Forum:Wiki Revamping: Time for a Facelift

Per our decision on Forum:Increasing Community Involvement, our community must come up with some plans on how to freshen things up. We want to attract new editors (which probably won't be too hard), but we need to improve editor retention. I would love to hear everyone's ideas. I've also got some of my own:
 * Large-Scale Projects: As we all know, there are some big problems on this wiki that haven't been addressed. That is why I propose the creation of large projects that people can contribute to. This could take the form of revitalized teams or new projects. As for project ideas, we could tackle Chapter and Episode Stubs, Articles Without References, or updating old pages that are really lacking in content AND references. We have plenty of options here, and I have a number of other project ideas.
 * Monthly/Weekly Goals: While big projects might give people a lot to do, many of the ideas are quite the tasks to take on. That is why we need smaller goals to achieve by month or week. For example, say we are updating Chapter Stubs. A weekly goal could be to complete 3-5 chapter stubs, or a monthly goal could be to complete all chapter stubs in an arc. These smaller goals might give people a better idea on how to tackle this stuff. You know what they say, the only way to eat an elephant is one bit at a time.
 * Rewards!?!: Yes, rewards. I don't mean like prizes or gift cards. Let's be honest, incentivizing edits would bring more people. I propose that we create an Editor of the Week and Editor of the Month award. For the weekly awards, we can have separate categories for new and veteran editors so that new people have good odds of winning if they are making positive contributions. We could create a panel of veterans (most likely respected editors and mods) to judge the edits of the newcomers and a panel of high caliber vets (i.e. admins and maybe Kaido, arguably the best/most productive editor) to judge the edits of veterans. The only edits judged will be contributions to projects because it would get out of control to measure that much activity. At the end of the month, winners from both categories will be voted on to elect a winner by all of the judges. To keep things fair, editors/judges can also nominate/petition for another editor, who may not have won during one week but contributed a lot overall in the month, to be added to the judging. Winners would be featured on our Social Media outlets (please take a look at that forum) as well as the wiki homepage.
 * Mentor Program: A complaint I have heard in the past from some non-editing members is the feeling that 1) they don't know what to do, or 2) they feel like their edits won't be good and others will give them crap for it. Why not help people out? Also, no one should have to feel like they are not welcome. I know in the past we have had some problems (SeaTerror) with people being rude to new users, but we can certainly fix that and create a more welcoming environment. I propose the following: a program where new users can sign up to receive a veteran mentor. The mentor will provide editing help/guidance with his/her own expertise.

I know I wrote a lot, but I think these could all be very useful additions to our community. If we can reach more people through social media and gain new editors with immediate outreach to some of our new users sources, these options could give our wiki the boost it needs. However, I'd still love to hear other ideas. The more options we have on the table, the better we can figure out what will work best for us all. 05:17, April 7, 2017 (UTC)

Discussion
All of those sound like good ideas, but we would need to hear from more people if we want to actually implement anything. 03:30, April 11, 2017 (UTC)

For the rewards thing we could try using badges to reward people for their edits. Spam Wiki incorporated the concept pretty well. We can make the badges obtainable for certain achievements, but let's not make them too easy to get (Edit your profile page or add 1 picture) 19:52, April 11, 2017 (UTC)


 * Drake, that's not a half bad idea. I forgot about badges since they weren't super common, but they could be a nice low-to-mid tier reward, which we lack right now. 21:21, April 11, 2017 (UTC)

Large Scale Projects: I completely agree with you. There is more than enough to be done on the wiki due to the enormous amount of characters and details of the universe. *cough* Especially in the ol' reference section we are very far behind *cough*. That said there are few projects that we already set up (obviously no one ever contributed to these). You can find them on the Comminity Messages.

Monthly/Weekly Goal: If anything, this should be monthly. The wiki is active, sure, but not much greats can be done in just one single week (especially with refs, trust me). We can try it out, but this should be kept simple and most importantly, realistic. Important factor here is the amount of users actually willing to contribute to these goals.

Rewards: The problem here is that this shouldn't take us more time than it could be worth of, if you know what I mean. I like the idea very much but it'll need to be simple and straightforward. I support the idea of just one judge commitee group choosing a User of the Week/Month/Fortnight consisting of well known active editors (doesnt necessarily have to be vets). I think that might be a fun little thing we can set up.

