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problemParticipants are not motivated to contribute throughout the duration of a month-long edit-a-thon
solutionCreate a statboard for the event to maintain competition.
creatorNetha Hussain
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created on16 March, 2014
status:in progress


What problem does this solve?

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Participants of the month-long online edit-a-thons are not motivated to contribute throughout the length of the event because they lose enthusiasm. This pattern aims at finding ideas for motivating the participants to actively contribute throughout the edit-a-thon.

What is the solution?

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Create a stat board for the event. The stat board should reflect the real-time progress of the event in terms of number of bytes added/edits made by the all the participants of the event. The participants are generally motivated when they see their contributions being compared with others. The stat board maintains a sense of healthy competition among the participants and make them want to contribute further.

General considerations

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  • Spread the word about the stat board among the participants. Place a link to the stat board on the event page.
  • Make sure that the code works well before the start of the edit-a-thon. A sloppy code might give you wrong stats!

When to use

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  • In edit-a-thons spanning for over two weeks. Here is an example.
  • In real-life edit-a-thons, after having the participants opt-in for being tracked.

When not to use

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  • In workshops where participants of different experience levels are present. The experienced editors are likely to gather more points than newbies, which might discourage the newbies and affect their interest to participate further.

Endorsements

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See also

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  1. An example statboard used for Women's History Month events in India and its code.

References

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