Forum:Removing wiki achievements

Wiki achievements were added in December of last year, on the promise that they would encourage users to edit constructively and encourage anonymous users to create an account.

As evidenced by my posts on that forum page, I've been against wiki achievements since they were created, several years ago. To recap my opposition to achievements:


 * 1) This system goes against the spirit of editing. It rewards users with arbitrary points (an e-penis, more or less) for menial tasks they ought to have been willing to do in the first place.


 * 1) It has failed to provide any growth. Activity before and after implementation has remained relatively constant.


 * 1) It is almost entirely uncustomizable. Beyond some very basic settings achievements cannot be changed fundamentally.


 * 1) It fosters poor edit habits, as has been proven time and again. No matter how on-target our admins are, it won't stop people from editing with achievements in mind (as opposed to editing for the well-being of the wiki)


 * 1) We have our own system that actually works. It encourages positive editing habits and interaction with other users.

Now that they've been up for over a half a year, we can draw a few conclusions on achievements in terms of impact on the community. Firstly, it does not encourage users -- new or old -- from editing on any wide scale. Users such as PSK, 3R, PLR, and the other administrators, did not suddenly pick up editing on the inclusion of achievements. In fact (related to my second point in my opposition), editing as a whole did pick up that month -- but it was part of a pre-existing upswing rolling over from the previous two months (which can be seen at Special:WikiStats), which fell off the month after and has remained in flux between 1000 and 4000 edits per month ever since. This directly corroborates the relation between achievements being in force and user activity -- that is to say: there is no relationship between the two. I could even name users who have joined since achievement implementation who have not done anything since joining. By the logic of those in support of achievements, these same editors ought to be editing in some fashion, at least, but they aren't.

The second conclusion we can draw about achievements -- not only do they not encourage our normal users to edit or do anything constructive, but they simply draw achievement-hunters. Sure, we stomped them out whenever they showed up, but the fact is that those few still showed up.

These two conclusions lead to a more overarching theme -- when the achievements aren't drawing achievement-hunters, they're not doing anything constructive. Now some might say "well they aren't hurting anything, are they?" But they also aren't doing anything constructive either. Not only that, but they're ugly, barely modifiable, and extremely ambiguous.

Essentially they're gold stars awarded for doing menial tasks that the user in question should already have been willing to do without the expectation of a reward.

Achievements furthermore are pointless on a wiki like ours -- where most of the users who stick around have already been around for years before their implementation. This means that they're, basically, incorrect as far as our older users go. And we rarely get new, permanent users.

We have a robust awards system which does a better job of rewarding users for doing something meaningful, and it looks better.

To sum up shortly what I've written above:


 * Achievements have no effect on editor behavior beyond encouraging achievement-hunters.
 * Achievements "reward" users for making menial tasks that they should already have been willing to do.
 * Achievements don't encourage any kind of competition (friendly or hostile). Nobody really pays attention to them beyond the achievement hunters.
 * In a community like ours, where the majority of our users predate their implementation, they don't accurately show anything about a user's editing habits/motivation.
 * Achievements are barely modifiable, and nowhere near as robust as the preexisting awards system that we've had in place for years.

"So what's the point of writing all this?" you must be wondering. Well I'd like to open up a discussion on whether the community still wishes to retain wiki achievements with all these things in mind. Юра  04:08, July 23, 2014 (UTC)