I am against badges. I think that they will not fullfil the function that is expected of them, especially if you keep it low/middle tier. People will edit purely so that they can collect badges, and I have a gut feeling these edits won't exactly be diamonds in the rough. It kinda goes against what we want to achieve here. 21:40, April 11, 2017 (UTC)

i really like the idea of goals and badges. speaking of experince; in a forum i participate the community involvement increased drastically after we added badges next to the user's name so that ppl can show off (for exampe a badge for 10 edits, then a more fancy badge for 100 edits etc...). The idea of someone "leveling up" his editor staus will surely trigger more ppl to edit more.

Definitely against badges. I believe we've discussed it before and decided against it. 22:41, April 14, 2017 (UTC)

Trying them couldn't hurt. Plenty of other wikis have made badges work for them, and we can always get rid of them if they do lead to a lot of low quality edits. 06:46, April 15, 2017 (UTC)

I agree with the statement above. Ive seen other wikis that worled quite well with the badge system and didnt lead to low quality edits. We could definitely do a test drive and see where it goes.

Rather than badges (if they were already discussed on this wiki), we could always look into Medals. Drake suggested them on the Discord. They seem like a better alternative to me, and they are very customizable. 19:00, April 15, 2017 (UTC)

Oh yeah the medal system seems quite better indeed.

Much better. Less prone to spam and admins can hand them out when they feel like it. Also if we do "User of the Month" make it have a limit so one user doesn't get the reward multiple times in a single year, let it be different each time. Godess of Time Dimaria (talk) 19:06, April 15, 2017 (UTC)

Another new idea has come up: interlanguage wiki collaborations. Other language One Piece wikis have been doing a good job, but they could always use some extra help. The most that some of us could do that don't speak other languages is upload images and create pages that they might be missing. I've already discussed the idea with Enrik, and the Catalonian wiki would love the support. We could do a test run with them before moving to other language wikis. Any thoughts on this idea? It would create more camaraderie between the different OP wikis and could get us some new editors here. 20:24, April 15, 2017 (UTC)

Not to shoot the idea down, but this isn't going to work. Every time something new comes around at some point people start becoming less involved and things like updates never come around. 22:01, April 15, 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't think dismissing this is very fair, and I don't know of any similar things proposed other than teams (which are basically the same thing as my project idea) and badges (nut medals have never been proposed and are much better). As for the rest, I don't believe we've ever had goals, a mentor program (which no one has responded about or discuss to my surprise), and collaborations with other OP wikis of other languages on a larger scale. Yes, people will lose interest, but creating and maintaining the infrastructure is all we need to do to keep up some kind of active community, as more people will fill in their places. Just look at some of the new editors who've shown up. With almost no promotion, we have gotten some solid contributors. I may be a bit too optimistic, but as long as the series is running and we advertise, we should be set. 02:18, April 16, 2017 (UTC)

I'm in favor of the large projects and mentoring, not so much the other two. On here I feel like a job well done is its own reward. As for the goals, I'm in favor of them as long as they factor in real life. Sometimes you set a goal but have to be away from the wiki for a few day for whatever reason. I also want to make sure that setting goals doesn't compromise quality. There's no point doing five chapter summaries if they all suck and were done in a rush and half-assedly. Also, Besty has a point. We'll need a way to keep people involved without the novelty wearing off. 03:52, April 16, 2017 (UTC)

Mentoring could be really useful. We could maybe create a page with a list of veterans willing to mentor new users and have a bot or something automatically post it on new users' talk pages. As for the goals, we could have someone check over the edits to make sure they were done right and not half-assed just to get it done. 03:39, April 19, 2017 (UTC)


 * I would be happy to set up either thing. And the mentoring idea was the main thing I think would have lasting impacts. I would happily mentor someone who wants to destub pages (because we have a LOT of locations to destub), and I can already think of a number of great users who could participate. As long as someone is keeping an eye on the edits for goals, we're safe. It also might be a good idea to have more than one person checking edits. That was the thought process behind having multiple judges for the monthly award; besides a project leader, more people watching edits will keep quality up. 23:19, April 19, 2017 (UTC)


