541
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 213:
Line 213: + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Conservapedia talk:Contest4 (view source)
Revision as of 00:08, January 22, 2008
, 00:08, January 22, 2008Thoughts after the contest
I thought we had today until midnight! I guess I should read the instructions :-) ? Ugh, I'm sorry...-[[User:MexMax|MexMax]] 13:20, 20 January 2008 (EST)
I thought we had today until midnight! I guess I should read the instructions :-) ? Ugh, I'm sorry...-[[User:MexMax|MexMax]] 13:20, 20 January 2008 (EST)
== Thoughts after the contest ==
Since Andy is apparently already about to set up a ''fifth'' contest, I figure I better post my own thoughts here now. There were a few good parts, but personally, the bad parts overshadowed them. I'm sure Andy will disagree with me on MOST points (thus making this post effectively pointless), but I still feel like voicing them because I don't want it to look as if everything was happy sunshine.
#I acknowledge that Iduan tried his best to prevent abuse. Kudos for that. Especially the "copy-pasting gives 1 point" rule was a GREAT change. However, most of this hard work was suddenly undermined when Andy introduced the extremely fuzzy "not ''entirely'' copied" addition that could lead to copy-pasted entries counting for as much as 15 points (and 4 points at the very least!).
#*Suggestion: Be consequent and undo the fuzzy-maybe-not-quite-completely-copied stuff. This isn't about what "adds value", it's about time vs. points. When you put your mind to winning the contest, you will try to use the method that gives you the most points per time. If I find a .gov article, add some wikilinks and a category (estimated time: one or two minutes tops), that should ''not'' give four or more points. If you stumble over a pile of such articles-to-be, you can get hundreds of points in ridiculously little time. I'm sorry, but that's exactly what the rule tried to prevent. It's called abuse (or "gaming the system" if you want to avoid strong words).
#*I also challenge the assertion that rabid copy-pasting adds value to the encyclopedia. It's spam. Tons of copy-pasted stuff falls into two categories: "Way Too Long" or "Laughably Short and Technical". Both results lead to articles that are very hard to improve without completely scrapping the old ones first. Some ships have ''much'' longer articles than some people who ''wrote history'' - simply because some Public Domain source had incredibly long and detailed accounts of certain ships (random samples: [[Advance-6]] (1570 words) versus [[John von Neumann]] (214 words, including section headers)). That alone should illustrate that something is off.
#*Duplicating content (and worse: duplicating content without pointing at where it came from or indicating that it's copied) is useless. Scrap it and just add an external link to the glossary or source. People can read it there, too. Have a link collection. Like "Conservapedia's Guide to Government Glossaries" (You could call it "CP G3" - fetchy!).
#Timing was a MAJOR issue. The contest was suddenly rushed onto people, leaving little time to finetune the rules or even pick teams.
#The "Quality New Entry" bar was WAY too low, especially when you were allowed to copy-paste. Alternatively, the reward was WAY too high for it (especially when you consider that just one or two more references can make the difference between 6 and 15 points).
#Some players were flat-out handicapped to ridiculous degrees. When you got members who can't even upload a picture or ''edit'' early in the morning or late at night (which were the only times I was online on some days that week - meaning that I simply couldn't participate on those days), it's hard not to feel completely inadequate. Sure, both sides had handicapped players, but it still led to a two-class system and to things like "The night is the only time I would be around!".
#*Suggestion: Either acknowledge that handicap in the scoring or at least give people EDIT rights. That's not some sort of epic demand in my eyes - it's the MediaWiki DEFAULT SETTING. Speaking of which, I spent my time editing on Wikipedia. I improved some of the articles there and had discussions that led to more in-depth improvements. Nobody loomed over my head and told me that I hadn't earned some mysterious "right". Quite refreshing!
#(It's minor, but since I'm at it...) Somewhat connected since sysops clearly have it easier: Don't expect me to undo vandalism sprees anymore. It gets ridiculous when the software punishes me for it by adding YET another step to the Undo process: There is a CAPTCHA-ish math test each time an edit introduces a new link - and when undoing page-blanking, I usually do exactly that. Sorry, not worth it. I'll just leave that for the people who merely have to hit "Rollback" and do with one click what I need several page-loads for.
#After the halftime mark, I had suddenly fallen off the scoring table. And you know what that meant? It meant that all my work up to that point had suddenly become completely worthless. It suddenly didn't matter anymore that I had spent three hours creating a shiny periodic table or that I had improved other articles. For the contest, I counted exactly as much as somebody who hadn't made a single edit: Not at all. Sorry, not feeling the love. (Especially bad when it's combined with the "You don't deserve to edit when we're not around to monitor you" issue.)
I think that's about it... hopefully it is - this post is long enough already.
Overall, I believe that it's possible to create a contest that encourages quality and not abuse (HelpJazz had a very interesting idea on this very page for example). However, this would take time, and it would require certain sysops to actually let go of their game-the-system goldmines.
Personally, I actually don't think that such contests do much good on the grand scale. Fuzzy rules, arbitrary scoring, implied emphasis on doing instead of discussing, the sense of being in the same team, but not in the same league... I believe that we should just go back to freestyle editing without wasting time to fill out silly scorecards.
Rephrasing my favorite Demotivator (no link - don't want the software to rub in that I'm not a trusted user by giving me a CAPTCHA) poster: "If being in some contest and a pat on the back are needed to motivate you, you probably have a very boring task. The kind robots will be doing soon." --[[User:Jenkins|Jenkins]] 19:08, 21 January 2008 (EST)