Wikipedia talk:Service awards/Archive 6

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Archive 7

[fine graded] Incremental awards?

By the way, did anyone notice that an editor created the page Wikipedia:Incremental service awards and added an entry for them on Template:Barnstarpages?

They allow for ribbons (only ribbons) at the lower levels at incremental levels, jumping levels at every couple of weeks/couple hundred edits.

I don't have any problem with this and this is fine work, but I think they should be integrated into this page and not have a whole separate entry on the Barnstarpages template. They don't really stand alone, and aren't as important as the other entries on that template. (Also FWIW I have found almost no use of the ribbons in the field, although they may be more used at lower levels.)

Maybe they could just be added near the bottom of the page after the main table? I have placed mergeto/mergefrom templates on these pages. Herostratus (talk) 07:34, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, perhaps the fact that there is almost no use of the ribbons may give an indication of the worth of this. Who would really like to change their user page every other week? I find it difficult to see it fitting here. It might lead to a fine grading of the upper level: potentially 100-200 levels. Who would like this? Mootros (talk) 11:08, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Well I agree that the usage is likely to be low. But 1) you never know, and 2) an editor did go to the trouble of making them, and 3) they are "fitting here" now, in the sense that they exist and have a separate entry on the Barnstars template list equal to this page. The question is how to handle this.

One question is, are these a good thing? We like the service awards, but you only have to worry about them every six months at most (after the first couple of levels). The defense of the service awards has always been "if you don't like them don't use them" and wouldn't that apply to these? Or is this going too far? Would they bring the service awards into disrepute? Is it just too much clutter?

It seems to me that possible outcomes are:

Leave the situation as it is. I am against this.
Merge them on here. Maybe a separate section at the bottom - "Here are some more ribbons if you like".
Nominate them for deletion via MfD. I would be quite reluctant to do this to another editor's good-faith reasonable-quality work.
Remove their entry from the Barnstar template page with just a "See also" link at the bottom, of this page. (And also remove the opening text, which replicates the text of this page.)
As above, but also userfy them.

I vote for #4. Herostratus (talk) 17:32, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

In fact I don't just vote for #4, I propose to implement #4 absent any objection. Herostratus (talk) 22:23, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I can see you logic as #4 would be the easiest. But would it not result in a fork? It copied just the text from the Service Award. What does the creator say to all this? Why is this award called "incremental"? What is the Service Award than? I dread to think. Mootros (talk) 22:32, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

May I also point out that #3 would not necessarily remove any of these artworks. People should indeed be at liberty to place these items on their pages! But having a template, especially one that emulates an existing one, I find difficult. I think, the page should be moved into the userspace of the person who created it. It looks very much like a private endeavor. Mootros (talk) 22:52, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm well another editor deleted them (effectively) by converting the page to a redirect here. That wasn't too friendly in my opinion, so I restored them, but then userfied them to ~~User:Iamiyouareyou/Incremental service awards~~, as I'm not seeing a lot of support for them at this time. I note that User:Iamiyouareyou is a Burba, and understandably wanted a set of incremental awards for Burbas. That is not necessarily a bad thing at all, and after all we would expect Burbas to be in the forefront of an effort like this. I'm not convinced that these have no place in the scheme, but I don't want it to get too cluttered. I'm not sure that putting them at a subpage of this page with a link at Burba would be bad. But it might be. Herostratus (talk) 20:11, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok ok thanks for opening this discussion and you few actually discussing them. There are two main reasons I made them:

. I'm sure the average person does not edit that often, also if you follow the unwritten rule of edit-preview-correct-submit chances are that you could make an infinite number of changes that would count as only one edit.
. I wanted to show a more of my progress at a finer limit then was provided. Iamiyouareyou (talk) 15:18, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

so if we could find a way to get them approved by the community and use them that would be awesome. Iamiyouareyou (talk) 15:22, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Well there you are! I was afraid a bear had eaten you or something. Herostratus (talk) 16:37, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Here is the page I created what do you think btw it's talk page is open. Incremental Service Awards Iamiyouareyou (talk) 15:05, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Additional top level/ possibility of reverting to 3rd of March version

1

This editor is Grand Gom, the Highest Togneme of the Encyclopedia and is entitled to keep the floor plan of The Great Library of Alecyclopedias, including its ancient access keys.

If that's the "agreed" outcome [see above section], we should have one more level: That's a 20 year level. Ultimate Editor can easily be renamed to Sovereign Editor II and the rest moves up.

Level 16 (Grandmaster Editor (or Redoubtable Togneme))
Level 17 (Grandmaster Editor II (or Rocambolesque Bordonth))
Level 18 (Ultimate Editor (or Laureate Kipzock Inziklopediock))
Level 19 (Vanguard Editor (or Gom))

Mootros (talk) 10:56, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm well. I'd counterpropose that any interval over two years between levels is too long, and that level 18 should be reduced to 14 years and a new level, if added, be at 16 years, and any levels after that at two-year intervals. There's no hurry on adding to the upper end. Herostratus (talk) 01:20, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Don't think we need the two year interval for the final level. It's supposed to be an "Ueber-Level" the last level. After 15 years of dedication another-two-year-turn-around will not have the same appeal anymore than after the first two years. It's supposed to be an Ideal type; the (suggested) names of Vanguard Editor (or Gom) nicely convey this.

I think, this should be added now, to have more the appearance of a life-time project. The longer it remains in one form, the harder it would be to change, especially if we want to add a level in between. Plus, for sheer consistency:

Level 16 (Grandmaster Editor (or Redoubtable Togneme))
Level 17 (Grandmaster Editor II (or Rocambolesque Bordonth))

It would make it more corresponding between the main name and alternative names. I'm quite certain that the additional level raised slightly higher, in conjunction with a better naming consistency, would be a welcome addition to the scheme. Mootros (talk) 23:49, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Note: For more consistency I suggest to replace the "Sovereign" with "Grandmaster". It's more in the spirit of skills, and less that one is not part of the community. Mootros (talk) 12:16, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Sneak preview affixed. Mootros (talk) 23:33, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

We just got the new system up. While I admire your enthusiasm, it's too soon IMHO to mess with it further. I'm fine with brainstorming with no set deadline, is this how you see these proposals?HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 21:27, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind feedback. Well, the idea is to fine tune the new system. I thought it's not a major change (adding an extra level and renaming two). The person who kindly came up with the higher levels did a really good job, but it just needs some straighting out to make a little bit more in the spirit of the community. So if people don't object, we could go ahead and make it really nice. Or would you like me to explain the rationale a little bit further. Or do you think we should approach this differently? Many thanks!Mootros (talk) 22:24, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Re Just brainstorming. That's what I thought we were doing, especially with the numbers, but then we just saw a major redevelopment in terms of numbers and years. If that's what we want we might as well go for it and try to make it better. Mootros (talk) 22:27, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Nice, but shouldn't it have 12 stars? Lanthanum-138 (talk) 02:03, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, taking the time to get good images is part of my concern. Re major redevelopment: that's been a few years in the making and finally just went live. I'm not saying don't mess with it, just not right this moment, okay? HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 02:51, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely. These would be the only two images (plus one new ribbon), as there will only be an additional level added. I hope people like them. @ Lanthanum-138 Glad you like it. Ain't there twelve: i.e. 11+1? Mootros (talk) 16:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

2

Well let's see. Here's what I think. As far as the jump between the levels is, if we are going to to take the higher levels seriously, there cannot be a gap of more than two years between any level. The basic purpose of the Service Awards if motivation. They are probably not really that big a deal, but for the purposes of discussion, let's imagine them as something that, for at least some editors, does serve as at least a little bit of their motivation for continuing to edit. (If this isn't true, the awards have no purpose and none of this matters; but let's assume for the purpose of discussion that it is true, at least a little bit.)

When you are at (say) level 5, you can look ahead to level 6 and say (depending on whether it is time or number of edits that is your bottleneck) "Well, that is only six months ahead. I can imagine continuing to edit that much more, I can do that" or "Well, that is 2,000 more edits. I can do that". It gets harder as you go up, so in looking from (say) level 10 to level 11 you are still looking at six months but now its 4,000 edits. But I can still see someone saying "Well, 4,000 edits, that's a lot, but I can do that". Looking from (say) level 14 to level 15, you are looking at two years and 18,000 edits. That is a lot of time and a lot of edits, and in my opinion is the absolute outside limit of what a reasonable person would say "Well, that's a lot, but I can do that" if not already outside the limit.

But going from level level 14 to level 15? An editor would look at that and think (depending on which element lags) "Well, I'm not going to get there for three more years" or "Well, I am going to need to makeanother 34,000 edits to get there". I think a reasonable response would be to think "That's too much. I'll never be able to do that".

I mean, I have been editing heavily here for what seems to me a very long time, and I have 22,000 edits and less that six years service. Another 34,000 edits or three years just to go up one level? It seems like a herculean task and is demotivating if a anything.

So in my opinion, you cannot have any jump, ever, that is more than 2 years and 18,000 edits. In my opinion even that is too much. If we want to reform, I think that the next reform should be to add levels at the seven-year, nine-year, and eleven-year points. (Just the technicalities of how to do that without overly disturbing the existing schema sounds headachy, though.)

But if we're not going to do that and instead add levels to the top, I feel pretty strongly that they cannot at be at intervals of more than two years. We would need scrap the 15-year point and have levels at 14, 16, 18, and 20 years (and longer beyond that if we want to).

As to the pictures and medals... Well, what is beyond the Second Edition of the Universal Compendium of Universal Knowledge? Well, there is always the 3rd and 4th etc editions, I guess, although that's not too creative, so maybe we have exhausted the "book" theme. (Maybe I'm missing here though. The Voynich manuscript could be worked in, or the The Book of Sand (although this is rather obscure), and I'm sure there are similar others.)

We maybe need to go beyond books to collections. How about, we could have "...is presumed able to master the entire Library of Alexandria" and "...Library of Congress" and other famous collections? The 20-year level might be Borges's The Library of Babel, which contains not only everything ever written but everything that ever could be written.

As to material for the medals, I think one or two were mentioned in earlier discussions that we didn't.Unobtanium was mentioned, and they don't have to be metals (or even stars anymore for that matter). Diamond could be used or other precious gems. Pehaps Neutronium for the 20-year level?

Well all that is woolgathering... it's amusing to make images and names, and this is fine, but before we go beyond that we need to get a structure in place. In my opinion it should be one of these:

Adding levels at 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, and 14 years (and at beyond 16 years if desired). (Hard.)
Getting rid of (or moving) the 15-year level and instead having levels at 14, 16, 18, and 20 years. (Easier.)

"Don't worry about it now" is also a valid option, but for those of us who do want to worry about it, it should be one of those two choices, I think (unless there are other schemes I have not imagined).Herostratus (talk) 18:01, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the "Don't worry about it now" argument is not very helpful. I disagree that you cannot have a gap for more than 2 years and and 18,000 edits jump. I maintain that after 15 years of dedicated service one will be beyond an edit count. One will have transcended and either continue like this or not, regardless of an edit count. That's the entire point: to write articles for it's own worth. Motivation must by this point (actually way before this) come from somewhere else. So 15 years followed by 20 years is a perfect representation of this. I like both of the new metals. Mootros (talk) 20:08, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

TLDR A large part of my support for "Don't worry about it now" is concern for high quality images and sensible ordering of metals, documents, and names. So as long as everyone is considering lots of ideas and letting them evolve with no pressure to get it done by next Tuesday, fine by me.HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 21:07, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Ah heh sorry about the Wall Of Text. Yes I agree we need to and should do nothing now and for a while. Mootros, I don't agree that the awards are necessarily no longer a motivation after 12 or 15 years, and if it's true that'd be a good argument for just leaving them as they are for now or for forever. But let's have some more discussion over the time, a year or more if necessary, before doing anything. Herostratus (talk) 23:39, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't really understand this. Why not do anything anymore? Why do we have to wait for a year. Two weeks ago, there was a rush to implement the new numbers (where I personally did not see an agreement).I pointed out that we need to decide a top limit, before changing the edit and year count, in regard to the questionwhether this is the final decision. This was ignored and now we are supposedly to stop in the middle of an ongoing discussion.

Moving forward, I have created to one high quality image, modified a second high quality image and made some reasonable suggestion. People should make specific comments or alternative suggestions on these specific cases. If there is no agreement we should revert to this version 3rd March 2011[1] until we have found an agreement. Mootros (talk) 21:36, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Well as I said, I would prefer awards at 12-14-16-18-20 years. So I'm not in favor of implementing this.Herostratus (talk) 20:13, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

It now looks like there is a persistent disagreement. I suggest a compromise: that we have a second final level at a two and a half year interval: It would like something like this:

This editor is a Grand High Togneme Laureate and is entitled to write the Book of All Knowledge: 3rd Edition and attach the library barcode.