 * You lost me at incentivizing edits with editor of the week stuff, no one really cares about those sorts of titles, if anything the best way to incentivize editing is to make people want to be here in the first place, and trying to accomplish that by making editing some sort of competition isn't a good start. Mentoring and long term projects are a good way to start.  00:21, April 20, 2017 (UTC)

Since Large-scale Projects and Mentoring have the most support so far, I propose that we designate separate sections of this forum or separate forums to discuss their implementation. As for the other ideas, they still need more discussion before they can be approved or axed. Creating individual sections/forums for each would make discussions cleaner and easier to follow across the board. Anyone mind if I do that? 18:46, April 21, 2017 (UTC)


 * I have no idea which forum it's best to post this in, so I'll just post here. In regards to mentoring, https://www.rabb.it/ would be a beneficial tool to use when training new recruits. Rabb.it can be used to browse the web while streaming to an audience. It's not just limited to movies, you can pretty much go on any site while showcasing it to the audience. We could use this to give a virtual tour of the wiki or literally just show them how it's done by sharing an invite link and let them see you edit in real time 18:59, April 21, 2017 (UTC)

I tried mentoring people when they were new. They all turned into assholes. Look at the guy above me, for example. But in all seriousness the vast majority of newbs aren't going to like being told what to do. We need to be careful about it.

19:33, April 21, 2017 (UTC)


 * Nova, you are right, some people may not want it. That's why it is an optional program. That won't stop us from reverting bad edits, and we can always suggest it if people make bad edits. Also, they won't take kindly to any of us if we don't promote the right environment. Calling a user an asshole is not what we need, even if you don't like them. Keep it in your PMs. 19:43, April 21, 2017 (UTC)

I like the idea of Drake and Noland. Maybe a test run? Godess of Time Dimaria (talk) 19:44, April 21, 2017 (UTC)

I like both Noland's and Drake's ideas. Mentoring does work from my experience, where even the slightest thing i know about editing is thanks to older users helping me. One of em is the person mr nova characterised in a weird way above (calling people names aint gonna strengthen any argument but actually does the opposite). I think a lot of users would be interested in something like this.

I still think some sort of reward system is a good idea HiddenAssassinxxXX (talk) 21:08, April 21, 2017 (UTC)

It’s fun to see wiki a bit alive and users coming with ideas. I’m not editor but the projects seems good and connecting it to monthly goals seems better. It depends ofc how large the project is but making stuff weekly might be too much. Its nice to see that everyone wants to help  between wikis, but starting too many things at the same time might just result on projects/tasks not being finished. The reward system is nice but not sure why its needed. You edit because you like it, not to receive a badge/medal. It can be implemented just to try it out, but for me if you are giving out medals it should be to users that earn it and it doesn’t matter if it happens to be same users. I like the idea of mentor program, because it’s true that new users to wiki in general or just to this wiki can feel a bit lost. I feel like this might be something good to attract new users and make them stay. --14:43,4/22/2017 14:43, April 22, 2017 (UTC)

Regarding the interlanguage collab thing, if there's volunteers then go for it. Make sure our editors don't just cause more problems for other wikis and vice versa though. 23:58, April 24, 2017 (UTC)

I few thoughts:
 * Regarding the Fandom extension Achievements, it recently went from "default" extension to "available on requests" and from the last staff statements about it, I suppose in the future (not imminent), it will eventually become deprecated and/or not supported. To clarify, it works perfectly now, just wanted to pointed out this and Fandom extension has nothing to do with custom badges or other custom rewards mentioned early.
 * I have mixed feelings about interlanguage collaboration:
 * Strictly from this wiki standpoint, that shouldn't be much of a priority as I don't see much gain for this wiki. Of course helping other wikis is not something to be discouraged or obstacolated, but what's the gain for this wiki? If someone wants to help, he is free to do it without the need for the wiki to "invest resources and time".
 * As admin of an One Piece wiki, I of course welcome any help, however I'd rather want to gain new users (of my language) then sporadic help from people who don't really know neither my language nor my wiki's organization. It certainly is better to ask before doing anything to avoid messing things up. I suppose a kind of help this wiki can offer to others is about how to import and use some templates and images, but I believe the other wikis should ask first if they need instead of the other way around. Maybe you can leave a message to the local admins, just to tell them you can help in case of need.
 * Something all languages can work together on is Interlanguage link. For example, if anyone (on any wiki) can run a bot specifically for interlanguage links (there is something like that in python) then he can use it on all wikis to keep articles and wiki well connected. Wikis can even granting him bots right if needed.
 * Since this wiki has a more "international" audience and editors, we could give a thought about setting up babel templates to make more clear everyone's level of understanding and categorize better regular users. Since this is the English One Piece Wiki we can, for example, require everybody to state their English and Japanese level of understanding as well of their native language. With this, if there is a discussion about Japanese, people would know who can they ask and how much should they trust that user's opinion, and international wikis would also know potential people who can help them.

