User blog:D. Cello/About: Groups and Badges

No, this is not my first personal post (altough it's coming, and I know that some of you can't wait, because of my awesome persona and writing style and all else.... but hold on).

First, I would like to talk about badges. Ah.. badges. Those lovely little things that cheer so many people and annoy other many people.

A week ago, some users brought it to my attention that a few other wikis were using this "rank" system, which consisted of achievements for actions performed on the wiki and awarded by points. As the awesome, happy, handsome, helpful and good-looking admin of this thing, I went after it, cause as every leader knows, (and those who don't aren't true leaders, if you want to be, learn this:)morale is crucial. I've been looking for ways to award users who worked hard on the wiki, and this badge system looked a good deal. Indeed it was, I was right. Some of my staff told me that it would bring crazy edits and useless edits with it. And they were right too.

On the two days this thing was active,the wiki almost growed 30 articles. We ahd about 1500 edits. But we also had users adding useless sentences, and we had stupid edits, and miscategorization, and bad picture placement, and format messing. But all those things happen, it's a community and not all are the same level on everything. But the problem was people who added a letter or a acentuation or small bits of info per edit, and edited the same page 15 times. The reason for that? It never happeend before the badges, and the users who did it were the oens with most achievements points. So even a monkey can see what caused it.

I warned people about the edits abuse for the purpose of earning badges, not because of the points (cause having more points won't make you part of the staff or anything), but because of the MESS it creates. It expands the edit log of the wiki, it makes us lose track of contributions and it increases the staff job when we usually only had problems with vandals.

To put at least a little hold, I asked all users on the news page and on the wiki Notice Channel (that white box on top of articles) to not add or remove categories, since we were in the process of revamping the damn thing and more input would only mess the thing even further. Most respected it, some didn't, I talekd to them and it stopped.

Last night, I went on one of my typical edit frenzy: girlfriend wasn't home, nothing on tv, no game to play, late at night, no sleep = result: edit frenzy. I took my to-do list and start checking items. I uploaded pictures of timeline events, and began fixing the ACII location category. I must have lost about 1h30 last night and edited like 60 pages in a row.

Then this morning I wake up, eat and go check my email. I found out that a user which name I won't be disclosing (now, but you know who you are) edited the Templar page and other pages and added categories, even after the staff express request to refrain from doing it. The worst part, taking an example from the Templar page: he added the categories "Assassin's Creed", Assassin's Creed II", "Assassin's Creed Blodlines", and all apppearances of templars as categories, and he did each one in a different edit. So he gained about 10 edits to his count, and 10 categories to his badge.

People, keep in mind: the staff serves to keep this whole thing working. We're not here because we got here first, or cause we payed someone, or cause we came from a ruling family. We're here cause we know what to do. We spent around 60% of our wiki time working on background things on wiki that you don't even realize it exists, but it wouldn't work if wasn't for us keeping it active. So when we ask "please don't edit this cause we're trying to fix it", it means "please don't edit this cause we're trying to fix it"!

I'm not saying for people to stop editing, nor am I saying that all users abuse the points, but this is a Wiki, a encyclopedical resource and not a gamers score board. Focus on making the wiki better, not on earning badges. We were doing fine before the badges arrived, and in those 5 days it's been on, we had to fix more than we had the whole previous month. If users keep messing the wiki for points, I will remove the badge system. Period.

Now, the other notice: Groups!

Everybody here's familiar with the Istruttorium, right? Riiight. Now we are implementing something similar to that. We will have 3 groups, each with a specialization:
 * The Custodi (meaning "The Guardians"): A group to combate vandals, formatting messing, and if the system continues, badge abuse. They'll monitore the pages and report all tresspassers in a special page. If the guys a vandal, he gets blocked. If the guy's an badge abuser, we talk to him. If he abuses the points again, he gets punished. The Custodi can be considered the "eyes and sword" of the wiki.(like guards at Masyaf, we could say)
 * The Progettisti (meaning "The Designers"): A group of users focused on design and illustration. They would be our fashion squad, the guys in charge of pictures and templates. Preferably people with ways of capturing good images from games and people with experience with image editors and template inner-workings. (I tought of naming ti the DaVincians =P It might be their nickname, at least for me it will)
 * The Rafiqs (the guys at Bureaus in the first game): These users would be our researchers and informants. There are people who keep a close eye on the net for nes and thinks relatng to the AC series. This users would focus on information gathering and distribution, mainly through observation of known (and unknown) channels and news updating. The eyes and ears (and inner mouth... like a esophagus... or amidala oO) of the wiki.

Membership to these groups require:
 * 1) That the user have at least 50 edits
 * 2) He/she/it shows that can be trusted
 * 3) Possess the skills necessary for better working inside each squad (if you never even opened "Paint", you probably wouldn't fit in the DaVincians)

Joining of the groups will be via subscription only. All candidates to fill the groups must leave a message here for analisis. Don't be afraid or shy, come and join us! And in case that you aren't accepted the first time, you can always apply again later =]