This editor is Grand Gom, the Highest Togneme of the Encyclopedia and is entitled to keep the floor plan of The Great Library of Alecyclopedias, including its ancient access keys.

*Level 16 (Grandmaster Editor (or Redoubtable Togneme))

*Level 17 (Grandmaster Editor II (or Rocambolesque Bordonth))

*15 years Level 18 (Ultimate Editor (or Laureate Kipzock Inziklopediock))

*17.5 years Level 19 (Ultimate Editor II (or Venerable Kipzock Vinziklopediom))

*20 years Level 20 (Vanguard Editor (or Gom))

If this is not acceptable, we should revert to 3rd of March version and do some more major rethinking and pay more attention to the time intervals for the entire schema. Please let me know. Mootros(talk) 22:38, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, no, reverting to the March 3rd version is out of the question at this point. We have to work within the current framework. Levels 16-17-18 (10-12-15 years) can be worked with there is no one at the latter two levels yet and no one at level 16 is displaying a service award now. But any levels below that should be left as is.

I guess my question, what is your objection to a 10-12-14-16-18-20 year scheme? I don't see anyharm in having steps be no longer than two years, and I think that any longer is too long. What is wrong, specifically, with having the levels above level 14 be two years apart? Herostratus(talk) 23:55, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick response. There are two objection: I/ Why stop at a two year increase half a way through the scheme? (There is a gradual increase from 1 day, 1 month, 6 months, 1 year 1.5. year 2 year, which stops half way through the scheme.) Psychologically speaking the continual gradual increase presents an increase in continually higher "reward" for achievement. II/ More than 20 level would lead to necessary fine-grading. (We just saw a "private scheme" like this deleted). As said before the suggestion below, is a reasonable compromise that can quickly be implemented without any disruption.

*Level 16 (Grandmaster Editor (or Redoubtable Togneme))

*Level 17 (Grandmaster Editor II (or Rocambolesque Bordonth))

*15 years Level 18 (Ultimate Editor (or Laureate Kipzock Inziklopediock))

*17.5 years Level 19 (Ultimate Editor II (or Venerable Kipzock Vinziklopediom))

*20 years Level 20 (Vanguard Editor (or Gom))

If you're not happy with this, lets revert back to 3rd March and try to do it properly. The increase is probably to steep (time wise) at the mid level and too low at the higher (suggested) levels. Please let me know. 22:31, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I hear you. Give me a few days to cogitate on this and I'll perhaps open a new section where we can hash this out. Herostratus (talk) 05:50, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi Herostratus, that's ok, but are you not making it more difficult, as you continue the "upgrading process" while the issues is not yet resolved? Let's try to get this sorted together. Mootros (talk) 21:42, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

3

The time is never in sync for me (by edit count I would be two levels higher than by time), so I won't comment on that; instead I'll comment about the images. I can see you have $11+1=12$ stars, but the stars are usually at the top of the badge, so this is a bit confusing. (Is there any fictitious metal beyond the philosopher's stone? I don't think it's very likely that there is one, but you never know.) Lanthanum-138 (talk) 13:36, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I see your point re the image; this could be changed. I suggest to dispense with all these little stars and add one large star replicating the affixed centre one. Any comments? Mootros (talk) 21:06, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I would not recommend any changes of any kind, basically, at this time, until the future-structure thing is worked out. I'm not sure what you mean, Lanthanum-138 by "11 + 1 = 12 stars"? Do you mean the little stars at on the ribbon above the big star? I count only 11 stars on the highest-level star. What, exactly, is confusing?

As to the time and edits not being in sync, well, this is in the nature of using a one-size-fits all scheme. I myself have the opposite problem, my level by edits lags a couple of years behind my level by time. So adjusting for users like you would make it worse for users like me. I think that being off by only a couple of levels is a pretty good sync, actually. And there are some editors who are wildly off - some editors make over 50,000 edits a year (not sure, but I think they do fairly automatic (but still very vital and useful, of course) edits using Huggle or AutoWikiBrowser or other tools), and some editors have been here almost ten years, are still active, but only have a few thousand edits. And we would seldom expect editors to be advancing exactly or nearly exactly in sync; most people are going to be off somewhat one way or the other. Herostratus (talk) 23:10, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Herostratus would your like to (re)design the (two) missing image(s). The alternative ones are done. The structure is already worked out, as outlined above, since you don't want to revert back to the 3rd of March version. Mootros (talk) 00:20, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I've noted you reverted my changes. I've now reverted back to 3rd March. I have ask you for the last 3 weeks to find an agreement. My changes today were not related to your concerns raised; nobody has objected. I raised my concerns for four weeks and you continued to ignore this. I think we now need to start from the beginning and find a solution. Yes, indeed structure needs to be work out first as I already kept saying at the end of February. Mootros (talk)

The fictional metals are a bit...weird to me, but Wolfram Alpha implies that only rubidium and caesium are stable and cost more than rhodium, and those would be silly. Lanthanum-138 (talk) 11:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

By the stars, I mean that the stars at the top go:

0. Veteran Editor (or Tutnum) - iron

Veteran Editor II (or Grand Tutnum) - bronze
Veteran Editor III (or Most Perfect Tutnum) - silver
Veteran Editor IV (or Tutnum of the Encyclopedia) - gold
Senior Editor (or Labutnum) - platinum
Senior Editor II (or Most Pluperfect Labutnum) - platinum
Senior Editor III (or Labutnum of the Encyclopedia) - platinum
Master Editor (or Illustrious Looshpah) - rhodium
Master Editor II (or Almightly Looshpah) - rhodium
Sovereign Editor (or Redoubtable Togneme) - bufonite
Ultimate Editor (or Rocambolesque Bordonth) - orichalcum
Vanguard Editor (or Laureate Kipzock Inziklopediock) - lapis philosophorum
Gom - neutronium (I don't like unobtainium - "it's not obtainable, right?"? :-))

But the Gom template only has 11 stars at the top! Shouldn't we have consistency?? Lanthanum-138 (talk) 11:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Now I see! Yes why not. It was merely a suggestion. Would you like to try to design some images. The way it looks we actually might have two additional top level rather than one:

0. Veteran Editor (or Tutnum) - iron

Veteran Editor II (or Grand Tutnum) - bronze
Veteran Editor III (or Most Perfect Tutnum) - silver
Veteran Editor IV (or Tutnum of the Encyclopedia) - gold
Senior Editor (or Labutnum) - platinum
Senior Editor II (or Most Pluperfect Labutnum) - platinum
Senior Editor III (or Labutnum of the Encyclopedia) - platinum
Master Editor (or Illustrious Looshpah) - rhodium
Master Editor II (or Almightly Looshpah) - rhodium
Grandmaster Editor (or Redoubtable Togneme) - bufonite
Grandmaster Editor II (or Rocambolesque Bordonth) - orichalcum
Ultimate Editor (or Laureate Kipzock Inziklopediock) - lapis philosophorum
Ultimate Editor II (or Venerable Kipzock Vinziklopediom) - ? +?
Vanguard Editor (or Gom) - neutronium (+ unobtainium?)

So the last two need to be (re)created i.e. Ultimate Editor II and (the new) Vanguard Editor. Try to be creative in terms of the materials. Can you do image editing? Mootros (talk) 16:45, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't really have image editing programs (not what I usually do) :-(. Suggestions for Ultimate Editor II: (We might have had stuff previously in earlier discussion that got scrapped, like mythril.) Lanthanum-138 (talk) 11:09, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Lanthanum for your continuing commitment. So to recap the two top new level could be something like this:

Ultimate Editor II : "This editor is an Ultimate Editor II and is entitled to display this Mythril Editor Star with an additional Superstar." Vanguard Editor (or Gom): "This editor is an Vanguard Editor and is entitled to display this Neutronium Editor Star with additional Unobtanium Superstar."

What about the number and colour of stars, as well as the colours and metals of the stars? I am bit concerned if there are too many stars; it might look more impressive to increase the size of the stars. I could imagine to have for the first (new) Ultimate Editor level one big star on the "band-knot", for the Ultimate Editor II level two big stars on the "band-knot", and for the new Vanguard Editor (or Gom) two big stars on the "band-knot" plus one big star in the centre of the "suspended banstar" (as the example shows). It's a suggestion. Maybe you have some better ideas. Let me know. Mootros (talk) 16:58, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

4

Once the number of stars gets above five or six, it becomes rather silly. Once Wikipedia becomes 20 years old, if we continue with Herostratus' plans, without changing the star stuff (pun not intended), and the templates go up to 24 years (say), people might think: "So I earned an extra star and got from 15 to 16. So what? I can't even see the difference!" So yes, I would like anything but adding to the number of stars. For higher stars, you could have (bigger) six-, seven- or even eight-pointed stars instead of the usual five-pointed ones, or maybe you could go for a higher-dimensional version of a star (some quick searching throws up the Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra, which look pretty good, I must say). Just a few suggestions. Lanthanum-138 (talk) 13:47, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

As for the colours of the stars, on [2] at niobium and tantalum you can see some coins and tokens said to be made of mythril, but really of anodised niobium or tantalum. These take on a spectacular appearance ([3]), so you might consider some of the colours there (anodised). For neutronium, such a strong, dense material, also without electrons would probably be dark black (see discussion at Talk:Neutronium which is pretty much WP:OR, but never mind). The trouble is that the dark black stars look like the iron star from much earlier. (BTW, I don't like iron; it rusts and the star just ~~flakes~~ rusts away. Not a good idea to glorify someone's accomplishments on WP with that. Perhaps copper or aluminium? That would certainly solve the problem of neutronium-iron constrast.) Lanthanum-138 (talk) 13:52, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much! I am really impressed with the Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra and I can see alot of scope in there, I will try to do some editing and will present the results. Again thank you kindly :) Mootros (talk) 19:11, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Hafnium has also been considered, in case you wanted to know, but it's not really as expensive. (BTW, I think you should make the links in the templates go to small stellated dodecahedron as that's the Kepler-Poinsot polyhedron in question.) Lanthanum-138 (talk) 01:49, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

What happened to the stars at the top? Although I think their number is insane, I oppose removing them altogether. After five or six stars we could make bigger stars (is there enough room?) or stars with more points at the top. I don't think users with 9 stars are going to be happy going back to 0 stars. I think either we keep the stars (a bit silly unless we think of good arrangements - the 11-star arrangement is awful, the rest I think OK), or we make redesigned stars. Any further comments are appreciated.

Just a heads up: no matter how much brainstorming and discussion we do here, this won't be implemented unless we can get others to agree. We could try letting some more of the "old hands" here know about this - MiQ, e.g.? - and see what comes of this. Lanthanum-138 (talk) 02:24, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Where does the name "Gom" come from anyway? Is it complete nonsense, or is there something behind it? :-D Also, we better start thinking seriously about the time and edit count. Lanthanum-138 (talk) 02:43, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Clarification note: I like the pictures very much! Currently working on updating the table at User:Lanthanum-138/SVC Table (unlike a normal user subpage, anyone can edit it!). Lanthanum-138 (talk) 03:24, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Btw, I would not recommend any radioactive elements (we once had plutonium, nobelium and meitnerium). That implies that one's accomplishments break down easily. Lanthanum-138 (talk) 03:44, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I have updated the small stellated dodecahedron links. I think, the way this normally works if nobody objects things get implemented. The edit count and years have been agreed for the additional two top levels as 17.5 years/ 150,000 and 20 years/ 200,000. The top two levels are very much aspirational levels that nevertheless might still be possible over a human working lifetime (see discussions above). In terms of the "band-knot" stars, I tried to place bigger stars there but it ended up looking rather messy and drawing the focus away from the centre. Let me see again. Mootros (talk) 03:54, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Have a look here: Legion_of_Merit#Appearance, the way the band changes. Mootros (talk) 04:00, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

If we can't put bigger stars, we're sort of stuck with going on to 11, 12, 13 stars; the lower images have not been edited yet. Lanthanum-138 (talk) 09:17, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I have got some alternative version now, because I agree that the plain band knot did not look so good. I took some inspiration from here Legion_of_Honour and here Military_William_Order by adding a wheel type symbol. This is nice, I think, as a symbol of continuity and tirelessness. It's distinctly different for the American style star system: i.e. Medal_of_Honor and adds an extra dimension to the highest level. Mootros (talk) 19:57, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Great! I like it! Lanthanum-138 (talk) 11:50, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Mootros (talk) 14:57, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

5

The ribbons are still missing... Lanthanum-138 (talk) 12:33, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer this renaming:

