Considering that the Bold Edit contest was so successful, I think that it would be a good idea to have another contest. This contest that I am proposing will be based around Answering Questions, and will differ from the Bold Edit contest in some ways. The goal of this contest is to help reduce the queue of questions that need to be answered, which is currently at 70,336, which is very stormy weather. Basically, the premise around this contest is that we set a goal, say that we want to answer 1,000 questions in October, and we all work towards reaching that goal.
Just like in the Bold Edit contest, there will be no winners in this contest. We’ll have a forum thread, and in the thread we can post status updates and messages of encouragement to help reach the goal. I also plan on creating a contest page that will list all of the participants who helped. I think that this contest will be fun, and it will also help reduce the backlog on one of our tools, both are noble goals in my opinion. Once we reach the goal, we can all celebrate! If we don’t reach the goal, we can “cheat” a little and extend the deadline of the contest.
This will create a larger backlog on the Patrol Q&A tool, but I don’t think that this is a problem since it is much quicker to patrol Q&A then it is to write answers, and the backlog on that tool does not have to be cleared immediately. Also, for anybody concerned about this contest creating a competitive atmosphere, I do not think that this contest would do that, since the Answer Questions tool does not have a leaderboard, and everybody can participate, even if they only answer one question, every little bit helps! There will also of course be rules similar to the ones that the Bold Edit contest had that will help make sure that there are no issues.
Anyways, what does everybody think about this idea? Do you have any suggestions, or concerns? Would you participate? Also, do you think that setting a goal of 1,000 answered questions is reasonable? Do you think we can do more? Or do you think that is unrealistic? Please comment below!
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XxVxX
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I like this, and I also think that goal is relatively reasonable. I’ll probably even participate, though I do think that there should be some focus on quality over quantity. If quantity is the biggest focus, then the answers given to the questions may not be of very good quality, that’s my only concern.
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I agree that quality should be over quantity. I can add that to the contest page. Luckily, I think that the wikiHow community also believes this, and I don’t think that low quality answers will be a big concern. Also, all answers are reviewed before going live, so any low quality ones can be deleted.
If during the contest anybody does notice low quality submissions, then they can report it on the contest discussion page. If it becomes a big problem, then the contest can always be ended early.
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I like this contest! I’d like to participate!
Is it okay if I start a wikiHow:Contests page for the record? Then when you want to come up with a contest we can have a page and a bunch of subpages detailing contests and whatnot.
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Freyrr
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I’d like to participate!
What’s the link for the contest page? (if it has been made yet)
Thanks everyone for your feedback. Please remember that this is the proposal, and the contest has not stared yet, I just wanted to see what other people though of my idea.
Yes, I can see how it does, do you think it should be less?
That might be a good idea.
If this proposal is approved by the community, then I will create the contest page.
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i’d like to participate as well
Sure! I never use the Answer Questions tool myself - I find it easier to go to actual articles and find questions that way - but I’ll answer some
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Keep in mind that the 70k articles in that tool are a “goal” number - not a great representation of what there is in that tool. There a ton more questions in that tool than that goal number - and that number keeps expanding the more questions people add and approve to put into the tool.
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That’s true, but there are ways to see how many questions were answered, while also removing the new questions added to the tool.
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XxVxX
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In that case, I would probably participate.
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I started a page for centralizing contests and the like. Thinking now I am not sure if there is consensus for such a page, but here it is: https://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=wikiHow:Contests&new=1
@R2_d2000
maybe you can expand it a bit more? And we can maybe have a few userboxes as well?
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Hello, I have an update. So I was emailing Jayne, and I got some statistics on how many questions are normally answered. So in the last 4 weeks, 2,529 questions were answered. In the 4 weeks before that, 2,325 questions were answered, and before that, 1,654 were answered in 4 weeks, so I think that a 1,000 questions answered goal would actually be too little. I think something like 3,000, or if we are ambitions, 3,250, would be a better goal.
Also, because of how the answered questions are pulled, this proposed contest would run for 4 weeks instead of an entire month, so that we could get the most accurate results. I think that running it from September 28th to October 26th would work well.
What do you guys think about that?
And, @Awesome_Aasim
, I’ll check out the page and add more info to it where I can.
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I don’t use it either. The categories are too broad for my taste.
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You don’t have to use the tool if you don’t want to for this contest. You can still navigate to the articles.
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I know. Finding them is just a tad difficult.
I’m starting today! Is there anything like a token?
