Project grants/GAN Treasure Hunt

Basic information

Project details

Good Article Nomination Treasure Hunt (GANTH)

Good Article Nomination Treasure Hunt (GANTH) is designed to promote reviewing on the English wikipedia.

Project start date (include month, day, and year)

TBA pending grant approval - hopefully late 2014 realistically will be after the conclusion of the GA Cup, which is scheduled to end in February or March 2015.

Project completion date (include month, day, and year)

One month after start date. The idea would be one calendar month (e.g. 1-31 October 2014, 1-30 November 2014 etc.)

Please describe the project in 1–2 sentences

5 x £50 Amazon voucher prizes are "hidden" in all good article reviews undertaken in a calendar month. The more good article nominations one reviews, the more chances one has to "find" a prize. (An alternative being considered is 10 x £25 vouchers.)

Amount requested

£250 (to be converted into 5 x £50 Amazon voucher prizes)

Project lead details

Are you an individual or an organisation?

Individual

Are you currently a member of Wikimedia UK?

No

Project lead name

Casimir Liber

Supporting member: KTC

Project lead username or email

Casliber on en.wikipedia

Project lead title (position), if any

Clever bloke that had the idea....

Project description

Please describe what the project will entail, in as much detail as you feel appropriate.

GAN Treasure Hunt lasts for a calendar month - during this time, every completed review that occurs wholly within this period is logged. At the end of the last day of the month, a list of all nominations that qualify is created. From the list, a random five entries are determined. We could make this a blind process - i.e. editor 1 (say, me) assigns a number to each entry, and another person (who doesn't know which entries are which numbers) generates five random numbers. The numbers are correlated with the entries, and the editors who reviewed these five entries then receive a £50 Amazon voucher each. Hey presto, one Treasure Hunt.

Thus, the more reviews and editor does, the more chance of winning. As part of the quality-checking process, judges will review the five winning nominations to ensure the reviewers did a proper job of assessing the articles by the GA criteria, rather than just a rubber-stamp pass or fail for ineligible reason. Both successful and unsuccessful nominations will be logged and have a chance of winning.

One option being considered to help novice reviewers is an "as a judge" type venue, where the judges can offer advice on what to look for or discuss in a GA review and its importance and/or relevance to GA criteria. The judges will not tell a reviewer whether to pass or fail an article, but assist them in looking at how they rate an article.

Goals and measures of success

Project goal

Please briefly describe what will be accomplished if the project is successful.

Project goal

On 16 August, there were 521 nominations listed and 444 waiting to be reviewed at the Good Article Nomination page. The backlog has slowly but steadily increased over the previous few years. Backlog reduction/elimination drives were initially successful but have made less of a dent in the backlog as the years have progressed. The idea is to use some prize/incentive to see if this makes a bigger dent in the backlog.

Measures of success

Please provide a list of measurable criteria that will be used to determine how successful the project is. You will need to report on the success of the project according to these measures after the project is completed.

Measures of success

A significant dent in the backlog. Getting down below 300 nominations in total by the contest's conclusion would be I think a good result, and 200 would be amazing.

Budget and resources

Project budget breakdown

As previous - £250 broken into £50 prizes.

Non-financial assistance requested

Might be best if one or two people in WMUK were the ones to determine which entries were the prize-winners.

Impact and benefits

How will this project support Wikimedia UK's Outcomes, charitable objects and vision, values and mission?

The review process is a necessary part of quality-control on wikipedia, and is under strain and lagging behind content creation. It is imperative that steps are taken to give reviewing a shove to assist in the further development of the 'pedia. I think clearing or significantly reducing a backlog will improve morale greatly as well.

Discussion

Thank you for your application. I have notified the Grants Committee to review and offer comments on what they think of the application. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 16:18, 4 September 2014 (BST)

Comments by CT Cooper

Thank you for your application. This seems like a great idea to me and clearly falls within our vision, values and mission of promoting high-quality educational content. My main points are as follows:

• The budget of £250 seems reasonable to me, but I do wonder if a £50 prize is a little excessive. Maybe reducing the prize to £25 and doubling the number of winners would make people feel they have a better chance of getting something and increase their incentive to participate. Another option would be to stretch this out to two months. In any case, I do understand that predicting people's behaviour can be very difficult.
• Where are the Amazon vouchers going to come from and what are the terms and conditions on their use? My main concern is what happens if a non-UK resident wins a voucher? Amazon doesn't operate everywhere, so a back-up prize might have to be considered for some situations.
• I myself use Amazon on occasion, but I am a little concerned about Wikimedia UK being seen as promoting them due to the various controversies they have been involved in, many of which are ongoing. Those of particular relevance to the UK are their alleged anti-competitive practices, workplace policies, and tax avoidance. No company is perfect and another option would be just to give people cash, though this also has its downsides.
• The process of determining the winners seems to have been well thought through. I'm not too concerned on who is selected to decide the winners and to determine if someone's reviewing work is worthy of a prize, as long as they are in good standing and the community sees them as impartial.