Ultimate Grandmaster Editor --> Grandmaster Editor III
Ultimate Grandmaster Editor 1st Class --> Grandmaster Editor IV

as "Ultimate", "II" added as additional modifiers become slightly humorous (there's some earlier discussion on this in the archives, in which somebody felt that "Master Editor II" was preferable to "Grand Master Editor" (which could now be confused with "Grandmaster Editor"...). Lanthanum-138 (talk) 12:42, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The idea was to make this level more distinct from the Grandmaster level, because the images are very distinct (through) the new centre piece, and requirements are slightly higher. The introduction of a first class looks very serious; most merit order systems do exactly look like this. (A Master 1st Class is clearly higher than a Master) The increase of number only really works if you have a very strict star-based system. 3 Star General v 5 Star General: this got completely lost in the entire system. Now we have something like "Senior Editor" v "Senior Editor II" ('Oh you're a Snr Editor too?' Excuse the pun). In terms of the new two "Ultimate Grandmaster Editor", the idea was not to call it "Ultimate Editor", which some people expressed reservation. How about "Grandmaster Editor of the Universe", which avoids the the "adjective-compound-noun-conjunction", and can be seen staying closer to the attempt of a more serious appearance? [Mootros]

We had things like "Lord High" and "Grand and Glorious...of the Encyclopedia" as modifiers at first. I'd go for a compromise of "Grandmaster Editor of the Encyclopedia". (Btw, we need ribbons...) Lanthanum-138 (talk) 11:49, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Changing my mind: I'm still in favour of III and IV: none of the other serious names have two adjectives. (I got confused with the non-serious names above.) Lanthanum-138 (talk) 11:53, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, "of something" is equally convoluted. ~~I suggest a simple: "Great-Grandmaster Editor"~~ Mootros (talk) 14:40, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, a much simpler solution and more consistent is to extend the existing two Mastergrades, by two more Master levels, called III and IV. This frees the Grandmasters so we will have something like this:

14. Master Editor (or Illustrious Looshpah)
15. Master Editor II (or ~~Almighty~~Auspicious Looshpah)
16. Master Editor III (or Redoubtable Togneme)
17. Master Editor IV (or Rocambolesque Bordonth)
18. Grandmaster Editor (Laureate Kipzock Inziklopediock)
19. Grandmaster Editor ~~1st Class~~ II (Venerable Kipzock Vinziklopediom)
20. Vanguard Editor (or Gom)

Sorted? Mootros (talk)

Made a small change for consistency...OK? Lanthanum-138 (talk) 06:59, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

6

Done! Thanks everybody for their input and support. Mootros (talk) 23:05, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Eh, I'm still a bit concerned about the quality of the images. The superstar looks okay but the circular insignia on top of the ribbon looks odd; I can't tell what it is. There's also some bad artifacts on the images, especially the background of the Vanguard's star. Perhaps you can ask the Man in Question for his photoshop files? Not sure I'm into the scroll of Alexandria, and why does the highest level only get one syllable? HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 13:47, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I feel that the insignia is very odd; it looks pretty weird, like it's not supposed to be there or something. I feel a return to stars, though perhaps of a different size or kind, is preferable (we already have the 11-star layout; it's easy to design 12 or 13 star layouts). Lanthanum-138 (talk) 07:19, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree about the insignia. Calling it very odd is an understatement. I'm also a little concerned that rapid changes are being made with little chance for consensus. VMS Mosaic (talk) 05:28, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed that this should not have been changed so far (only Mootros seems to be in favour of implementing this as it stands right now). I've tried working with him somewhat and we actually got somewhere, but I feel that this shouldn't be made live just yet, as not enough people are explicitly in favour of the new images. Lanthanum-138 (talk) 08:59, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

@ VMS Mosaic: How about extremely odd? :-P Lanthanum-138 (talk) 09:02, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Mootros, I think these changes were pretty rash there. You said of Herostratus (see 7 - I've numbered the sections, the titles were getting too long) that he was:

Well, you've just speedily implemented your changes without waiting for consensus, and HereToHelp and VMS Mosaic have already raised concerns. I've reverted your changes; I'd be happy to implement them after this discussion is over. "Discussion is still ongoing" does not mean we cannot change yet. "Concerns are being raised" means we'll have to think this over again.

Sorry I just reverted this back. I didn't see the disscuion here above. If people feel offended, my apploglogies. I will adress each of the concern above. Mootros (talk) 10:11, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! We're getting somewhere, aren't we? (^_^) Lanthanum-138 (talk) 10:28, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

@HereToHelp The circular insignia is to represent "perfection" as a complete circle and a symbol of continuity and tirelessness. In graphical design less is sometimes more. Why adding more and nore stars.

Re background, I have now improved the image, but please feel free if you have further suggestions. Or just let me know what exactly I should do here.

@HereToHelp the highest level has only one syllable because it is supposed as the final level and therefore distinct for the others: A kind of special level. "Ultimate perfection condensed into one "perfect" syllable, where less is more. Mootros (talk) 10:31, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Can I ask what browser you are using to display the images? On all three browsers I tried, even "extremely odd" is an understatement regarding the insignia on the ribbon part of the images. I can only make out two of the three designs; I have no idea at all what one is other than a cyclops (reminds me of the robot in the original "The Day the Earth Stood Still" movie) with a crack in it's forehead. Maybe if it was explained to me, it would make sense, but an image shouldn't have to be explained. I appreciate all your work here and in no way want to discourage you in your efforts, but these insignia simply don't work in their current format. However, I'm not opposed to replacing the stars if something workable can be found. VMS Mosaic (talk) 07:23, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Would changing the web browser change the appearance of the images? (I don't know enough.) Lanthanum-138 (talk) 09:02, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I thought it might have been a strange transparent PNG image (PNG is actually a poor excuse for an image format which some browsers have major problems handling), but now that I see that it is a JPEG, it is unlikely the web browser used would make a difference. I'm basically confused about the insignia at this point. VMS Mosaic (talk) 09:49, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback VMS Mosaic. I guess you're particularly concerned with the image called File:Editor_-_lapis_matter_ii.jpg. I agree, this insignia has gone wrong; it was supposed to be a wheel with some missing spokes to set a contrast to the final image that has eight spokes (as a symbol of perfection). It clearly does not work in its current form! For File:Editor - lapis matter iii.jpg,2.jpg the problem is that it lack some suitable texture, making it appearer like a foreign object... I will try again (on Sunday) and hope to come up with something more presentable. Thank you everybody for their forbearance! Mootros (talk) 14:39, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Dear all, I have uploaded the received version of the images for your appreciation. Please comment. Many thanks! Mootros (talk) 16:59, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I really like it! (^_^) Lanthanum-138 (talk) 05:57, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Looks all OK now. Mootros (talk) 20:26, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Beautiful. Lanthanum-138 (talk) 06:29, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I just noticed the last three ribbon images are identical. I assume they should have one, two and three insignia instead of all three having three insignia? VMS Mosaic (talk) 03:06, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

How do you mean. All three feature different insignias that get progressively more complex. I thought it might look good like this (the harmonious three), but if people would like to change the ribbons go for it. Alternatively, if you can wait for a few days I'll tweak the first one, which admittedly is very similar to the second one. Mootros (talk) 21:43, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Something is seriously wrong with the browser I was using. Now it is showing me the eleven star ribbon for the Vanguard level. Using a different browser, I see the correct images with the different insignia. VMS Mosaic (talk) 23:33, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

7

Minor concerns from Lanthanum-138

I have just one concern. Are we sure we really want to use "Grandmaster Editor First-Class"? No other level uses that, so we might want to consider "Grandmaster Editor II" for consistency. Please tell me what you think, Mootros. Lanthanum-138 (talk) 10:50, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I was hoping you would warm to this idea. The rational is to show the difference of these grades (the only high group with two levels anyway). The term first-class here is borrowed from the British_undergraduate_degree_classification were it sounds rather impressive and is used even in day-today speech to give emphasise for something extraordinary. Apart from the consistency issues, do you find out of place? Mootros (talk) 13:20, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

It's fine with me now you've told me the rationale for this. I withdraw my objection and I guess everything's resolved! Lanthanum-138 (talk) 10:14, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

My apologies, I should have made this clearer rather than assuming this is self-evident for other English speakers. I'm glad you like the new graphics. It was worthwhile going the extra bit and not just settle for the first attempt. For this I'm grateful to you and the others. :) Mootros (talk) 13:49, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

8

New structure to be worked out on the basis of 3rd March version

Dear Herostratus, I've noted you reverted my proposed implementations. I've now reverted back to 3rd March. I have ask you for the last 3 weeks to find an agreement. My edits today were not related to your concerns raised; nobody has objected when I had outlined a simple name change. I raised my concerns re the missing agrement terms of a structure of the top levels for four weeks and you continued to ignore this. I think we now need to start from the beginning and find a solution. Yes, indeed structure needs to be work out first as I already kept saying at the end of February. Mootros (talk)

Dear Herostratus, I am asking you again why are you not engaging in discussions. I have for one month asked you to find a solution to the concern I have raised since Feb. You speedily implemented changes and when people raise concerns you choose to ignore this. This is well document in the discussion above. When other people make minor alternations (changing a name) that were outlined and nobody has objected, you object on the grounds that a discussion is ongoing. This is not a private initiative that you can dominate. You have not being acting very constructive of late. Mootros (talk) 16:28, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Currently I have suggested a compromise to introduce two more levels, if this is not found acceptable we should revert to the 3rd of March version until we have worked out the top level. The changes of the new number count were introduced speedily and haphazardly despite my warning --in response to the question "Final decision?". The issue will not go away until we sort it out. Mootros (talk) 16:40, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

9

documentation of announcement of a minor change

“

For more consistency I suggest to replace the "Sovereign" with "Grandmaster". It's more in the spirit of skills, and less that one is not part of the community. Mootros (talk) 12:16, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

”

“

[...] can quickly be implemented without any disruption.

Level 16 (Grandmaster Editor (or Redoubtable Togneme))
Level 17 (Grandmaster Editor II [...] Please let me know. 22:31, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

”

No objection were raised against this minor change. Let me spell out the rational behind this again: it is based on a hierarchy that focus on "skills" (assuming that they increase) rather than a god-given right. It also avoids confusion as suggested before by other people. Mootros (talk) 17:45, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

“

Of course I forgot to comment on "ultimate", maybe because I was too busy laughing, thinking of the "sovereign" grade. But "ultimate" is also a riot. Same goes for "master". Anyone who falls for these needs to reevaluate their understanding of these awards. Dr.K. λogosπraxis 20:34, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

”

This is the sort of incremental change that I'm fine with. Thanks for the documentation. HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 13:49, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

10

Preview

Grandmaster Editor (or Laureate Kipzock Inziklopediock)

This editor is an **Grandmaster Editor** and is entitled to display this **Lapis Philosophorum Editor Star** with the Neutronium Superstar hologram.

Done. Lanthanum-138 (talk) 03:52, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Grandmaster Editor 1St Class (or Venerable Kipzock Vinziklopediom)

This editor is an **Grandmaster Editor, 1^st Class** and is entitled to display this **Mythril Editor Star** with the Neutronium Superstar hologram.

Vanguard Editor (or Gom)

This editor is an **Vanguard Editor** and is entitled to display this **Unobtainium Editor Star** with the Neutronium Superstar hologram.

1 for all

I just made a template here that incorporates all of the big award templates. It is that in each parameter there is another template. May I replace each different templates for the template with the parameter. I will be doing it. I am open to revert. ~~EBE123~~ ^talk_Contribs 13:56, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Even higher?

