Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Canada/The 10,000 Challenge/Awards

This page is for discussion and organization of an awards system for The 10,000 Challenge of WikiProject Canada.

How this came about

This is the third phase in my approach to organize and promote the challenge by: cleaning up the layout of the pages for easier use, promoting the challenge through targeted notices to Canadian-content creators, and giving out awards to recognize contributors and draw more attention the challenge. There's nothing new or innovative here, I've used established systems and adapted what I've seen elsewhere.

I picked November as the target month to give out awards as it marks The Challenge's anniversary, and I didn't want to set it back to December which is a busy month for many editors. I also thought it'd be nice to keep it seasonal for the Maple Leaf Awards. Although some projects have monthly award competitions (eg: GOCE, AFC), I felt it would be too much work to do this every month and that annual (or semi-annual) awards made more sense.

I chose The Maple Leaf Awards as they were already established with the WikiProject and I felt the geometric scale fit the challenge. Reds can be given to casual contributors, who might be inspired to try for the silver awards given to regulars, who in turn will know that if they stick with challenge they'll be recognized with a gold award. It can take years to earn a gold award, which nicely fit the timeframe of the challenge.

Given that contributions to the list are not equally substantial, ranging from updates and reference repair to full featured articles, recognitions shouldn't be given solely by number of list entries, yet it'd be too much work to check every article. I made a system to try to assess the overall contributions and give fair recognition. I felt that a random check of three articles per contributor was sufficient to demonstrate quality. (Additional checks may have been made to help decide when a contributor was close to an award threshold.) – Reidgreg (talk) 15:05, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Things to be done, Oct 2017

I would greatly appreciate if someone could check over the awards page as a whole and let me know if it's reasonable or if you spot anything that you think could be changed, clarified or otherwise improved.

For article checks, I have a few areas of particular concern for which I would appreciate a second opinion:

• The expansion of Place D'Youville (Quebec) is small and unsourced, and I don't feel it qualifies. (addressed below)
• The expansion of New Prussia, Ontario is sourced but fairly minor, and I'm not sure it alone is enough to qualify for a red award.
• Magnolia677 created 25 new articles but many of them are stubs. The contributions are at least worth a red award but I'm not certain there's enough content to qualify for a silver award.

I would greatly appreciate if someone could check the articles that I submitted to the Challenge. (One already went through AfC.)

With the new contributors who started adding to the list in October, there will be an additional 60+ articles to be checked. If one or two editors could check some of those, the work would go a lot faster. Any volunteers?

I expect to update the table's contribution numbers and add random articles to check in mid-October and again in early November. – Reidgreg (talk) 15:05, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

I've updated the table with contributions from 1 to 11 October, and about 35 articles to check (including my own). – Reidgreg (talk) 18:54, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

@Reidgreg: I've re-written and expanded the article on Place D'Youville (Quebec), including a nomination for DYK. The old article was essentially just a copy-paste from the French Wikipedia into Google Translate, then here. Jon Kolbert (talk) 15:34, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

@Jon Kolbert: great! That's substantial enough to keep it on the list. I'll put another article expansion on your tally. - Reidgreg (talk) 18:43, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

The last articles from October have been added. I wouldn't mind a second opinion on awards before giving them out (soon!). Reidgreg (talk) 15:49, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Barnstars

Hello everyone, I've re-done a few of the barnstars as vectors (with the generous help of User:Drewmutt). I'm willing to do some tweaking if desired. Jon Kolbert (talk) 01:31, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

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I've listed the older graphics from Template:The Maple Leaf Award for direct comparison.

• Do the new (top) ones qualify as Barnstar 2.0?
• The maple leaf on the old (lower) ones is used in a lot of WikiProject Canada banners, etc. Not that we have to use it, but it would be project-consistent. I imagine it would be no small task to make a vector version of that maple leaf.
• The maple leafs in the top ones seem a bit high on the barnstar. They also look smaller to me, though it may be because the lower maple leafs are "fuller" (or the shaded background gives the lower ones dimension which makes them seem bigger) with the red standing out more against the lighter background. I'd like to see the leafs in the top ones lowered a bit and sized-up to fill the middle of the barnstar.

Awesome work! – Reidgreg (talk) 14:13, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

@Reidgreg: Thanks! I'm not sure if what the criterion are to qualify it a Barnstar 2.0. I've uploaded a new version that's more centred and uses the same maple leaf pattern as the WikiProject - but I also included a gradient because otherwise I found it falls a bit flat. I've left a large version here so the detail can easily been seen. I can also add the leaf design to the red barnstar in this file File:WLM_Barnstar_1.svg. That way we can have four replacement barnstars - if desired. File:Canadian Barnstar - Bronze v2.svg Jon Kolbert (talk) 14:42, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Okay, now that's totally awesome! Here are the Barnstar 2.0 guidelines. (Warning: the page is all graphics with no alt text.) It seems to meet the criteria to me, though I'm surprised it doesn't mention SVGs. That's a good idea with the gold/silver/bronze/red. Does the red-on-red look alright? I could change {{Can10k award}} to give the new ones or either type (eg: |type=red1 for original, |type=red2 for new). – Reidgreg (talk) 16:05, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

