launchpad-translators team mailing list archive

[Robert Collins <robert.collins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 8:53 PM, Lucian Adrian Grijincu
<lucian.grijincu@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Those of you who have contributed to Stack Exchange sites like
> askubuntu.com or stackoverflow.com may have noticed how little things
> like badges and notifications when new points unlock new
> functionalities bring users back and provide an incentive by
> themselves to contribute. This is similar to the "need" to finish a
> game level even though it's 3AM and you have to go work in the
> morning.

Its not all that similar.
http://www.hideandseek.net/cant-play-wont-play/. Speaking as a long
time gamer, the badges and notifications that many sites are doing are
plain boring. Particularly if I'm just proving in a new context
something I already have the skill to do: set me an exam and lets
bypass all the nonsense.

> Launchpad has something of this kind: the karma counter, but this is a
> static, silent mechanism and does not engage the user as much, whereas
> SE sites make sure to notify the user and congratulate him a lot for
> the first contributions, phasing them out as the user receives more
> and more points for more and more contributions.
>
> In Launchpad translations users could get badges for:
> * first 1 translation suggestion
> * first 10 translation suggestions
> * first 1 accepted translation suggestion
> * first 10 accepted translation suggestions
> * completing 10% of a packages's translation
> * completing a packages's translation
> * rewriting 10 old translations
> * being accepted in the QA team for a language
> * etc.
>
>
> This is not Launchpad Translations specific and can be implemented for
> Launchpad Bugs and other submodules.
>
> Any thoughts on this?

We want to be sure that we encourage high quality contributions, not
numerous contributions. One of the reasons karma is a restrained thing
is for this reason: we don't want folk to do lots of
actions-for-the-sake-of-karma : in fact, we regularly have to speak
with abusers and sometimes disable accounts where folk are doing this.

I think its more important to get spammer and amok-user prevention
heuristics in place before considering badges or other artificial
feedback mechanisms.

-Rob