Should we have a Vanguard Editor II (or Deitogom Wikiopadiock Lozponthoomiculaddoxk) level, with a Saberophotium Editor Star with Space-Time The Force Wanderer in the middle, 13 stars arranged in a circular pattern, and a requirement of 10,000,000 edits and 100 years' service? --Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty | Averted crashes} 01:15, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

No. HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 04:02, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the humorous interjection. I'm afraid it is a: thanks, but No thanks. Mootros (talk) 10:22, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

To further expound: no, because we need to draw a line between the humorous and the ridiculous, in terms of both names and requirements. HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 17:06, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

We could always go higher, but this is just a little to far.--GoldenGlory84 (talk) 02:35, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

10 million edits?? Even at my fantastic editing rate that's soon to take me three levels of editing above time, that's just not possible! Maybe once we're all living on Titan I'd have reached 10 million edits. ;-) Lanthanum-138 (talk) 03:22, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

On second thoughts, Titan is too easy - it actually has an atmosphere. Maybe once we're all living on Charon. Lanthanum-138 (talk) 10:51, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

very hard to tell apart

The ribbon for the top three-- unlike all other levels-- are very hard to tell apart. We should change them to something like this. ^{şṗøʀĸşṗøʀĸ: τᴀʟĸ} 07:36, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Support I agree.--GoldenGlory84 (talk) 00:45, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Years of service

Resolved

Will someone be so kind to clarify one thing. When exactly start period of the "years of service"? Is it registering or first edit?--Antidiskriminator (talk) 17:09, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

The description says "It is achieved strictly by a mechanical count of time registered and number of edits." so time registered starts with registration, not editing. - Dravecky (talk) 05:46, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

No; read Wikipedia:Service awards#What is counted?. ^{şṗøʀĸşṗøʀĸ: τᴀʟĸ} 07:43, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I did not read the page till the end before I posted my question.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 22:50, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Excessive categorization

In looking at one of the service categories, I noticed that multiple users are listed several times. This is caused by the fact that the template is included on the user page, their talk page an archive page and other sub pages. I think we need to modify the template to only include the categories if it is included on the user page. I may try one to see how that works out. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:35, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, I decided to do this and it is completed for all of the awards even the ones for future years. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:30, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Not sure what's going on here, but it appears categories were created by User:Things That Will Bite. I'd like to ask him what his overall scheme is, but he's permablocked, which is seldom a good sign. At any rate, prior to being permablocked he made the categories without discussing this, and they can be faulted -- people using the "serious" track go into the "informal" categories (e.g. a Novice Editor goes in Category:Burbas) which I think would be unpleasing to some, and only some of the templates are categorized, and I'm not sure what this editor was thinking -- perhaps nothing and he was just riffing or messing around, I don't know. At any rate per Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 November 22#Wikipedian Service Award Level categories these are probably illegitimate and subject to deletion on sight -- I say probably because a case could be made that these categories are different (they're less finely defined, I guess) and a WP:DRV might allow them to be recreated to then be WP:MFD'd, where they'd probably lose. Certainly User:Black Falcon will have a cow if he sees these, but he's been pretty inactive recently so who knows.

As always, I'd prefer that the Service Awards not be considered a playground for drive-by messing around by soon-to-be-blocked editors, editors who have limited interest in the project and will soon get bored and leave, and similar random mooks; that changes be presented and discussed beforehand; and that any changes are at least arguably actual improvements rather than just pee'ing on a rock. But whatever. Herostratus (talk) 00:18, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not convinced the categories are even necessary. No one goes looking for an editor who claims to have certain qualifications. Also, I agree with Herostratus on planning changes. HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 01:21, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Moving forward: complete, copy to meta, protect

OK. Here's what I think. I'd like to get this finished. I know the concept of "finished" is rather foreign to the Wikipedia, but in this case there's no benefit to just making changes for the sake of changes. Certainly levels 13 and below are de facto locked in because they're in heavy use.

What I'd like to is move this page to Meta-Wiki, and offered to the other-language Wikipedias as a source for them to translate and use, if they want to. We need a stable version to do this, and some fixes have to made to achieve that. The page should then be fully protected, probably, as many template pages are.

Regarding any changes, I'd just point out that in no case should any changes be made to levels 13 (Senior Editor III (or Labutnum of the Encyclopedia) or below absent a very very compelling reason. There are serious numbers of people at these levels who are using the awards, and we don't want to keep messing around with them once they're in use. It's annoying to them. And since not all users use the templates, this would entail a quite serious amount of work. (An exception could be made for changing the content of the images (but not the image names) if this is deemed desirable, since this would automatically promulgate.) There are almost no users at level 14 and above, so changes to these levels could be made this this one last time before moving this to Meta and protecting it.

OK. As I see it there are two main issues:

At the higher levels, the time requirement should increase by two years: 6-8-10-12-14-16-18-20. Currently they are 6-8-10-12-15-17.5-20. I haven't seen any convincing argument that this is better, and two years is already a long time, and as long as anyone should be expected to wait to advance a level, I think. (Arguably it should be one year -- that's a plenty long time -- but certainly not more than two years. Having the levels be 6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20 would be a lot of contentious work, so I'd leave it at two.)
At the higher levels, the edit requirements should continue to be 9,000/year and no higher. (This number was arrived at as a compromise between 8,000 and 10,000). At the higher levels they are currently 11,333, then 12,000, then 20,000. This is too many edits to expect a reasonably diligent editor using the default tools to achieve, and I haven't seen any convincing argument otherwise.

Some more technical fixes are:

Due to the various messings around, there's a mismatch in the ribbon templates between the template name and the file name. The graphic for the template {{Senior Editor III Ribbon}} is named File:Master editor 2.png, for instance. These need to be tracked down and fixed. Not too many people use the ribbons, so this is probably achievable and worthwhile and is an exception to the rule of no changes at level 13 or below.
The template {{Service awards}} is broken. I fixed it after the Great Edit Count Reform of this spring, but it was broken again by messing around with the levels. It's a pain in the ass but I'm willing to fix it one more time if we can get this locked down. Only a few people use it and just deleting it would be OK too.
Someone added categories to the templates. This was done haphazardly and poorly. A decision was made (not here, but at WP:CFD) that we wouldn't have categories. I don't agree with that decision but it is what it is. If they are to exist they need to be fixed, and an advisory CFD needs to be run on them (It'd likely fail, but maybe not.)
The following images are little bit substandard (I can say that because I made them myself): File:Editor - iron star.jpg, File:Editor - bronze star.jpg, File:Editor - silver star.jpg, File:Editor - gold star.jpg. Compare to the superior File:Editor - rhodium star I.jpg for example, made by other editors who are better artists than me. This is not pressing but if someone wanted to improve these four images that'd be nice.

Also... due to the swap of rhodium and platinum that occurred in the past, the file names and text of the templates don't match. The text that goes with the file "Editor - rhodium star n.jpg" says "...is entitled to display this platinum star", and vice versa. This is confusing. If everyone used the templates, this would be an easy fix. But a non-trivial number of editors don't use the template, so fixing this would be a massive task. So we just have to live with it I guess.

That's all I can think of for now. There may be others, if anyone can think of them please say so. (I think that some reforms of the terminology at the higher levels are in order, but that's a matter of taste and opinion and is not in play yet.)

Now that User:Mootros is gone, I don't see any of this as being contentious, and I propose to implement these fixes. I created this page and pushed it through against opposition, and I also did all the work for the Great Edit Count Reform of this spring, so I claim some standing here. Cogent arguments as to why the time-in-harness requirements to advance a level should be 2 years, then 3 years, then 2.5 years are welcome. Cogent arguments as to why editors should be expected to make 20,000 edits a year to advance in the upper levels are welcome. The question of changing (or not changing) the names and images for the upper levels is to be considered later, not now. This is about the structure (and some technical fixes).

You make some very good (cogent) arguments here, and my one big refinement is that we should take however long is necessary to get it right before we freeze it on meta. Specifics:

The images were made by three people, and it shows. I find your images to be of acceptable quality even though they are inferior to those by The Man In Question (we want the higher levels to look "cooler" anyway). Mootos's images I find unacceptable, given the flat-looking ship's wheel (?) and 3Dish star.
I also dislike the levels they represent. Why can't we discuss this issue now? If we ax the extraneous levels, it saves us work and makes us look more together to outsiders. The books for the uppermost levels are a mess (otherwise, books look good, but I haven't checked the template and file names). An what kind of a name is Gom? I'm in favor of reinstating Laureate Kipzock Inziklopediock as the top level, with The Man In Question's image. I lean towards requiring 15 years because 15 is a much "rounder" number than 14, and it makes The Last Level feel more prestigious, complete, and final (in my subjective opinion). It's also a moot point for a few years because Wikipedia is only 10.5 years old. Once we ax the upper levels, I like the progression as-is. We can also look into making increases in the increases between echelons (Veteran, Master, Senior Editors).
Maybe this has already been done, but have we looked at actual data to see what is a reasonable number of edits per year? Do we know whether more people are held back by time or edits? I would like to make a decision scientifically rather than pull 9k/year out of a hat.
I don't really care about categories. Since users can add the templates themselves, and these awards are not a sign of status, I don't think it's worthwhile to be able to find all the Tutnums. If you do go ahead with categories, please post your plans on this talk page first for community feedback. WP:DELREV is probably the more appropriate process after that.
The ribbons for Tutnum and above need graphic makeovers. The rightmost 6th is lighter than the rest, and I'm no fan of the purple, especially for half our levels. I'd prefer the ribbon design tie in with the background or necklace ribbon pattern in the main award images. In the process we can sort out the file names and edit the templates that everyone uses. Our contact, who seems to have made the ribbons for the lower levels, is VernoWhitney.
I guess we can live with Rhodium/Platinum switched. Or we could call up The Man In Question and have him make new versions which better reflect the appearances of the metals. Maybe. In any case we should explain the swap on the image description pages.

I guess that's all for now. HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 19:31, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

OK, axing the higher levels is fine. If I read you right you're proposing 6-8-10-12-15 (as the years-in-harness steps), right? I'd prefer 6-8-10-12-14 (or 6-8-10-12-14-16), keeping two years as the longest step for two reasons: 1) more than two years is just too long, and 2) if we ever did encounter a Y2K type problem and needed to extend, the 12-15 step breaks the pattern so we'd have to go 12-15-18-21 (or 12-15-20, but that leaves far too long a gap between 15 and 20). I don't see 15 as being particularly preferable to 14 (or 16) as a top number, not enough to offset these objections. I don't feel strongly about it, though, and am willing to accept the judgement of the next person to weigh in (if anyone does).

The ribbons... I never much saw a need for them at all, and not very people use them, although a few do. I actually think some of the lower-level ribbons are the worst, such as File:Yeoman Editor Ribbon.png. If we ax three levels we get rid of the ship's wheel altogether (I agree it's mediocre), if we ax two levels we can change it -- I think I have to chops to do ribbons (but not stars). The ribbons with stars on are look OK me -- the rightmost sixth being pale is a problem. I might be able to fix those.

Graphics questions are not pressing. Improvements to graphics promulgate automatically, so there's no work involved beyond changing the graphic.

The names of the upper levels... we used to have "Grand and Glorious Tutnum of the Encyclopedia" and so forth, and now we instead have Rocambolesque Bordonth and Kipzock Inziklopediock and Vinziklopediom and so forth. I personally preferred the old way, piling on various iterations of pompous grandiosity (a thesaurus helps here). They're supposed to be amusing but not necessarily nonsensical and unpronounceable, which I think Inziklopediock etc. are. I don't feel strongly about this and wouldn't fight over it.

FWIW the Rhodium/Platinum switch can't be fixed by changing the graphics, it's the graphic names that are the problem. They're in the templates, an easy fix, but also directly on people's user pages, when they didn't use the templates -- a big job to fix. If someone wanted to fix this, fine, but I don't think anyone wants to. I don't.

I didn't look at actual data regarding the edits-per-year figure, and I don't know if there is any good data -- averages would not tell us much. It was kicked around a little and that's what we came up with. It does match my personal experience as someone who edits regularly without using any tools and with a mixed editing pattern (sometimes posting whole articles or spending a long time on a single change, but making a fair number of patrol-type edits such as reverts also). My experience in the Great Edit Count Reform reinforced my feeling that it's in the right general ballpark, probably. Some editors are well into the six figures on edits, and I have no idea how they do that, but they're outliers; there were a few more editors with long service who lagged in edit count, but they may not edit that regularly or do patrol, or have taken long breaks, I guess. (The bump from 8,000 to 9,000 for level 12 and up is just an artifact of various discussions. Staying at 8,000 would have been OK but some people wanted 10,000, so... it's just a small bump and it's basically too late to change it.)

So, on the main points:

Agreed, we go back to 9,000 edits/year for all levels 12 and above. Right?
Agreed, we make some graphics reforms and do the other minor fixes.
Agreed, we get rid of the categories, for now anyway.
Agreed, we ax some of the upper levels. The only question is, for years-in-service do we go 8-10-12-15 or 8-10-12-14 (or 8-10-12-12-14-16)? A fairly minor point, and I'm willing to agree with anyone else who wants to weigh in, or we can flip a coin.
Not agreed yet, what the names of the upper levels should be. This can actually be left open for a short while and discussed. If no one else weighs in I'm OK with whatever you like.

