... astronomical!), but I have to say I found the sentence above to be really really disheartening.  It generally takes me several hours to complete one contribution.  And after a final preview then save and I discover I still forgot a typo, I feel guilty that that quick typo fix should even count as a contribution.  To see that others can run up their totals ("100 in an hour or two") just feels ... just feels wrong, almost like cheating.  Juha is right, quality should count for something, over quantity.  Since I began, I've only gotten 5 100's, and barely made them.  A 200 badge seems unreachable, especially for those of us that work for a living.  So I've been thinking about ideas, hopefully easy enough for our developers, but better reward effort, time, and hard work.

Each idea starts by counting one contribution for the save, as normally done now, then adds bonus contributions for one or more augmentations to the profile.  (These are different ideas, probably only pick one or two)

• Counting keystrokes - add one contribution per N keystrokes added (the difference in character count between entering Edit mode and saving the profile)
• Tracking time - add one contribution per N minutes (between entering Edit to clicking Save); may not be very representative, as it gives credit for taking breaks; harder to game the system though because it takes time for each bonus point
• Counting ref's - add one contribution for each added ref; this is a good way to encourage sourcing
• Counting paragraphs - add one (or N/3?) contributions for each added paragraph (line beginning with a character in first position of line, perhaps single asterisk or single colon?); this rewards both adding sources and adding content (but how not to over-reward someone quoting a story by copying it in)

One question would be how to reward a new profile, don't want to give bonuses for default verbiage.  At the same time, a lengthy and well sourced new profile should count more than a brief unsourced new profile.

Answer 9

We all work at different speeds. Age or disability may make us slow.  Also, we all have other demands in our lives that limit the time we have for genealogy. For many Club 100 will be a nice reward for an active month. The jump to Club 1000 is enormous. For many people it will always be unobtainable. For them there is nothing beyond Club 100. It can actually be quite disappointing to have worked many hard hours making over 500 changes to only have 100 acknowledged. Quality is, of course our aim. Badges are certainly not the goal but they do give a sense of reward for effort and therefore motivate. I would very much like to see a Club 500 badge introduced for all those of us who are never likely to make 1000 (at least not without a big drop in quality).

Comments

I guess it's too expensive to sew those higher badges.  On the other hand many of the slaves are revolting and not proceeding beyond the basic 100 since there is no incentive to do so.  I could easily do 200.

Answer 10

Idea Gloriosa !!