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After the success of the Bold Edit and Answer Question contests, I would like to propose a new contest. This contest will focus on Answering Requests through the Answer a Request tool. Of course, this is not a contest in the traditional sense. This contest format will be the same as the others, but for anyone who does not know about how these contests work, basically, there will be no winners or losers. Instead, every Answered Request will be listed in the “Hall of Fame”. “Contestants” can put their Article that they wrote up on the forums and say why they are proud of their work, and what they learned (either about wikiHow, or the topic the article is about) while writing the article. Additionally, other users can respond to the submissions and say why they like the article that the user started, and what they learned from the article. The initial submissions and responses will occur on the forums, and latter all of the submissions will be moved to the Hall of Fame.

This contest is similar to the Bold Edit Contest , but it will not focus on improving articles. Instead, it will focus on writing new articles to answer requests. And, just like the Bold Edit Contest, in order to reduce stress and to keep issues to a minimum, you don’t have to get the article promoted at all in order to participate. You just have to write it.

Additionally, just like the Bold Edit Contest, users can work in groups if they want to. Also, messaging boosters directly on their talk page is prohibited in this contest. Users need to go to the article review team to request the assistance of a NABer. This is to help reduce any issues that may be caused, and it also makes sure that no New Article Booster has to worry about participating in this contest. The contest rules also prohibit arguing with any users who may nominate an article for deletion. I believe that these rules will help prevent any issues.

There is however, one requirement. The article cannot be nominated for deletion. This is because the goal of this contest is to write new articles, and if that article is deleted, then it would not help achieve the goal. Also, this helps keep out low effort submissions. I believe that this restriction is okay, since writing a stub article that is demoted is easy, and even if the article is nominated for deletion, it is not difficult to improve it to the point that it is no longer a deletion candidate.

There is also a limitation to this contest. In order to submit the article, it has to be started through the Article Creation Tool, not through the advanced editor. This is because in order for the article to register in the system as an answered request, it has to be done through the Article Creation Tool. However, once started, you can edit the article in the advanced editor. This is a technical limitation and is not something that can be changed easily, so this rule is required.

Anyways, I think that this contest will be fun and help answer some requests. I also think that it will be a nice way to recognize users who work hard to write new articles. Therefore, I would like to request community consensus to start this contest. You can see the draft of the contest page here . Additionally, I would like to request consensus for the creation of two new templates. The Answer Requests Award, which is a template that you can place on your user page to show that you participated in the contest. And the Answered Request template, which will be placed on the new article’s discussion page to say that the article was written through this contest. The template will also provide information about who started the article and will also include the statement they made on the forums about what they learned and why they are proud of their work.

Please comment below about what you think, and if you are concerned about anything or if you think that something should be changed.

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I don’t agree with this propsial. Year’s ago, Anna and staff turned off a feature that would be vital to those. Every time you check for dups, the first step asks you to verify that the listed topics aren’t synonymous with one another. At if chosen as one, selecting it, really doesn’t do anything anymore. I don’t feel this contest is right until that tool has been turned back on. This feature, if you click on the topic, would send the proposed redirects to a long list that NABers and Admins would work through, which hasn’t been turned back on.

Also, article writing can also be done through guided and advanced editors and shouldn’t be limited to those written through that article creation tool - because that just inaccurate.

I oppose this contest at this time.if the concerns above are addressed, I could see some support, but not right now.

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I like the idea in theory, but I have some concerns about it in practice.

My main concern is the amount of pages we may have to boost. It was not that long ago we were boosting literally hundreds of articles a day from the Wayne State students alone, and NAB was stuck at 50+ articles for quite awhile. Obviously this isn’t nearly the same magnitude, and I trust that established editors won’t write pages that are nearly as bad as some of the WSU pages, but there’s no way to avoid getting boosters involved when people are writing new articles.

My other, more minor concern is the focus on “just write something”. I doubt most participants would write low-quality or joke articles, but I also would be concerned about people writing articles that are “okay” but not up to quality standards (like if they forget citations), or getting editcountitis (contestcountitis?) and creating a bunch of stubs. It’s also possible that people might inadvertently write duplicates, because pages on the subdomains don’t show up in the duplicate list when you go to write the article. Writing a new article is often more effort and more emotionally involved than a bold edit, and a demote or stub (or NFD|dup) could end up being discouraging.

If there’s some way to resolve these things, I would be open to the idea. I’d love to see something that gets people involved in improving the site somehow, whether that’s bold edits or new articles. As-is, I feel extremely hesitant about the idea, but I’m not 100% opposed if there’s some way to work around these things.