Either 8-10-12-14 or 8-10-12-14-16 would be okay with me. I also prefer the old names. VMS Mosaic (talk) 03:13, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Those few new awards

I've noticed that the newer awards have extreme edit count inflations, akin to the original inflations when we added those new awards last year. Do people want to discuss lowering this? Also, there really is no reason to have an award system for something that is nine and a half years from now so I would even support removing them until that time is near. Both of these are just an idea, but if we don't stop it, I can honestly see people creating award boxes for something twenty years in the future. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:54, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, that was User:Mootros mostly I think. He was pretty determined and adamant and combative that his vision for this scheme was the only right vision, but quickly grew bored with the Wikipedia (his last edit was in May) and has presumably moved on to cast away darkness in other parts of this world. We need an overall scheme for making sense of this and maybe I'll get around to this sometime (or maybe not) or someone else will. Herostratus (talk) 00:32, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Edit count inflation? How about years of service inflation, requiring you to have started editing before Wikipedia existed! Oh wait you mentioned that...anyway I also dislike the award graphics and the anticlimactic "Gom". Also, the language inflation - Inzikclopedioc or whatever was meant to be for the final award only. I second getting rid of them. HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 01:27, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree. The point of the higher levels is that those are goals for the future. Being in a position where every year or two years we have to say "OK, some editors have reached the highest level, we need to add another" is not prescription for having a well thought out overall scheme, I don't think. (And remember "Look, it's 1972. We're not going to need four byes for the date field for 28 years and no one will be using this program by then, so let's just express the date as 72 rather than 1972".)

If you don't like the images, propose others or make suggestions. I agree that Inzikclopedioc and so forth is poor, and this hasn't been thought out. We need to work through this in the context of a considered structure, for which I'll add a section below. Herostratus (talk) 16:39, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree - these numbers seem way too far off and pretty much impossible to reach without the use of semi-automated tools. -down load ׀ talk 22:32, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Although I (as La-138) had helped Mootros develop his scheme above, I do not oppose any changes away from his version. Double sharp (talk) 04:13, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to delete categories for service awards

There is a proposal to delete all the categories for service awards. It has been under discussion since October 2 but the proposer did not notify any of the people who have the service awards. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:00, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I've closed the discussion in favor of retaining the categories, but adding "Wikipedia" to the front to make it clear these are userspace titles (so, Category:Wikipedia Burbas). However, there is a metric ton of templates that feed into these categories. Can somebody here help change all categories on these templates from, say, Category:Grognard Extraordinaires to Category:Wikipedia Grognard Extraordinaires?--Mike Selinker (talk) 13:59, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Do you want to change Category:Grognard Extraordinaires into a redirect? RockMagnetist (talk) 14:26, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Checklist:

For consistency, I also changed the other categories in Category:Service award templates that were not listed for deletion. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:26, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Anyway, they were all deleted here. We've been through this before, and creating categories based on the awards is just not going to fly, for good or ill, so I would recommend not doing this anymore as it's just going to irritate people. Herostratus (talk) 08:38, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I was not aware of the CfD and did not participate, but I agree with the deletion per nom. HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 18:41, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

edit notice?

I'm not a huge fan of edit notices, but I created one for this page, {{ServiceAwardsNotice}} which looks like this:

Please note: changes to the Service Awards should be made with care. Changes that substantively affect levels achieved by large numbers of editors (such as changing the names or requirements) or that affect template codes should be avoided. Other changes and improvements may be welcome, but proposed substantial changes should be discussed first at the central talk page for the awards.

This comes up when a person opens the page for editing. I'm thinking of adding it to this page and all the supporting pages such as the templates. Any objection? Perhaps it could be stated better. Herostratus (talk) 16:04, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Not seeing any objection, I put in the request to have this added. The text of the editnotice can be edited (whether it will remain at {{ServiceAwardsNotice}} or be put into some other place I'm not sure.) If for some reason it's objectionable it can be blanked I guess. Herostratus (talk) 14:34, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I can see the humour in it

It's a nice bit of Americana to offer useless awards to people with good intentions. I've worked for American companies who awarded people for any feat accomplished except maybe farting without burping. Dutch companies tend not to give awards and diploma's that are useless on a CV for special achievements but things people can actually use, like CD or book vouchers or monetary renumerations. ^^ S_peakF_ree ^(talk)_(contribs) 17:53, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

In Canada, you get to go out for sushi and submit an expense at the end of the month. No blowfish.
Varlaam (talk) 17:07, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

moving forward

Per Wikipedia talk:Service awards/Archive 6#Moving forward: complete, copy to meta, protect, I

Reduced the top service time to 16 years. This, and no higher, is the longest term that people were willing to consider.

Rather than removing any levels, I just dropped down some levels giving 6-7-8-10-12... years instead of 6-8-10-12... years so that now level 15 is 7 years (was 8), level 16 is 8 years (was 10), level 17 is 10 years (was 12), level 18 is 12 years (was 15), level 19 is 14 years (was 17.5) and level 20 is 16 years (was 20). This affects existing editors at those levels, but there are only a very few at those levels that are displaying the awards.

Regularized the edits-per-year requirement to be a constant 9,000/year after level 11.
Changed some of the "informal" names to remove meaningless/unpronounceable terms such as "Inziklopediock" and "Vinziklopediom". I just made some others up off the top of my head, but at least they are real words.
Edited the template text to match and renamed the templates to match.

If anyone has suggestions for better names than "Most Imposing Togneme" and so forth, this is fine, suggest away, but please speak now or forever hold your peace, as I want to rename the graphics to match whatever terms are used.

Also, where I made changes, the links from the table (near the top of the page) and from within the userpage templates back to the appropriate places on the Service Awards page don't work now... there seems to be something with a ".28" code needed... do not understand this at all.

Still to be done:

Rename graphics -- they are on Commons so I have to figure out how to do this, I think I have to put in a request.
Update {{service awards}}, the self-updating template. Possibly not worth doing.
Ideally, some image upgrades such as getting the "ship's wheel" off the graphics for the top three levels -- this is beyond my skill, isn't critical, and will probably not be done.
Make an editnotice template warning against ill-considered changes.
Some technical listed in the archived thread re making the image filenames match the template names. Not pressing. Pain in the ass.

What else? Am I missing anything? Herostratus (talk) 07:01, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I've edited Wikipedia:Service awards/Table so that the links from the table at the top and from user page templates now work. All that was needed was to rename the section headings. The ".28" and ".29" stuff you see in the templates is to do with how MediaWiki internally represents parenthesis in section headings. It isn't necessary to use this internal representation in wikicode - you can safely replace ".28" with "(" and ".29" with ")"; both ways should work. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 16:59, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I've also updated the {{service awards}} template to use the new 6-7-8-10-12 years. The template currently does not support the top two awards (14 and 16 years). I haven't bothered to add support for these, as no editor has been with the project that long yet. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 17:20, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Wow, thanks much! The {{service awards}} looks kind of codey and I wasn't looking forward to fixing it. Thanks! Herostratus (talk) 04:49, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I put an older Grandmaster Editor image back in the table. It has stars on the ribbon and the simple superstar in the middle. A version without the superstar is also available. Older images for the higher levels should also still be around. Opinions? VMS Mosaic (talk) 23:08, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I dislike the "ship's wheels", so I also restored images for the top two levels. No versions exist which have stars on the ribbons or which don't have the superstar. VMS Mosaic (talk) 13:18, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

That is great! These are improvements. I didn't like the ship's wheels either and I don't think they were ever much liked. Thanks. Herostratus (talk) 15:21, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Although I (as La-138) helped Mootros develop his scheme, I do not oppose any changes away from his version. I don't really have an opinion on this, so you can make any changes you want and I won't mind. Double sharp (talk) 04:16, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Orders of Chivalry

There was some discussion (more a passing mention) in, I don't know, one of Archived page about having a third 'tract' if you will. There'd be the Signator-Lord High Togneme tract and the Registered-Vanguard tract. The third proposed (again, briefly mentioned) tract would be similiar to European Orders of Chivalry. Something like Member of the Order of Editors to Knight Grand Cross, Order of Saint Jimbo (or, y'know, something like that), with post-nominals (and the current Ribbons always make me think 'orders of chivalry' anyway). The offhand comment asked if anyone familiar with Orders of Chivalry could mock up a third 'tract', and I offer my services to the community, if this is something that we'd like to pursue. Achowat (talk) 20:18, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't have a strong opinion about this, but a couple of things: it'd have to be done right, with good-quality images (that are free; can't claim fair use here). And we'd have to change the display. As it is, the table scrolls off the page little and adding another column would make this worse; probably would have to split the table into three sections (regular/humorous/ chivalry) or something. If these objections could be overcome it'd be fine I think. Herostratus (talk) 16:08, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Given that no one has stood in support of the idea, I don't see that it would be used. It appears (by the image use numbers) that the vast majority of users use the "Serious" (term used loosely) style, secondarily people use the ribbons, and tertiarily people use the "Humorous" style. Since the idea of Orders of Chivarly have been brought up twice now with no one really jumping on board, I'd say it would just be a lot of work for no real benefit. Achowat (talk) 13:12, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

ribbons

This is an extremely minor point, but since it's contended... I made slight alterations to three ribbons, and they were reverted, which is fine and possibly that's an improvement. There's not much to choose between them, but a third opinion would be good. You can see the altered versions in the File history sections of:

Your changes took away the "fabric" texture to the circles shown on the ribbons. Though I don't think ribbons need to have this texture in all cases, in this case I think they looked better with the fabric texture. BTW, I've also informed User:Aldaron (the person who made the reverts) about this discussion, in case they want to give any further input. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:29, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I was the reverter, and I actually think either version is fine for all but the "Experienced and Established Editor", where the "new" version is not only far too dark, but also has some problem with the border and shadow, that makes it unusable (and not consistent with the others). — Aldaron • T/C 21:32, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes that's fine. The one ribbon is a little too yellow-y though, it should be more gold-y. Herostratus (talk) 03:51, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Do only en-Wikipedia edits count?

I think it should be made clear in the lede whether these awards are intended for edits on English Wikipedia or Wikipedia as a whole... -- megA (talk) 11:10, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Towards the bottom of the page (What is counted? section) makes it clear that it's a personal decision. Other Wikimedia projects, IP edits before you registered, legitimate alternate accounts, bots...anything counts if you want it to. I think it is pretty clear, but it wouldn't hurt to move the "Exposition on the requirements" to above the templates. Achowat (talk) 12:59, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree, so I've moved the Exposition on the requirements section above the images and userboxes. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:30, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

AH, thanks: I didn't look that far down... -- megA (talk) 13:59, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I've taken out the __NOTOC__, as I think the page is a bit long to not have a table of contents. I guess the ToC was originally hidden as it listed all the headings in the userboxes table, making the ToC a bit long. To fix this, I've limited the ToC to only show 2nd level headings. I've also floated the ToC to the right, to be unobtrusive. I'm not sure what standards we have on formatting ToCs. Please feel free to change if you dislike how I've done it. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:31, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I support your edit. Extra999 (talk) 03:44, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes this is fine. Somebody moved the "Exposition on the requirements" section up toward the top though... not sure if that's an improvement. Maybe it is. Herostratus (talk) 03:50, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

That was done because of the thread two posts up, under the rationale that if one user is confused by the current (now old) set-up, other editors are likely also confused. Achowat (talk) 07:32, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Service awards by time and edit count?

