User:Joris Gillis/WikiEffort

WikiEffort, a proposed Wiki project.

Synposis

Thousands of visitors like the idea of contributing to Wikipedia, but lack the expertise to write encyclopedic articles.
Some Wikipedians have tasks in mind that allow Wikipedia to take a giant leap forward. But with only themselves or some insighters aware of it, the task is unsurmountable and might take a life-time to complete.

WikiEffort brings the two together in a massive collaborative effort. One day later, the unsurmountable task is completed.

The process in short:

attract lingering users, possibly via the main page.
propose to them a wikitask (the task of the day).
link them to one unique workunit. Notice the similarity with BOINC.

WikiEffort User interfase

Short info

A short description of the wikitask of the day.
The skills it takes to perform the task.
The estimated time it will take to complete one workunit.
The progress (ratio of completed workunits) so far, indicated by a visual progress meter of some kind.

User input

An accept and a decline button.

Long info

A motivation of the proposer of the task.
FAQ that may arise whilst carrying out the task.
After 24 hours, a debriefing is archived here.

The process of wikiEffort

One proposed wikitask is elected 'wikitask of the day'.
WikiEffort makes publicity on the main page "WikiEffort calls for id"
Thousands of visitors follow the link to the wikitask of the day and read the information on it.
Each user can either accept or decline the wikitask.
The users that accept are linked to a unique workunit.
If, after a period of time (e.g. 3 hours), the workunit is not yet done or the user clicks a resign button, the link between a user and a task is decoupled. The workunit becomes free again to be assigned to other willing users.
The process ends 24 hours after innitiation and begins all over again.

The nature of a candidate wikitask

It should be related to and useful for Wikipedia or its sister projects.
It should not require any insight to complete it. A wikitask would typically be something that is impossible for computer/bots and trivial for any human.
The task should be (automatically) equally dividable into workunits. Lots of them, in the order of thousands.
Each workunit should not take longer than 15 minutes to complete.

Possible wikitasks

proofreading the 2500 OCR-scanned pages of the The New Student's Reference Work.
Add persondata to biographical articles.

Impossible wikitasks (no candidates)

Creating new articles
Improving articles

Keys to success

user-friendly, informative interface, with the workunit being literally only one click away.
Because the user gets the guarantee that he is assigned a unique workunit, the motivation will be higher.
WikiEffort would engage thousands of users that lack the expertise to make valuable encyclopedic contributions and thus did not make any contributions to date. After having performed several trivial wikitasks, the user grows acquainted to the working of Wikipedia, wikiEffort could serve as an introduction. The amount of active wikipedians would thereby grow faster.

credit system

I don't believe a credit system is desirable.--Joris Gillis 09:31, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Practical

WikiEffort requires some functionality that is not built in in mediawiki. Software is needed to uniquely link the workunits to users. WikiEffort might need a website of its own (but preferable in the wikipedia domain name, maybe www.en.wikipedia.org/wikieffort). The user interface might consist of a frame, with the wikitask info and resign and done buttons on a sidebar, with the workunit (e.g. a wikipedia article) embedded in the middle.