Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-11008902-20141226235147/@comment-1738746-20150118100636

The Rim of the Sky wrote: Bluesonic1 wrote:

Timeoin wrote: I would finally like to just add, since I'm the only one old enough here to actually remember a time BEFORE these came out - other attempts were tried to try and encourage newbies, but as soon as we introduced this, we got a lot more regular editors. It's basically THE thing that helped us become what we are today. You make some good points Timeoin, though could I get more elaboration on this last point here as it's a bit general? I'm not very good at explaining myself, but what I was trying to get at is that while the badges are indeed an incentive, I'm not sure if they're a good incentive (as in promoting good article edits as opposed to bad article edits- increase in activity isn't necessarily good edits going on).

Since activity has increased, by how much as vandalism activity increased too? By how much have 'pointless' edits increased that have then lead to badge hunting accusations increased by? By how much has 'wrong' (edits that don't follow policies) editing increased? Has the increase in activity overall been more productive or has it caused a lot of problems along the way? Whatever vandalism happens we're quick to remove. Oh I know, I've tended to some vandalism as well. I'm just wondering whether the increase in activity has been overall more productive or has just provided additional problems. It's not meant to be personal in any way- I'm just curious as to how the evidence stacks up. I didn't realise that the badge system had made such an impact into activity levels on the Wiki, I thought it would have only been a small contributor but Timeoin has pointed out otherwise. I'm just digging deeper to see if there are other possibilities that haven't been considered yet.