Uhm...normally these types of things come with an "either/or". Since it's not official I go by the time I have been editing. The reason I feel strongly about this is simple. These awards are supposed to be encouraging to editors, not discouraging. I would like to make a small but simple change that reads as such~ "This many years of service OR this many edits, which ever comes first". If a newer editor has the time to achieve a high amount of edits, their service time shouldn't hold them back from proudly showing their level and if an active registered user is still around after so many years, they should be able show that their time has value. Thanks!--Amadscientist (talk) 22:58, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

As it stands right now....it just seems to be asking too much for a humorous self-given service award and may be making editors simply look at the award as insignificant when in many ways it does have some small amount of meaning.--Amadscientist (talk) 00:36, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I dunno if these types of things are either/or, or that there are that many of these types of things. I don't see any reason for a person who's been here 5 years but only makes an occasional rare edit to qualify for a high award. Not that those occasional edits aren't welcome and useful, but I guess the awards are intended mainly for dedicated editors. Editors that have a large number of edits in a shorter time have a better case, but there are useedit rboxes that say "this editor has X edits" and I think that these update automatically (not sure). Meh, I dunno, I think the current scheme is probably best. Herostratus (talk) 05:03, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Awards based on nothing more than the time one has been hanging around would be essentially meaningless and would completely devalue them for those who have actually expended much effort in editing. An active registered user could be nothing more than someone who logs on once or twice a year to check their talk page (and update their user page with the latest service award they have earned). There is no perfect solution, but I agree that the current scheme is probably best. I wouldn't see a problem with having a separate set of pins or ribbons marking one's years of being an editor, but that should probably be done as a separate project page (e.g. Years of service pins). VMS Mosaic (talk) 09:53, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

The "this editor has X edits" userboxes do not automatically update. A MediaWiki extension (e.g. MW-EditCount) is needed to write templates that show a user's edit count, but no such extension is installed on Wikipedia. For now, users must manually enter their edit count as a parameter to such userbox templates. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:45, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok, so in regards to the either/or idea, which frankly is far from new, the idea of these awards is to give editors something tangible to strive for. "To become a Grognard Mirabilaire 'on time' I need another 1,500 edits by April", that sort of thing. So, as it stands, number of edits is the primary factor, and I've always seen it as thus. The reason for the Service Time requirements is based on the good faith idea that the longer an editor contributes, the more constructive each edit he makes is. This talk page post, that I am composing right now, is of better form and more constructive to the goal of creating an encyclopedia than my first edit was: A talk post on a mostly dead WikiProject to start a project long-since finished. I support the current two standards and would adamantly oppose an either/or scheme. Achowat (talk) 13:58, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Tough crowd....I'll take my measly 11 thousand plus edits and just go back to my little Tutnum space. I will add one thing...seems strange that if one is among the top 5000 contributing editors, that might have something to do with this. But there is probably some reason to suggest the huge disparaging gap in numbers between levels is that the editors that fall just below that imaginary line aren't really any different. The top percent probably changes in relation to the amount of edits by the top 1 percent (and I swear that's not an occupy reference!=). My point being that the rating for this is far to dismissive and discouraging for those that want to feel their edit history is more substance than numbers. But....I guess it's only a game really. LOL! Thanks for the input.--Amadscientist (talk) 08:43, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

We have wp:EDITS for those who just want to focus on edit count. I think the idea behind the service awards requiring a combination of edits and tenure is that some sorts of edits require far less effort than others. The typo fixing that I do being a good example. Equally it is possible to create an account and rarely use it. Requiring both means that you need to have been active for a while. Though of course no system is going to be perfect, and I could now go on Wikibreak for several years returning occasionally to add another service award:). Ϣere SpielChequers 09:15, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, it's just in inward look really. If having an interesting looking self given award were really important, I wouldn't have even suggested a change. I get the point, I just think it's asking a bit much. But ...if it ain't broke why fix it and if ya don't like it...don't use it! Thanks!--Amadscientist (talk) 13:50, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Most sensible thing I've heard all day. Achowat (talk) 14:00, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, but gosh, we don't want people to be thinking like "my little Tutnum space". A Tutnum (of any grade) is a really experienced and diligent and valuable editor! Tutnum is a really high level that takes a lot of work to achieve is signifies a very elite editor. If people are thinking "Geez I'm only a Tutnum and it's gonna be so much work to make Labutnum, it makes me feel like just giving it up" that's the opposite of what we're trying to do here. So hmmmm. I don't know the answer to that, but it's possibly a problem with the entire concept of the Service Awards. Herostratus (talk) 15:39, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps because there are so many levels above Tutnum, it isn't clear how great an achievement it is to reach Tutnum (e.g. Jimbo is a Tutnum). I'm not sure what the solution is either – we could reduce the number of levels, but then it would take even more work to get to the next level... – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:19, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Letting people know that The Jimbo is a Tutnum will do quite a bit to demonstrate how big of an accomplishment that is. Hell, I was 'promoted' to Yeoman Editor today, and I felt great about it! Achowat (talk) 22:22, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

No, no, no, User:Herostratus, I don't want you to think I feel like Tutnum is a horrible embarrasment. I was trying to be cute there. It didn't work. Like I said..tough crowd. But I myself have worked hard in the 5 years I have been here to establish a understanding of Wikipedia that was sufficient to enjoy it more. That really is what's important to me. Along with the occasional rare and unique discovery now and then. I like research and digging and understanding things better as I work....or play or...however it may be percieved by each of us....I guess. I enjoy it as much as play as it's a hobby and not a full time job. But I don't see myself as just "anything" on Wikipedia. I leave that to others.--Amadscientist (talk) 01:23, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

This seems like a mind-set that if encouraged is corrosive to growing the content of the encyclopaedia - people should be trying to genuinely write and add to articles more, creating new ones, improving the many many many very short articles, that is far more important than edit count and much fewer people seem to do it: we need more people taking the time to sit down from the watchlist patrol wars and genuinely writing :) --Mistress Selina Kyle ^{(Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉)} 23:22, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

I've been here for nine years and have made seven thousand edits in that time. So what do I qualify for? — Hex (❝?!❞) 18:58, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

You qualify as an "Experienced Editor". Achowat (talk) 19:04, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I think you missed the point of the question. — Hex (❝?!❞) 19:44, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Maybe you can state that point more clearly (I can be dense

) so that I can better help you out. Achowat (talk) 19:47, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I think they mean that you can be an editor for a long time, obviously very experienced, but if you don't have a very large amount of edits this would disqualify you

- the same kind of thing I was getting at basically?

I have been looking at the WP:MLT templates trying to make them more friendly but I'm not sure how effective it would even be with so many people using bots to edit - I have noticed that some people do pretty much nothing than revert new users automatically and give out sometimes cold warnnings which are less likely to make people return if the atmosphere comes off as dismissive/authoritarian, which is kinda sad for Wikipedia --Mistress Selina Kyle ^{(Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉)} 11:26, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, I don't understand your point about WP:MLT, or even how that's relevant, but I would guess that, for the vast majority people, editing quality is a function of both time and edits. As I've stated earlier, this is a better post than my first one was, and it's a better post than it would have been if I had made all 4,000+ edits in one week (using Twinkle or whatever). For that reason, I think Service Awards function best under their current scheme. Achowat (talk) 13:05, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Selina has explained what I meant. I've been here a very, very long time, far more than most people, and yet under this system I only rate a very lowly award. That doesn't make any sense. I don't actually care about getting one or not, likewise barnstars and other paraphernalia - I just wanted to point this out. — Hex (❝?!❞) 18:01, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Experienced Editor is not a "lowly" award, at all! And you're only like 600 edits away from being a Tutnum. (Y'know, the same level as Jimbo). Achowat (talk) 18:22, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

False Award

I recently discovered an editor who I believe to have falsely awarded himself the Senior Editor Award II. I looked at his contribs and could only see 1500. His edit counter says 1,586, and he joined on the February 4, 2009. Should I remove the award from his page? Aunty-S (talk) 13:44, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

The long and the short of it is that we don't care. Or rather, we care but can't do anything. It's the honor system and that editor is more than likely being a dick, but there are some things that might account for it: Alternate accounts, bots, and time IP editing can be counted if a contributor wants; or the contributor may have a huge amount of deleted edits (but it is highly unlikely that an editor would have 10k or so deleted edits.) But, no, we don't remove Service Awards from other's pages, even if they're wrong. Achowat (talk) 13:58, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Even if we wanted to, removing them from a user's page would violate wiki policy. There is a very limited set of reasons for editing another user's page (e.g. WP:BLP). VMS Mosaic (talk) 08:59, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Alright thanksAunty-S (talk) 14:20, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Vanguard Editor (or Lord High Togneme) Image

Was browsing through the service awards and I noticed this image for the Vanguard Editor (or Lord High Togneme):

Looks very similar in appearance to a QR code - maybe this should be changed to seem more authentic? :P -down load ׀ talk 19:51, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Ha. Well, something like this would be good:

It uses some text from the Voynich manuscript instead. I also made it smaller. It need to have the text background be a blend and not just one color, which possibly I can figure out how to do. Even without that it's better I think, so I'll put it in and later I or someone can do the blend. Herostratus (talk) 04:37, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

It's also now a little too small. Will fix presently. Herostratus (talk) 04:44, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, it's about the right size now, but the text area is only marginally adequate. That's about the limit of my skill though. The script source file is File:Voynich manuscript excerpt.svg. Herostratus (talk) 06:23, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Wait, I thought the idea was for it to be a QR Code (and not just look like one). As though the ancients had complete world knowledge that we had lost and not yet recovered. I oppose a change to the Voynich text, the least significant reason of which is that the photoshopping wasn't done very well. -Achowat (talk) 13:36, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, OK, maybe, but that interpretation of the QR code was lost on me. Also, I think that that the script just looks better than the QR code which is kind of blocky and ugly IMO. (Granted the bad photoshopping, but that can be fixed.) Herostratus (talk) 13:50, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I really like the version you made with the script, Herostratus. I think one major issue with the current image is that the QR code is significantly stretched in the vertical direction. -down load ׀ email 02:45, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose. Yes, idea was for it to be a QR Code, when I composed this image. The QR Code, is a URL! Guess which one! Mootros (talk) 09:47, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

PS I like the new name Lord High Togneme. Mootros (talk) 10:01, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Following existing logic it should be called Lord High Togneme of the Encyclopaedia. What do you think? Mootros (talk) 06:24, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Also, for logic and consistency the alternative name for all Master Editor levels should correspond. So Redoubtable Togneme and Esteemed Togneme Laureate should be Redoubtable Looshpah and Esteemed Looshpah Laureate. Mootros (talk) 08:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

re the Wikipedia:Incremental service awards (Ribbons)

PartTimeGnome added these back in. I'm of two minds about this: in past, I was not too crazy about these. On the other hand, the Foundation has its hair on fire about bringing in new editors. And this could help, a tiny bit. I used to worry about attracting the kind of new editor who is concerned about updating his status every week or so, but we really need to encourage new editors.

So anyway, if they are to be used, maybe they should be featured more prominently, and if an effort is made to use {{Welcome award}} I guess it could help a little. Should they be moved up and the page and perhaps integrated into the main table, I wonder. Herostratus (talk) 05:00, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think editors who update their status regularly would be a problem, so long as they are also improving the encyclopedia. I added the link from Wikipedia:Service awards to Wikipedia:Incremental service awards (Ribbons), along with a brief description, as I figured since we do have them, it is sensible for them to be mentioned here (the incremental service awards page was previously an orphan). I didn't realise that the incremental service awards had previously been removed; I assumed they were something newish (the page history shows that the page was created by Iamiyouareyou in July this year).

I see your point about making the incremental service awards more prominent if we are to keep them. Perhaps the incremental service awards page should be merged into this one, rather than keeping them on a separate page? I've added a link to this discussion on the incremental service awards talk page. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 20:07, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm not complaining; I have mixed feelings but no real objection. I think it's OK to have it on a separate page. Then maybe like, something in the main table, for the first four levels saying something like "there are also ribbons for incremental slices of this award, see HERE" or something. Would require some fancy table editing though. Herostratus (talk) 22:03, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I've made some changes to the table. Is that the kind of thing you were thinking of? I've also merged the Incremental Service Awards section that was near the end into the Levels section, so that readers have an explanation of the incremental awards before they see the links in the table. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:18, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, all the improvements you made are outstanding. Yes, this is what I was thinking of. It's great, thanks. The main table is much better now also, it all fits on the page without scrolling. This is fine work. Herostratus (talk) 06:27, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Incremental service awards misnomer

This is not an objection to this scheme from my side, but I continue to be puzzled about the naming of it and would like to voice this again. If this "Incremental service award" is incremental, what by all mean is the main service award? Is it not incremental? It doesn't really make any sense. I think the naming of this scheme should be more logical: e.g "small steps","small increments", "newbie encourager", or what not service award. Mootros (talk) 04:02, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmm... I believe the name was chosen by User:Iamiyouareyou; I've notified them of this discussion on their talk page. My guess is that the incremental awards are more incremental, since they go up in smaller steps. I'm not sure what would make a better name, but I'm opposed to names describing the awards as "small", as the word could be misinterpreted to mean "insignificant". It would defeat the purpose of the awards if new editors thought their achievements insignificant. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 15:42, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

It does not have to be called "small" at all. Anything that would represent that the increments are smaller, literally or figuratively, would do. If not something completely different that gets away from the current misnomer. Mootros (talk) 00:59, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Spelling of "Most Pluperfect Labutnum"

The spelling of "Most Pluperfect Labutnum" bugs this copyeditor, but I know that some words were intentionally chosen because they're not in an English dictionary. Still, how about changing this to "Most Perfect Labutnum"? Pine^talk 11:18, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, a few issues I have with them (two minor, one major): "pluperfect" is a word, just not a common one; something can't be more or less perfect; and (most importantly) I don't like the idea that because an editor has hit an account age or edit count of a certain number that they should be considered "perfect", in fact, I think it goes against the very ideas of a Wiki to consider anything "perfect". Changes can, and will, always be made to improve the encyclopedia, and editors should be no different. Achowat (talk) 13:16, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

If you'd like to eliminate the idea of perfection from the names then how about eliminating it from its existing use in "Most Perfect Tutnum" and substituting something else? How about "Most Fluorescent Tutnum"? Pine^talk 06:55, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

The easy solution would be to make it "Most Pluperfect Tutnum", but something that mixes it up a little would be better. I agree about avoiding the word 'perfect'. VMS Mosaic (talk) 08:53, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Is it the spelling of "pluperfect" or the word itself? Looking it up, it means "more than perfect". Somebody put it in, God knows when or why, but I'm OK with it -- I find the concept of "more than perfect" somewhat amusing, and humorously immodest to a satisfying degree when applied to one's self. And it is Level 12. There are at least 39 editors at this level displaying the award (as of about a year ago, possibly more now), and I'd be reluctant to change the name of a level that's in significant use, absent a compelling reason. Herostratus (talk) 02:03, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Herostratus here. 'Pluperfect' is something I find amusing, it has no meaning nor has Tutnum. Disagree with perfect since no one could be the most perfect here, as Achowat said. The current spelling with fine as I feel, e^xtra999 (talk) 02:38, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

"'Pluperfect' [...] has no meaning [...]"? Do you mean no meaning in this particular title, or in general usage? In general usage, "pluperfect" is a common grammatical term describing a verb form (more specifically, a verb which has both perfect aspect and past tense).

