User:Scott5114/A rebuttal to "The straight truth about WikiWork"

This is a rebuttal to User:TwinsMetsFan's essay entitled "The straight truth about WikiWork". The WikiWork statistics are a set of statistics intended to provide metrics about how a WikiProject is faring. I created and introduced the statistics on March 31, 2007. Since then, they have become a major motivational tool for editors of the project.

Formation of a new statistic
Contrary to TwinsMetsFan's account, the ω (its proper title from the beginning, usually ASCIIfied as "total wikiwork") and Ω ("relative WikiWork" or "rel") were both introduced in the same night. The statistics were invented because there was a widespread feeling of inadequacy throughout the project following the introduction of WP:1.0 assessment stats to the project.

The elevation of an article to Featured Article status is the point at which an article is considered "finished". This is a major goal for many Wikipedians, so I used it as the goal for the statistic: having all articles featured would mean that $$\omega = 0$$. Obviously this in an unattainable goal for most WikiProjects, which cover very wide topics with a large number of articles. However, it satisfied the need of showing progress being made. I had a spreadsheet that I put the numbers into, calculated the formula (which assigned an ascending number of points to each class on the assessment scale), and the number it spit out was $$\omega = 29009$$. Naturally, however, this number has no meaning without something to compare it to, so I worked out the numbers of another WikiProject, WP:TROP, and found their numbers wildly divergent.

Therefore, I devised the second metric, which became Ω, to even out the disparity between the scope of the two projects. At the time of writing, USRD has 9681 articles, while TROP only covers 1028 articles. Obviously, the ω of these two projects would be extremely different due to the sheer magnitude of USRD. Thus, the relative WikiWork stat was devised to show what the average article was assessed as. These results were just as alarming — TROP's articles were on average a whole class better than USRD's. I showed my findings and the WikiWork formulas with the project via the IRC channel, which concerned many of the participants. Regular calculations were soon being made as their values convinced USRD members that work needed to be done.

Thus, the very nature of the WikiWork system, as it was designed, is to not only to provide an idea of how much work needs to be done (ω), but also how the project compares to others (Ω). This latter statistic is necessary to provide an idea of whether a project is in "good standing" quality-wise or not.

By state
The state-by-state statistics and table were created mainly due to the difficulty in seeing how a state alone is making progress. The table itself has never been updated on any regular interval simply because of the amount of work needed to do it manually, and also due to the sometimes irregular intervals at which the assessment bot produces the source statistics.

The leaderboard also served as a motivational tool because some editors were eager to improve their state's standing on the chart. The friendly competition provided an impetus to improving the articles in their state of interest. Some editors have a sense of pride about the higher standing they have earned through their work; at all times this has been kept on friendly terms and has not caused strife among those who have participated. The only problems the statistics have engendered can be directly traced to users who do not use the statistics, consider them a "game", and view them and the editors that find them as is beneath themselves. Such users attempt to disrupt or abolish the statistics, which is the direct cause of whatever drama that is related to them.

Users deliberately avoiding tagging an article out of a concern for their statistics shall be smacked in the head with a trout.

Disparity between states
One of the points that TwinsMetsFan makes in his essay is that a lot of states have improved and thus improved their position on the leaderboard, but other states with no active editors have been "left in the dust". He believes this is due to the desire of some editors to improve their state's articles first and thus raise their standing. I find this argument to be an overly simplistic explanation of the subject, and to provide a counterpoint, highlight my own editing experiences.

I lived in Oklahoma from 1990 to 2007. As a result, I became familiar with its highway system first, and when I discovered there were other road enthusiasts out there, naturally read up on Oklahoma highways first. Pretty soon I knew the system well enough that I associated the numbers with certain areas of the state, 2 with "the east", 5 with "the southwest", 94 with "the Panhandle". And thus whenever I started writing articles on Wikipedia, Oklahoma's road articles were written first. At the time, around 3 Oklahoma articles had been assessed as B-Class. After the by-state statistics were introduced, I was embarrassed to see that my 3 B-Class articles, which I had been moderately happy about, paled in comparison to New York's 100+ B-Class articles. I soon set out to expand more Oklahoma articles to B-Class.

In August 2007, I moved to Missouri for college. Missouri is a state with poor statistics compared to other states. However, I didn't transition to Missouri editing at the time of my move. Why? It's not because I didn't care about Missouri's articles...I do, and I did do a little bit of work, like replacing some shields with SVGs and even expanding Missouri Route 73 to B, and adding jctlists to a few articles. However, I soon returned to editing Oklahoma articles, because 1) I knew the subject better 2) I knew where the sources were and where to access them. Also, Oklahoma has better sources available.

I believe this explains why Nevada and Florida are at the bottom of the WikiWork leaderboard. The reason random editors don't go and improve Nevada articles are because they have no background knowledge about those articles and thus have no interest in editing them. Even if they did, it's often a chore to discover sources for them. Contrast this to editing a familiar state, where an editor has outside knowledge to start them off and known sources to turn to. This is a maxim that applies sitewide, and explains why we're all here editing road articles as opposed to biographies of George Washington, or why people write about Pokémon instead of string theory.

The point of editing?
The question that is raised at the end of the essay is "do the statistics interfere with our goal on Wikipedia?" I say no. The goal of Wikipedia is to create a well-referenced, accurate encyclopedia. As long as we're expanding articles, adding references, and enforcing WP:NPOV, does it matter what tools we use to motivate ourselves to keep slugging on? Why does it matter if we keep track of our project's progress numerically? Is it really better to feel as if we're not getting anywhere because we have no way to tell where we are, and where we have been? The answers to these questions should be "no", "it doesn't", and "no", because there is overwhelming evidence to support the position that WikiWork benefits the project and very little on the other side, aside from vague accusations of being a role-playing game and causing discussions that would have necessarily occurred anyway. The problems that USRD has are due to problems between individual editors, their egos, and their personalities. It's not due to a few numbers in a table, and those who believe that it is are ignoring the larger issue at hand here.