User:Sphilbrick/Tour of Duty

Motivation

Generally speaking, volunteers ought to be able to work on what interests them. But what do we do when there is a mismatch between the list of things that volunteers want to do, and the list of tasks needing attention? In the real world, we use pay to encourage work in areas that would not be done otherwise. In some aspects of life, sports, particularly, but also teaching, and scientific research, some people get paid to do things they would otherwise find enjoyable. But as someone recently quipped, who would work in a mine if it weren't for pay? There are many less than pleasant jobs that need to get done—pay is the usual motivation. In a volunteer world, we have to approach the challenge differently. The existence of barnstars is a way to reward people for doing good work. In some cases, that work is enjoyable by itself, in other cases, the work is considered part of contributing to a community. However, while the approach works broadly, it works imperfectly. The pile of things needed to do is not exactly matched by the willingness of editors to do those things, even given the promise of barnstars and other forms of gratification. As a result, we have backlogs, some of which are years old.

Goals

This proposal has two distinct goals:

• A process for reviewing needs for volunteers, and providing a very rough priority
• A process for rewarding those who step up and tackle high priority needs

Prioritization

Details to be worked out, but after identification of potential projects, I envision a voting system that is updated periodically. One approach is to give everyone n votes, which they can distribute any way they like (n votes for one project, or one vote for n projects or anything in between). While I like this approach, it may be too cumbersome, so another approach is simply to allow anyone to rank their top five, and calculate the aggregated results.

Updating could be continuous, or at designated intervals, have to think through the advantages of either. Updating is obviously necessary, as one day a particular backlog might be very important, and if the system works, the backlog will be reduced to the point it is no longer a problem. (In a perfect world, will all backlogs be reduced to the point they are equally unattractive?)

It will be helpful to keep track of which backlogs get voted the most serious, as I envision some differentiation in rewards for the dirtiest job—e.g.I earned this barnstar for tackling the #1 ToD.

The proposal is not...

The proposal is not intended to supplant existing processes for addressing backlogs, but merely to supplement. If the Guild of Copy editors wants to organize a Backlog elimination drive, then wonderful. There are enough bureaucratic hoops to jump through, I would not propose that they have to clear their drive with an self-anointed group. However, if they'd like to add their drive to the list, it can be prioritized, and they may get volunteers who wouldn't otherwise know of the drive.

Similarly, if an editor is good at copy-editing, they should be free to copy edit. It doesn't matter if the initiative is the lowest rated item on this list, if that's what an editor wants to do, it improves the encyclopedia.

So who is this for, I hear you saying - this process is for those who want to help generally, have skills in a number of areas, and would like to work on whatever the community thinks is most pressing.

Rewards

Obviously, we could have special barnstars noting that someone has completed a Tour of Duty. My hope is that completion of editor Tours of Duty would become relevant to RfA, while sysop Tours of Duty would be relevant to 'crat or steward discussions. I'd prefer not to make them de jure requirements, but let them become de facto, if and only if they are viewed positively by the community.

Sample ToDs

Admin only

• Monitor the Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement board for CC article issues on at least seven of every ten days for three months (this is one that more than one admin can sign up for)
• Monitor the unblock-en-l mailing list with a goal of keeping the backlog below one day most of the time (doesn't mean you have to handle every request, you can identify a small list of admins to poke if the backlog gets too high, but you have to make sure it gets done).

Editor

• Participate in a copy-editing drive and place in the top n participants. (n to be determined)
• Participate at WP:CCI or WP:SCV. This would give reviewers at an RfA insight into whether the editor has a handle on copyright issues.
• Help out with {{Request edit}}. This would help reviewers at an RfA gauge how you handle COI issues.
• Sign up as a reviewer at WP:AfC
• Spend n weeks monitoring a noticeboard and providing useful information in a meaningful proportion of the items (details to be determined)

I am sure anyone reading this can identify many more.

We either have to ensure rough parity between the items, perhaps by adjusting the length of time involved, or have more than one category - modest ToDs, serious ToDs and big, challenging ToDs.

Anyone can identify any addition to the list at any time (within reasonable bounds). The community will discuss and prioritize—then only the top ten, or top ten in each group (or such other number as the community might decide) will be eligible to count as a ToD. To emphasize, this doesn't preclude anyone from working on any thing at any time - it just means if we can figure out how to give meaningful credit for top items, only those items making the top list would count for rewards.