If you mean in this particular title, I agree it has no meaning, but its usage (at least to me, IMHO) seems to play on the fact that Wikipedia editors often have to deal with grammar. — al-Shimoni (talk) 05:25, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I didn't know this word has article for it self, and a special meaning! But anyhow, this still does not apply any meaning here. The word is fine, as I think. --e^xtra999 (talk) 07:22, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I rather like Pluperfect in this context, if it can be interpreted as meaning anything serious it would be that this editor has in the past been perfect with no guarantees about the future. This should remind all of us that even the most experienced editors can be challenged. But in the context that these awards use it we are not describing someone as a perfect or indeed pluperfect editor. We are describing them as perfect Tutnums and pluperfect Labutnums, without specifying whether a Tutnum or indeed a Labutnum is anything other than an editor who has been here a certain time and done a certain amount of editing. Ϣere SpielChequers 10:00, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Duplicate titles

There are two levels with the title "Grandmaster Editor First-Class (or Lord High Togneme Laureate)". How should this be fixed? ~~The TOC seems to say that the lower of the two ranks should be "Grandmaster Editor (or Lord High Togneme Vicarus)".~~ Unless I'm missing something, it also looks like one of the duplicate levels isn't shown in the TOC. Pine^(talk) 05:40, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for checking this. I think, this has already been fixed. Could you pls check again. You might need to clear your browser's cache. From my side it looks OK now. Many thanks! Mootros (talk) 03:56, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Rhodium and Platinum

The metals for Senior and Master are mixed up between the descriptions and files names. Slight Smile 19:05, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Good spot! I think it is the filenames that are correct, since platinum is more valuable than rhodium, so should be associated with Master Editor, the higher award. I've been through the templates and swapped 'Platinum' for 'Rhodium' and vice versa, so the descriptions should now match the image filenames. Thanks for pointing this out. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 00:08, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Platinum is more valuable than rhodium, but rhodium often swings in value and can be worth more than gold to worth less than silver in about 4 to 5 months.

Drla8th! (talk)

19:44, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Levels suggestion

I'd like to suggest some changes to the current edit count, but not experience requirements. The current numbers are not easy to remember at the higher levels, and I feel that there are some significant milestones at the lower levels that are missed in the current setup, particularly 500, 1500, and 3000. So I propose the following. Note that the numbers become more similar to the original at the higher levels.

current > proposed

1 > 1 (Registered/Signator)

200 > 100 (Novice/Burba)

1000 > 500 (Apprentice/Novato)

2000 > 1000 (Journeyman/Grognard)

4000 > 1500 (Yeoman/Grognard Extraordinaire)

6000 > 2000 (Experienced/Grognard Mirabilaire)

8000 > 3000 (Veteran/Tutnum)

12000 > 4000 (Veteran II/Grand Tutnum)

16000 > 5000 (Veteran III/Most Perfect Tutnum)

20000 > 7500 (Veteran IV/Tutnum of the Encyclopedia)

24000 > 10,000 (Senior/Labutnum)

28500 > 15,000 (Senior II/Most Pluperfect Labutnum)

33,000 > 20,000 (Senior III/Labutnum of the Encyclopedia)

42,000 > 25,000 (Master/Illustrious Looshpah)

51.000 > 30,000 (Master II/Auspicious Looshpah)

60,000 > 40,000 (Master III/Redoubtable Togneme)

78,000 > 50,000 (Master IV/Esteemed Togneme Laureate)

96,000 > 75,000 (Grandmaster/Most Imposing Togneme)

114,000 > 100,000 (Grandmaster First-class/Venerable and Eminent Togneme)

132,000 > 125,000 (Vanguard/Lord High Togneme)

Comments welcome. Pine^talk 11:34, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

That does significantly water-down the stages from Grognard through Tutnum. Like, very significantly. On the face of it, that might seem like a bad idea. But most of the complaints on this page (if not in the Archives, too) are based on the fact that the scale is front-loaded. There are just as many awards for people who have been here over 4 years than everyone else. We come to the point where people look at their 2 year old account with 36,000 edits or their 6 year old account with 8,000 edits and wonder why they're "only a Tutnum". This proposed scheme makes it significantly easier to achieve the first 10 or so 'ranks'. Now, there are pros and cons to this scheme. The pro is that if the goal of the program is to give new-ish editors a reason to stick around and edit constructively, these easier numbers (with an easier path of 'advancement') will benefit that. The con is that if the goal of the program is to make the 'advancement' really matter and be a real accomplishment, this scheme will hurt that. I support the update exclusively because I believe that our goal should be to encourage users to contribute more than it should be to 'award' editors who are already contributing. Achowat (talk) 13:31, 22 February 2012 (UTC) I also added the names to Pine's list above, just for ease; hope he doesn't mind

A major problem with this type of change is that many editors would then have an award different than what they have given themselves. The last such change required a great deal of work which was done by the editor who created these awards. He had to either modify their user pages and/or give each one a message about it on their talk pages. Any one in favor of this needs to be willing to do the required work. Changes at the higher levels are much easier become fewer editors have the awards. VMS Mosaic (talk) 08:45, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

But an important note is the no one is going to go down a "level", everyone is either moving up or staying where they are. Achowat (talk) 13:24, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

VMS Mosaic you bring up a good point, but I came to the same conclusion as Achowat. I think that an announcement through the Signpost might be enough notice. I'd be surprised if anyone was upset if they level-up. But I want to make clear that I am not currently proposing any changes to the time requirements. The only things that would change are the edit counts. Does anyone think that time requirements should be lowered also? Pine^talk 07:30, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, I dunno. I kind of think that the levels below about 14, or certainly 13, are kind of locked in at this point. I mean, the Service Awards have existed for some years now, and many people have and have expressed various opinions about them, but there's no "right or wrong" answer to these questions, and at some point I think you want to lock it down, because you can't keep roiling it and you don't want to keep troubling people with changes. There was the Great Reform of 2011 (see Wikipedia talk:Service awards/Archive 5#OK, done! Let's go! All done! and related threads) and that required a change only at Level 11 ((Senior Editor (or Labutnum)) and above because the reform did not affect lower levels. And that required about 120 users to be upgraded, and of course many more to be checked. And this required some considerable man-hours, and the bothering of the affected users with a message about this essentially minor point.

I think that this would be required for any change. I don't think a Signpost notification would be sufficient, at all. If we didn't go through and upgrade the thousands of editors affected, we'd end up with a two-tier system in place, some editors using the old system and some the new, and this is not satisfactory in my opinion.

It's entirely possible that the editors proposal is an improvement, but it's basically way too late for a change like this in my opinion. However, the creation of another entirely separate service award scheme would be OK and would be the preferable way to implement the proposal if this is deemed desirable. I'm a littleleery of having two or more separate schemes in place, but there's no law that says there can't be such, and it might be fine, the more the merrier, maybe. Herostratus (talk) 01:18, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Is there another community that we could ask for input, maybe communities that deal a lot with newer users? I'm thinking WP:AMBASSADORS. We could ask them their views on what appropriate levels would be. I'm not enthusiastic about having two systems but I agree that having two may be eaiser than changing this one. Pine^talk 09:34, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, more input would be great. Maybe you could ask User:Maryana (WMF) is she would like to take a considered look at the Service Awards or knows someone who would, or just generally where to go next; she's a an actual paid employee tasked with finding ways to attract and retain new editors, so this should be up her alley. Possibly there could be an effort down the line to move these to Meta and translate them and offer them to the other-language Wikipedias (if they want them). Anyway, couldn't hurt to ask her (or maybe also the AMBASSADOR program, which I'm not familiar with, or other venues).

If there was as truly well-considered and though-out scheme to change the Service Award levels, backed by solid reasoning and accepted by several knowledgeable people, then it would possibly be OK to change the awards. It would take quite a bit of work to update everyone, but it's doable (perhaps with a bot). It's just, we had a major reform a year ago, and, you know, if there's a change and huge effort to reform and then someone comes a long a year or two later and says "I think it should be such-and-such instead", that's not good. So we would only want to do this if it can then truly be locked in. Herostratus (talk) 16:34, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that at some point there has to be a final lock in, at least for the lower levels. Making major changes every years or so does not help, particularly given that there are many editors who would like any excuse to do away with the entire project (see the previous two deletion proposals). VMS Mosaic (talk) 00:42, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I have posted "Request for Comment" notices on the talk pages of Wikipedia:Ambassadors and User:Maryana (WMF). Pine^talk 02:22, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing me here, Pine (and Herostratus) :) My thoughts on this are twofold:

First, big YES to restructuring the system to give more weight to new editors' contributions, because, as Achowat says above, "our goal should be to encourage users to contribute more than it should be to 'award' editors who are already contributing." I'd add that this is not because I think heavy editors don't matter as much as newbies or shouldn't be recognized in other ways; it's simply that people who pass a certain threshold of edits are generally "hooked" enough not to really need edit-count-based awards or care about them as much. It's the classic economics law of diminishing marginal utility, wherein your first few dollars (edits) matter way more to you than your hundredth or thousandth.
The problem with making these awards more newbie focused is, unless we develop a really thorough outreach/publicity campaign for them, they're likely to go unnoticed and unused. I've been researching Wikipedia for over two years and editing as a volunteer for one, and I had no idea till just now that the lower levels of these awards even existed! One thought is to talk to the folks at the newly-opened WP:Teahouse, an experimental help/mentoring space just rolled out today by Sarah Stierch and Jonathan Morgan. They will hopefully have a lot of newbies rolling through their doors and would be able to alert folks who are just about to cross the novice/apprentice thresholds that these things exist and can be self-awarded.

I should add that Steven and I have been doing a lot of brainstorming lately about editing thresholds and ideas to motivate new users to cross them. In the office, we hacked together a neat tool that plays a sound every time an editor crosses the 1000 edit mark (because we're huge nerds, it plays the beaming up sound from Star Trek :D), and sometime in the future we'd like to experiment with turning this into an onwiki or otherwise public-facing tool. That would hopefully make it a lot easier for editors to realize that they've attained an important milestone, which in turn might motivate them to shoot for the next milestone... and then before you know it, they're Grand Tutnums and are too cool and cynical to care about edit count anymore :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:09, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, Maryana. Below I'm putting a table with current and proposed levels, including changes to time periods.

Requirements for service awards
°	Award	Current Edits	Current Period	Proposed edits	Proposed period
1	Registered Editor (or Signator)	1	1 day	1	1 day
2	Novice Editor (or Burba)	200	1 month	100	1 week
3	Apprentice Editor (or Novato)	1,000	3 months	500	1 month
4	Journeyman Editor (or Grognard)	2,000	6 months	1,000	2 months
5	Yeoman Editor (or Grognard Extraordinaire)	4,000	1 year	1,500	3 months
6	Experienced Editor (or Grognard Mirabilaire)	6,000	11⁄2 years	2,000	6 months
7	Veteran Editor (or Tutnum)	8,000	2 years	3,000	1 year
8	Veteran Editor II (or Grand Tutnum)	12,000	21⁄2 years	4,000	11⁄2 years
9	Veteran Editor III (or Most Perfect Tutnum)	16,000	3 years	5,000	2 years
10	Veteran Editor IV (or Tutnum of the Encyclopedia)	20,000	31⁄2 years	7,500	21⁄2 years
11	Senior Editor (or Labutnum)	24,000	3 years	10,000	3 years
12	Senior Editor II (or Most Pluperfect Labutnum)	28,500	41⁄2 years	15,000	31⁄2 years
13	Senior Editor III (or Labutnum of the Encyclopedia)	33,000	5 years	20,000	4 years
14	Master Editor (or Illustrious Looshpah)	42,000	6 years	25,000	5 years
15	Master Editor II (or Auspicious Looshpah)	51,000	7 years	30,000	6 years
16	Master Editor III (or Redoubtable Togneme)	60,000	8 years	40,000	7 years
17	Master Editor IV (or Esteemed Togneme Laureate)	78,000	10 years	50,000	8 years
18	Grandmaster Editor (or Most Imposing Togneme)	96,000	12 years	75,000	9 years
19	Grandmaster Editor First-Class (or Venerable and Eminent Togneme)	114,000	14 years	100,000	10 years
20	Vanguard Editor (or Lord High Togneme)	132,000	16 years	125,000	12 years

The original table is on the project page Wikipedia:Service awards, and I expanded it with my proposals.