Interlanguage collaboration sounds fine until we get swamped with people spamming in new and interesting languages. Some sort of basic understanding of English is a good idea but how would we check/enforce it?

And as I've said before, if I have time and the new person is willing, I'll try to mentor them. But I don't have high hopes from the past.

16:51, April 26, 2017 (UTC)

We would definitely to establish strict ground rules to the interlanguage collaboration that can only be change when there's a consensus with our wiki and other wiki/wikis we work with. I think that we should do a trial run before we move to multiple fronts, and Enrik has so graciously volunteered his wiki. If it goes south, then we can figure out what rules to change or decide to ditch the idea.

The mentor program idea seems to have pretty unanimous support, so I think we should move that forward to figuring out how to implement it. This is perfectly timed, since AOD, Drake, and I are holding the r/OnePiece AMA tomorrow. As for achievements, I saw them as a possible incentive for the editing goals, but both ideas are open to problems (i.e. people just editing to get achievements, crap/small edits made to meet goals, etc.). They definitely need some tinkering before they'll be ready to implement. 17:22, April 26, 2017 (UTC)


 * About interlanguage collaboration, as I said in my post early something that can be done and benefits all wiki is good interwiki maintenance. If we find someone who can run bots to do that, we can organize with other wiki to keep articles always well linked together. Another thing I strongly encourage is categorizing users by language in order to understand better who speaks what and consequentially who is reliable. For example an EN-1 user should definitely not work on making chapter/episode summaries, while a JA-3 user may offer some good insight on a discussion about Japanese when native speakers aren't around. This can become very useful for both this wiki and others. I can make the templates and categories to start.
 * About achievements, as I saw on several wikis, these "side-effects" are quite marginal, I wouldn't worry too much about them.

About interlanguage collaboration, I had thought about the other wiki admins telling the volunteers what things they could do, though it is true that some wikis might not want any help or that this ends with no future after all; we could also do other things like exchange of ideas or experiences between all wikis, for example. Levi's ideas about more organized interwiki links or babel templates are good ideas too. 23:04, April 26, 2017 (UTC)

I don't want to "shoot down" anyone, I'm just saying that kind of collaboration should be case-by-case which ultimately means users should do that on their own, no need to have a wiki discussion about it. The best we can do about it is maybe inform the users that other wikis might need help, so if we want to really do something we could create a project page where we post all relevant links to other wikis and possibly if they want help / what kind of help they want. It could become a sorta of interlanguage HUB for all One Piece Wikis (which can also work well in conjunction with the babel templates). After that, it's up to the users.

Mentoring
So people seem to be in agreement about mentoring. Any ideas on how to actually implement it?

16:40, May 8, 2017 (UTC)

Maybe there is a script that can be run so that the wiki will produce a closeable floating box for unregistered users, or people that have very few edits (less than 25 or something) which will link to a list of possible people to contact for help (who must agree on this).

There could also be a bit more "ads" on the wiki relating to this and mentions across platforms like forums, a blog mention, a discussions mention, even on social media every determined period of time like every two weeks or every week (dependent on platform - ofc, a blog would be a one-time thing only).

If not for any permanent thingy, at least a start-of-project campaign to raise awareness and a clarification to all active users of this thing happening so as to redirect any newbies that join a chat or a discussion to a possible mentor for assistance.