Wikipedia talk:Reward board/Archive 2

Monetary reward: Proposals for corporate Pro bono work within Wikipedia
Hi everyone. I posted a monetary reward for proposals for corporate Pro bono work within Wikipedia. Please feel free to add any questions or comments here. Thanks! Eclipsed  (talk)   (code of ethics)     18:25, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Time to archive?
Time to archive the expired/fulfilled requests? GoingBatty (talk) 20:49, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I recently cleared them. I usually go through them every few months. This page is rather small as it is (for a page of this type). Griffinofwales (talk) Simple English Wikipedia - Come and join! 14:19, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

RB order
The RB used to list the most recent requests at the top. I thought this worked well as regulars who check this would want to see what's new quickly. I see that the order has now changed, with new entries going to the bottom. Any reason for this change, and more importantly, would this be of any advantage over the old system? Just wondering what the thinking was behind the change. Cheers. – SMasters (talk) 05:17, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I made the change based on the thought that it would be easier to see what will be expiring soonest. I figured that there would be more people that occasionally check for something to do, rather than regulars seeing what has been added. It can be changed back, but IMO this way makes more sense. MrKIA11 (talk) 05:29, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * My problem with this is that now, we have requests from a year ago, all on the top. What if someone sets an expiry date of 1 year and keeps "renewing" their entry, as is the case with C++ GA/DYK, which is from 2009. They will be there on the top forever. I personally think new entries on the top makes more sense. Very old entries will then fall to the bottom naturally. My 2 cents. – SMasters (talk) 06:27, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * In your scenario, once that request is renewed for another year, it's expiration will now be the furthest away, and therefore will go to the bottom of the list. I think the misunderstanding is that they are not in order of offer date, but rather in order of expiration date, which I made a little clearer a little bit ago. MrKIA11 (talk) 06:42, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, this makes a lot more sense. – SMasters (talk) 06:53, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Five years later
Five years after this was launched, what has it achieved? The WP:Bounty board appears to have only resulted in four successful results, and USD $215 being given to the WMF. (See Wikipedia_talk:Bounty_board) I think these two boards are a failure, and I've recommended that they be marked historical at Requests for comment/COI. John Vandenberg (chat) 22:21, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

monetary rewards
Considering the current deluge of paid editing at WP, and its generally non-constructive nature, to have the possibility of offering monetary rewards be a part of an official WP process seem hypocritical. It's fortunately rarely used, and I think should be considered obsolete: the most recent monetary offer was in 2010  and the last one actually awarded was in 2008. I propose modifying the lede paragraph so the last sentence reads as follows
 * the reward can be goods of a relatively small monetary value, barnstars and similar in-wiki awards, or reciprocal editing assistance (like improving another article). If a monetary award is offered, it should be as a gift to the WP Foundation. And then we'd combine the Bounty board with this, as they'd no longer have a separate purpose. I'd suggest doing it as a MfD on the Bounty Board after we've made the change here. Alternatively, if anyone wants to set it up as a requested merge, that's another possibility.  DGG ( talk ) 05:35, 26 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Is there a policy which actually prohibits editors from giving each other cash rewards for improving articles? bobrayner (talk) 12:44, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
 * That shut him up, Bob. Good call. - 2001:558:1400:10:34D0:2421:97D8:C7F7 (talk) 20:21, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Creating a Kickstarter Campaign?
Would it be possible to create a Kickstarter campaign to massively improve Wikipedia? I'm thinking that there can be a page for the campaign (perhaps this page), where Wikipedians generate a consensus on a list of articles that need improvement. Editors would be paid by the word for articles that are brought up to featured article status. As long as the list and the people who decide on featured status are not paid. I think that such a campaign could give Wikipedia a shot in the arm, but there is also the concern that it will take away from the volunteer nature of wikipedia. I personally feel that a consensus can be reached on a procedure that balances things. This is something that I personally can't commit to now, but I can in the future. In the meantime, it would be good to throw the idea around and see where it stands. What do you think? NittyG (talk)
 * I appreciate the good intent, but:
 * The wikipedia community tends to be very wary of paid editing - although, personally, I'd happily consider some kind of independent campaign to pay people to fix weak spots that we haven't fixed ourselves, as opposed to paid PR people making their clients look good.
 * The volume of work is very large; countless thousands of people work on en.wikipedia for free. Compare that to any realistically achievable Kickstarter funding, and... folk would be working for a thousandth of a cent per word.
 * Those are my principles; if you don't like them, I have others. bobrayner (talk) 00:56, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Interesting. Yes, I don't see why it can't be independent. That's the beauty of open knowledge and editing (provided you follow the rules). I think that you'd want to involve the Wikimedia Foundation as much as possible though, either under their umbrella or in partnership.
 * I think that you can get a lot from kickstarter if you design and market it well. I also think that it would be good to have kickstarters or pledges for more specific projects - like articles on places and politics in Africa or Indian philosophy, which are dismal. I think it might also make sense to line up editors that will pledge to write articles in advance, before a kicksarter is launched.
 * I imagine many wikipedians being something like starving artists, and an opportunity to get some income from writing wikipedia articles would jump at the opportunity. I know, because I was once one of those people. Featured articles seem to range from 3500-9000 words and perhaps average at 7000. While a typical blog post rate might be $500 for 5000 words, I think that we can go much lower than this, like maybe somewhere between $50-100 on average (if that sounds too high or too low, let me know). I'm not sure if it's a good idea to pay by the word though... this will invite people cheating or the perception of it, where people delete words and simply write the same thing in different words, whether that is legitimate or not in a particular situation. People should be paid by the article (which can vary depending on the subject), the word count is just a good reference. The thing is, it's general knowledge, doesn't require incredibly creative writing, and there are people who are able and willing to readily write on those topics. Someone could write a featured article in 1-2 eight hour days. I think that we can achieve featured article status for tens of thousands of articles for a few million bucks. You could raise that much money in piecemeal campaigns, perhaps focusing on certain areas for each campaign. This can be done from small donations alone. There are philanthropists who crap that much money, and they can be convinced that it would be worthwhile to finance the single most accessible knowledge resource on earth. I know that the Wikimedia Foundation struggles to raise money... but I think that if someone said "donate an amount of money to have someone deliver a X article/articles", it would be successful.
 * An interesting note on perspective - one could easily argue that Encyclopedia Britannica exceeds Wikipedia in its overall completeness of basic topics. Its most recent DVD had 55 million words and just over 100,000 articles, and the online version has over 120,000 articles. I'd estimate that the featured articles have maybe 5-10 million words.
 * NittyG (talk) 17:41, 27 May 2013 (UTC)