Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-4544033-20150913232123/@comment-1738746-20150917010013

SuperSajuuk wrote: I have to ask something: why is there so much need to recognise every user who edits the wiki? I hate Achievements (which is why I have global css code that buries the notifications and everything to do with it [personal code that is]) and the constant need to glorify editors here is concerning. Fishy sticks and MOTM are perfectly fine to recognise editors of the wiki, there doesn't need to be any more such methods of recognising good contributors. I really very doubt that the vast majority of editors here do so simply to get noticed through achievements or badges. -_- I don't know much in the area of what deeper messages these kinds of awards would be sending out, such as glorifying users or whatnot, I'm not much of a 'fluffy' thinker in that sense (I also really dislike the achievement board stuff). My perspective on this is purely from that of a behaviour analyst. These awards can simply act as positive reinforcement, to reward a user who's been editing for us or doing x and y. Sure, we're still get a minority who will try "badge hunt" (though this will be tougher with actual users handing them out) or then encourage a few users to work simply for the badges rather than the intrinsic enjoyment of editing itself (is this one really that bad if they're working on the wiki anyway regardless?).

So, what's the difference in reinforcement between these types of awards and that received by the achievement board? These ones are given out by actual humans- human attention is a very powerful form of reinforcement for humans, and knowing that someone or a group of people have actually noticed your work and given you recognition for it goes much further than an automated machine dishing out the same rewards to everyone for doing the same thing. Even if they don't notice the reward system, to be given a reward out of the blue tells them that we acknowledge and value their work, so that they don't feel like they're doing this all for nothing. And this can help motivate users into hanging around and editing for longer in the community :)

But we already have the Fishy Stick and MOTM? Yes, but those are too few rewards and the MOTM reward is extremely difficult (considering the nomination and voting) to get- the benefits I mentioned above of these two rewards alone are quite small. I think expanding them out will help reach out to other lesser editors who can then be encouraged to go for these tougher rewards, and in the process, do more for the wiki.