Karma
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(English) This is an essay. It expresses the opinions and ideas of some Wikimedians but may not have wide support. This is not policy on Meta, but it may be a policy or guideline on other Wikimedia projects. Feel free to update this page as needed, or use the discussion page to propose major changes. |
Karma is a term denoting points accumulated to one's account. At Wikimedia projects in various languages, such concepts include (but are not limited to):
- Number of barnstars
- Designed for contributors to award other contributors with barnstars for what they did well.
- In fact, some content work is not noticed and hence appears less rewarding! And it's unconstructive to just thank where a human feedback on the actions could be useful instead...)
- Total edit count, or that in namespaces.
- Some people make large rare edits of content of use to the project and aren't as welcomed as they could've been.
- Number of FAs you contributed to
- Designed to motivate a contributor to expand existing articles.
- Imposes excessive focus on FA criteria rather than on common sense.
- People who only correct mistakes in articles or write stubs don't get this award, which is imbalanced.
- Designed to do what edit count and barnstars do, at the same time... Shares pros and cons of both.
- Designed to help new and inexperienced users by pairing them with more experienced Wikipedians.
- This makes a newcomer feel “inexperienced”, in contrast to the mentor.
- In fact, we are all learning, we're all more or less experienced...
- Some reviews are more difficult. Scoring them all as 1 point is not balanced.
- Quality > Quantity; this system gives more points for quantity instead.
These are disastrous, barbarous concepts; apart from being confusing, they mislead contributors' work. Examples are included, as an illustration of the concept.
- Good Humour barnstar — misused to apply more humour and pay less attention to the content and context being worked on.
- GA and FA class style guidelines (a follow-up) — considered more valuable when justifying work on article, over reaching agreement and understanding with another contributor.