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I see what you’re saying, but unfortunately, this rule is necessary. It is in place because the user who requested the article won’t get a notification if it is written through the advanced or guided editor, so writing the article through the article creator is necessary to allow the requester to know that their requested article was written. If someone wants to, they can start the article in the Article Creator, and then edit it with another editor after. The contest page does mention this as an alternative.

I see where you’re coming from. The WSU stuff is certainly time consuming, but I don’t think that this should be an issue. If you look at the bold edit contest’s Hall of Fame , you can see that there were not that many actual submissions. I would be surprised if this contest flooded the NAB tool like the WSU students did. The main point of this contest is not really about significantly reducing the queue in the answer requests tool. It, like the bold edit contest, is about getting the community together, and to make users feel better and appreciated. I know that when I sent the reward messages at the end of the contest, it made a lot of people very happy.

However, if you think that this could still be a problem, then a limit of only being able to submit 1 article would prevent this.

I do agree with your concern about “just write anything” now that I see it. I think that a better way to put it would be to change the wording to “put in your best effort!” instead, so that it encourages people to write higher quality articles, but it also doesn’t make anyone feel pressured.

For the issues with editors getting emotionally involved, I do see this as being an issue, but I also think that the contest’s structure will help limit this. This is because if someone submits their article to the contest, they will get a bunch of replies saying what people like about their article, and what they learned. Also, the article will go into the “Hall of Fame”, and a template congratulating them will be placed on the discussion page. I believe that this would make the fact that their article was not promoted seem like less of big a deal to them.

For solving the NFD|dup problem, I think that changing the steps to say that you should first use Special:Search to check and see if a similar article has been written will solve this problem, since Special:Search searches everything. I would put steps that say how to use Special:Search to more effectively find duplicates so that users will be able to easily find and articles that might be duplicates. I think that doing that, combined with the Article Creator’s “Are you sure this isn’t a duplicate?” feature would most likely prevent any duplicates from being submitted.

Do you think that these are good solutions to the issues that you mentioned?

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Then I am 100% opposed to the contest - regardless of if the above issue is fixed or not. ANd by the way, I’ve seen several users write them through both Advanced and Guided Editors - and I’ve gotten those emails every single time. The history page would mention the use of the ACT, and none of them have ever said they got use of this tool - users typing aren’t using the ACT and the requester still gets the email.

I’ve had over 300 requests in the database, and every single one I’ve gotten notified for - once it’s been demoted or promoted, leaving me with checking the history to see what’s still needed.

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Oh, I didn’t know that. Thanks for providing that information. Then the rule is not necessary. I will remove it. But you could have informed me of that in a nicer manner.

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Sorry R2, I thought my tone was still on point to be kind, but apparently, my offline feelings for an offline issue had become angry and I expressed my viewpoint with my angry self. I’m upset at what you were saying, and that only intensified my offline issue’s feelings…I think I need to log off for a little while, but I am still opposed to the contest.

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I agree that it’s probably not going to overwhelm boosters like WSU does - and looking at the Bold Edit Contest Hall of Fame, I do feel my initial concern about low-quality stuff may have been overblown. With that context, a cap of one article seems like overkill. But to be sure that we don’t get a ton of low-quality submissions (and so that nobody feels like they need to write All The Requests), I might say we should have a maximum per user anyway - maybe five articles? It lets people answer multiple requests while ensuring it doesn’t flood NAB or result in a lot of stubs.

“Put in your best effort” is a better message here than “just write anything”, too. I’m not sure if celebrating the fact that someone participated could take away the disappointment of a stub or demote (though I personally am quite sensitive to that, so I may be projecting here!), but I’m sure any participants will be able to cope, looking at the Bold Edit Contest. And using Special:Search seems like a good solution to the duplicate problem, so that sounds good to me. I’d feel much more comfortable with these kinds of things in place.

If I can also make a suggestion, I’d also suggest on the contest page for participants to file any bad titles on the ANB - we have a ton of requests and plenty aren’t that great. If we can use this as a way to clear out obviously nonviable titles, that’d be a great help too:slight_smile:

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Sounds good. I’ll add these to the contest page.

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Little late to the party here, but since it seems many, if not all, of the issues mentioned have been resolved in some way, I’d say I’m in support of this contest. I actually saw the wikiHow:Contests page for this in RC the other day and have been looking forward to hearing more! I’d definitely participate in something like this:slight_smile:

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Does anybody else support, or not support, this contest?

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Given the above modifications to the proposal, I’m in support of this contest.

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I just want to remind everyone that if you support this contest, you have to reply. I can’t count likes as a “support” vote. If you do what this contest to happen, there needs to be more support votes to gain a consensus.

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Support

not sure what else to type

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I support.

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I have counted the votes here, and it looks like we have consensus to start this project! I’ll start the contest soon!

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