I look forward to hearing from you. CT Cooper · talk 21:29, 5 September 2014 (BST)

There is nothing stopping a winner from requesting vouchers from a different supplier if desired. Amazon have been used in the past as people are generally happy with receiving vouchers for them. To receive the prize, the winner contact the office with their desired Amazon site (e.g. the USA .com site rather than the UK one) and the email address they would like to receive the prize to, and we pay for it and it's sent over by Amazon automatically via email. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 23:15, 5 September 2014 (BST)

I see. I would suggest making clear in the competition documentation that alternative options on a request-by-request basis. Not every country has an Amazon site and we naturally want everyone to feel able to participate. CT Cooper · talk 09:42, 6 September 2014 (BST)

(belatedly) - sorry folks, I missed this as have been distracted elsewhere. Furthermore, some editors have tried an alternate process - the GA Cup ([1]), so I feel it best to put this on ice until after its conclusion and discussion of impact/success.

But in answer of queries above - I do like the idea of 10 x £25 vouchers as well and can see the rationale - i.e. spreading the goodwill and maximising enjoyment/fun. Regarding vouchers themselves, this was an idea from early on that has been successfully used in the Core Contest (4 runnings) and Stub Contest (2 runnings). The rationale is that it is not cash (really move away from idea of paid editing), and something that gives winners a wide variety of items to buy and is international. I am open to the idea of winners from countries where Amazon is not available getting some equivalent voucher. If WMUK feels cash is better, I agree that it is clearly much more versatile, but am uneasy that someone will liken it too much to paid editing. Anyway, your call on this. cheers, Casliber (talk) 13:03, 17 November 2014 (GMT)

To sum up, I suspect there'll still be a backlog of GA reviews come mid 2015 and expect that I will try and run it then, so am in no hurry to run this before. However, it'd be nice if all folks were happy with an agreed format. Cheers, Casliber (talk) 13:03, 17 November 2014 (GMT)

My apologies, I forgot to get back to you. I think giving £25 vouchers is the way forward. I can understand your unease with the idea of cash, so it's probably best to avoid that if possible. If someone can't use Amazon or doesn't want to use it, I'm sure we can arrange an alternative voucher on a case-by-case basis. Overall, I'm happy for this grant request to proceed. CT Cooper · talk 13:00, 14 January 2015 (GMT)

Sjgknight comments

Looks great to me and thanks for clarifying the reward basis above. Aligns with 'G1.2 The quality of open knowledge continues to improve' - not necessarily insofar as the review completion itself, which might just be labelling existing content (certainly worthwhile but slightly different) - but especially through comments and improvements made on those articles. You're also suggesting it'll support the community (probably goal 5.1) (which seems likely to me and also an excellent aim). I wonder especially on the latter whether there would be constructive ways to encourage new people to engage in the, that's obviously partly about advertising but I'm wondering if there's scope for a 'referral' or mentoring incentive - very vague idea though! I agree with User:CT Cooper that £50 sounds more than might be necessary for our desired effect but it's hard to judge. Sjgknight (talk) 14:02, 6 September 2014 (BST)

Hmm, interesting thoughts on how to induce new people to review. GA mentors is not a bad idea, though tricky to see how (say) they could comment on some reviews and not others etc. I guess we could have an open policy on reviewers being able to ask a judging panel questions about (for instance) what is reasonable or not reasonable to comment what might be a deal-breaker in reviewing articles (?) Casliber (talk) 13:06, 17 November 2014 (GMT)

Update?

Hi Casliber, is this grant application still live, or could it be closed? You will see from the Grants page that grants can be paid only to members of the charity, so you'd either need to join or include in the grant proposal a member who would receive the funds. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:28, 28 May 2015 (BST)

As it happens I'm in the middle of drafting an email to Casliber about this grant and a couple of other open grants. The Core Contest conclucded last month so the office will need to be updating a few things. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 15:41, 28 May 2015 (BST)

This one is best put on hold - The GA Cup is being run again from July to November, and their briefs are similar. I would look at this again if the GA Cup does not put a big dent in the GANs waiting for assessment. Casliber (talk) 15:52, 29 May 2015 (BST)

I think £25 would be too poor. I was actually thinking that £50 wasn't great. What I'd suggest is use the £250 and actually have £100 first prize, £50 second and £25 runners up. If you had a £100 first prize it would be more likely to motivate people rather than just £25 even.Dr. Blofeld (talk) 13:48, 10 December 2015 (GMT)