@Reidgreg: Here they are! There was an issue with the red barnstar, I'm trying to find a solution. Jon Kolbert (talk) 18:42, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

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@Jon Kolbert: any progress? If not, I can probably use the old red barnstar and the new bronze/silver/gold ones. I finished checking the random articles. Just have to do a few more at the beginning of November and finalize awards, and would like to be good-to-go by then. – Reidgreg (talk) 18:53, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

@Reidgreg: Still working on it - I propose having the red one as the top-level barnstar, as I'm going to try and make this one to replace the Canadian content award. Jon Kolbert (talk) 21:25, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

I rather liked the red as the lowest award, one that anyone should be able to earn and display proudly. (Plus, this time of year, they are very plentiful.) The Can-Con Award, by name alone, distinguishes it as separate from the Maple Leaf Awards, so it may as well be the "top" award. – Reidgreg (talk) 16:49, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

@Reidgreg: I've uploaded two new files and have adjusted the awards page. If you prefer the old Canadian Content award by all means feel free to restore it. If you would like anything tweaked let me know :) Jon Kolbert (talk) 21:26, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Representative samples

@OhanaUnited: Thanks for listing another article to review. The articles to check on the tables were chosen randomly, in an attempt to get a statistical sample. However, I understand this method might not detect an editor's best work. If an editor submitted 9 stubs and 1 B-class article creation, there's a relatively small chance that a random sample of 3 would include the B-class. I have tried to keep an eye out for bolded articles (i.e.: GA and FA class), but otherwise I don't see how I'd have time to be more comprehensive. I don't suppose you know of any tools that can take a list of articles and return their class, possibly along with some editing history stats? – Reidgreg (talk) 13:18, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Second year

Awards for the second year have been distributed except for mine (Reidgreg). For anyone who would like to give me an award, so that you don't have to read through that whole page, I'm leaving some instructions here to make it easier:

1. There is a table at Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada/The 10,000 Challenge/Awards § Awards for second year of challenge. Find Reidgreg and there are three random articles you can check to make sure I did the work. If you want, pick other articles of mine from the master achievement list within 1346–2275. Most of them have already been checked by WIR or DYK. One easy way to check edits is with xTools page history ( 1, 2, 3) and they should be adequately referenced.
2. Pick an award level which is fair compared to the contributions of others on the sortable table.
3. Give an award in a new section at User talk:Reidgreg using the template with instructions at §Distributing awards on the awards page. It should look something like these:
   • {{subst:Can10k award|type=bronze2|reason=writing 54 new articles and a major expansion}}
   • {{subst:Can10k award|type=silver2|reason=writing 54 new articles and a major expansion}}
4. (optional) To keep a tidy record, edit the table and note the award I earned, and use {{y}} to check that it was given and to note the articles which passed verification.

Much thanks in advance! – Reidgreg (talk) 15:24, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

10,000 Challenge Awards vs. The Maple Leaf Award

I've started a discussion on the Maple Leaf Award talk page about synchronizing this award and the Maple Leaf Award. Feel free to chime in here: Template talk:The Maple Leaf Award#New ribbons, and updating. - Aknell4 (talk · contribs) 19:58, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

GAs

Reidgreg, shouldn't GAs be a requirement for some of the higher reward levels? Volcanoguy 17:19, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

@Volcanoguy: That would make things easier for scoring but not everyone brings articles to GA, and I'm not comfortable imposing that as a must-have. For example, Anne Delong did between 170 and 330 article expansions (plus other contributions) in each of the challenge's first three years, and as far as I recall none of them went through GAN (though I'm sure a number of them would have passed the GA criteria). It's been my feeling that editors who make very large numbers of smaller contributions (which can easily happen over several years) should be considered for the higher rewards. – Reidgreg (talk) 20:22, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

@Reidgreg: Not everyone brings articles to B-class or FA-class either but they are listed as minimum requirements for the bronze, silver and gold maple leaf awards so I don't see why GA-class can't be a minimum requirement for one of the higher reward levels. Volcanoguy 20:37, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

@Volcanoguy: Oh, I understand. (1) When I set that up, I was following the template documentation at Template:The Maple Leaf Award, where Red is a small kudos for a useful series of edits [...] or for one particularly clever edit that deserves mention, Silver is for a major initiative, such as writing a featured article about Canada or standardising a series about one Canada-related topic and Gold is for months or years of hard work into all aspects of Canada-related articles. I added the Bronze level at B-class, feeling that B-class was a better middle ground than GA. I felt that was a good system as almost anyone could get a Red "participation" award while the higher levels were something to really work toward. (2) Where it says The minimum requirement would be to write a B-class article. perhaps it should be added "or equivalent contributions". e.g: expansions to five articles which would be equivalent quality content to creating a new B-class article from scratch. – Reidgreg (talk) 05:33, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

@Reidgreg: I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that it's unclear where GAs fall in the awards because there's nothing on the awards page about them. Volcanoguy 00:22, 21 March 2024 (UTC)