Should there be a restriction that only non-automated edits count, since automated edits let someone gain edit count numbers significantly more rapidly? Pine^talk 00:41, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

How does one get the non-automated edits count?

Instead of messing with the upper levels, why not create more at the lower level (e.g. Novice editor becomes Novice editor I and Novice editor II)? This would be less work and create less confusion. VMS Mosaic (talk) 02:33, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll ask a developer about your first question. Apparently there was a way to do this but the tool is currently offline. Regarding your second question, I'm confused because I feel that I'm proposing very significant changes to the lower service levels. The names are staying the same but the edit count and time requirements are shortened, especially for the newest users and those with the lowest edit counts. Pine^talk 04:12, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Tool found: http://toolserver.org/~tparis/autoedits/index.php. When you press the "Submit" button you'll get an error, but if you change ~soxred93 to ~tparis then the tool works. Pine^talk 04:26, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

You want the lower levels to increment quicker, right? So simply create more of them and leave everything else alone. The comments above suggest that experienced editors aren't motivated by the awards, so why go thru the effort to change their current awards? If you look at the archived discussions, you will find one and only one editor editor was 'forced' to do all the work required by the last major change proposed by editors who didn't help. I am strongly opposed to that happening again. . VMS Mosaic (talk) 06:42, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose The last review hasn't really had time to bed in yet so it is way too soon to overhaul these again. But if and when we do our next review we should build on the last review rather than reversing it. The Pedia is currently 11 years old, we should be designing a service award scheme that will work for decades to come. Other organisations have longservice awards for members who've been with them for thirty, forty even fifty years. The last review extended these awards to just 16 years, and instead of starting to think about, or at least make provision for the future this proposal would reverse that and reduce the top level to just 12 years. As for the low level awards, those at best are just humourous clutter. Newbies who've been here weeks or even a month or two aren't going to be interested in some "medal" that is handed out to everyone who shows up, give them that and many will think you are insulting them and labelling them noobs. Ϣere SpielChequers 10:59, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Wait, where did these new times come from? The first I saw of them was when the table was created (if I'm not mistaken). SpellCheckers is right, the time-frame reduction is not a good idea. The edit-count reduction, as per my above, is something we should look at. Achowat (talk) 13:12, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not so bothered about reducing the edit count provided you leave the time bands or even increase them. Nobody currently qualifies for the 12, 14 and 16 year awards so you could turn them into the 20, 30 and 40 year awards that we will eventually need. Alternatively we could classify the whole of the current service award system as basically a bit of fun and start designing a more serious system for editors who have been around for 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years. But my suggestion for that would be to move away from edit count altogether and use a has edited in the month metric. So the ten year award would be for anyone who has edited in 120 different months across the whole of Wikimedia. That allows for the fact that some of our earliest editors have long left to work on their own language versions of Wikipedia or on new projects like Wiktionary or Commons. Ϣere SpielChequers 14:48, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Damn, that sounds like a really good idea, too. But having both would be stupid...GAH! I don't want to decide which one to support. Achowat (talk) 14:59, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

We could have both. The existing one as a tongue in cheek self awarding system here on the English Wikipedia and the longterm one as a serious Wikimedia initiative for the whole project, the longterm one would need a bot to calculate things across Single user logins across the whole of Wikimedia. But I see that as a nice thing for the WMF to run. There is a slight overlap at ten years but I don't see that as a problem. Ϣere SpielChequers 15:06, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

And how would we go about getting The Foundation involved? Maybe a scheme like a X Year Veteran Service Award, given for any year in which you've made at least 1 edit per month; or something like that. Achowat (talk) 15:14, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

We should probably move the conversation to Meta, that would emphasis that we are thinking of this as a movement wide initiative that the Foundation should pickup; then I'd suggest fleshing it out - maybe for the ten year award specifying some sort of prize, no-one will be earning twenty year awards for another nine years but there will be a few people who've already done ten years and a whole wikigeneration coming to their tenth anniversary in the next few years. I'm thinking of going to Wikimania this year and if I do I may collar some people there. Of course one difficulty is that much of this is medium to long term stuff and a lot of the Foundation people have this very American focus on the current quarter. Ϣere SpielChequers 00:41, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I always found the service awards to be skewed towards valuing date of registration over contributions. There are some editors (like myself) who have more edits that the service awards recognize, yet since we did not start editing back in 2001 we are not eligible for them; nor we will ever be. In other words, why number of edits reflect merit, the date of registration reflects luck and coincidence, and I don't see why we should reward it. That I started editing in 2004 does not make me better than those who started later, nor does it make me inferior to those who started before. If you want to keep time in the award, make it possible for everyone to be able to claim them, by reducing the amount required for the top award to no more than 5 years. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 05:07, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

It isn't date of registration, its the time since your date of registration, so it isn't the case that if we didn't "start editing back in 2001 we are not eligible for them; nor we will ever be". If you started editing seven years ago and you have the requisite edits you will be eligible for the whole set of awards in another nine years. I started editing nearly five years ago and if I included my edits on commons, or I do a bit more editing here, I will qualify for the "top" award in another eleven years. A new editor starting today could qualify for the whole set within sixteen years. If we reduce the requirements for the highest level to five years then how do we mark the service of those who've been here for ten years? Ϣere SpielChequers 07:06, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem is, as nicely illustrated by the table above, that there is a tendency to introduce new awards, extending the deadline. So your hypothetical new editor who could qualify for all of our current awards in sixteen years will, if the trend keeps up, be not eligible for the new top tier awards which would require something like twenty seven years of editing history. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 07:10, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

OK that's a different issue. My view is that in the future we will want to honour people who've been with us for twenty, thirty maybe fifty years. Many other volunteer organisations do this, so why not us? That would mean that those of us who are relatively old won't ever be able to qualify for the awards that some who started as teenagers may one day achieve. Even if I live to be a decade older than my father was at his death I'm not going to get a thirty year award. But I hope that Wikipedia will still be running in fifty years time, and that some of the editors that I knew will still be around and will have got fifty year awards. Ϣere SpielChequers 07:25, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

You have to stop thinking about this and start WikiThinking about it. The goal should never be to reach "The Top". There never will be a Top. We will keep adding levels to always give editors something to strive for. It's just like the Project itself. We're never going to be done. There is no such thing as "The Perfect Encyclopedia". We'll never get there, even if every registered editor spends 40 hours a week in a library digging through sources. But the Project and the Service Awards are like World Hunger: a problem that can never be solved, but the very act of trying (and invariably failing) to solve it will be of net benefit to all involved. Achowat (talk) 13:30, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that the service awards tie number of edits to length. I'd rather see separate awards for that, and separate for number of edits. Not necessarily replacing the awards; the more the merrier, after all. Perhaps we could have a ribbon add-on or such for editors who have significantly more edits or who have been active for a significantly longer time than the range in their service award column? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 18:00, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Piotrus, I like your suggestion of splitting the two types. Want to start a new section to discuss that? Pine^talk 07:51, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Pure edit count is already well covered by WP:EDITS. There is a scoreboard, numerous userboxen and even people giving out barnstars to people who reach certain milestones. We don't need to make these awards merely a subset of those - the difference between these awards and those is that service awards also reflect how long you've been here. Ϣere SpielChequers 08:00, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

I like the idea of the service awards because it gives editors something to strive for to self-actualize. I propose to keep the time and edit numbers the same because it would be consistent. Geraldshields11 (talk) 18:52, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Edit Count Update (and back on topic)

So, I'd just like to focus our discussion a little bit back to the numbers for the different Award Levels. (The above conversation is productive, but going in a completely different direction). It seems that a big barrier to an update of the level "requirements" would be the difficulty in implementing them. Could someone explain what, if any, work was done to informed users the last time the requirements change? Achowat (talk) 16:27, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Well there's also the issue that as connections speed-up and more people make use of tools it doesn't make sense to reduce the edit count requirements. Ϣere SpielChequers 00:25, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I disagree that "it doesn't make sense to reduce the edit count requirements" for the lower levels. See the comments from Maryana (WMF) above. I also think that my proposed changes to the upper levels make them easier to remember while not drastically changing the count requirements. Pine^talk 07:49, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

We need to remember that newbies already have lots to take onboard, and we need to be judicious as to what we think is important to communicate to them. A service award scheme is not really an appropriate thing to market to new editors, especially an award scheme devalued by having such easy starting levels. I once worked in a company where the HR department lowered the criteria for a longservice award lunch to two years. It was a seriously counterproductive move that just communicated to people that this was an organisation where people didn't stay. So my preference is that we focus our thoughts on how the award system can evolve over the next few decades from a 16 year design to one that will work for an organisation with volunteers who've been around for half a century. Ϣere SpielChequers 09:40, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

If anything is changed, I think it should be gradual towards some new values, instead of making big changes on one day. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 08:37, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Support the edit count as per new methodology. Makes sense to exclude all automated edits. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.68.104.221 (talk) 06:18, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Improved template

Examples

Result	Small Ribbon Code
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=2012-04-21\|edits=1}}
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=2012-02-21\|edits=150}}
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=2012-02-21\|edits=250}}
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=2011-04-21\|edits=1000}}
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=2009-04-23\|edits=3000}}
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=2008-04-23\|edits=90000}}
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=2001-01-15\|edits=132000}}
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=1999-01-15\|edits=132000}}

Result	Large Ribbon Code
Registered Editor	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=large-ribbon\|date=2012-04-21\|edits=1}}
Registered Editor	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=large-ribbon\|date=2012-02-21\|edits=150}}

Discussion

I propose the above template for your use. All you need to define is:

|type=ribbon (which is the style you prefer)
|date=2001-01-15 (date when you started editing in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD))
|edits=9001 (your edit count)

It currently only works with the smaller ribbon but it can be made to work with any style. I just don't want to waste my time if no one is interested. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 22:31, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I have expanded the level 1 to include variants. Other levels need some copy/paste work. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 23:10, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

What is the need of this template, because we have {{Service Awards}}?Does this have something extra? Yours is equally good, but the Service Awards is being used for this purpose. e^xtra999 (talk) 09:42, 23 April 2012 (UTC) 10:01, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

User:とある白い猫/Service (main function, checks style)
User:とある白い猫/Service/Count (checks edit count)
User:とある白い猫/Service/Range (checks date)

I wasn't aware of that template. Hopefully I did not waste my time. :) This template also offers the smaller ribbom (I like that better) and is easier to update. If numbers need adjustment, it is trivial to preform this task even without programming skills. This could particularly be useful if number ranges are adjusted in the future. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 10:06, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Maybe we can add the small ribbons to the service awards templates, because many more people are using it. by the way it is problematic to update the edit count. Since service awards are being used as landmarks, we can find it as easy to update the service award itself. e^xtra999 (talk) 10:36, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I am not suggesting an update. My point is if a change is conducted it would be a lot easier through my template's code. {{Service awards/select}} code is a lot more difficult to read, at least for a seasoned editor with a great deal of experience in parser functions. Consider an update in the context of adding a new level (beyond the available 20).

It is possible to update thee existing code to incorporate mine without inconveniencing the users of the template. I can adjust the parameters to match existing ones.

-- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 15:56, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I've added support for small ribbons to {{Service awards}} (use format=smlribbon). I'll take a look at A Certain White Cat's template later to see what else would be useful to put into the Service awards template. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:41, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Style part is incomplete as I only coded it for small ribbons except for level 1. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 00:33, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I've updated {{Service awards/select}} to be much more readable, based on A Certain White Cat's templates. It should now be much easier for someone to make changes to this template. The template now calculates dates in a manner similar to User:とある白い猫/Service/Range, which eliminates the need for the {{Service awards/month}} and {{Service awards/day}} templates. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:16, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Good tweak. extra999 (talk)

Service award userboxes

Details of changes

Buaidh made several changes to the service award userboxes:

Template	Lines	Img size	id-w = 0	id-c = info-c	info-a = center	Added <br/>s
Registered Editor Userbox	2	x45px	yes	no	yes	no
Novice Editor Userbox	2	x45px	yes	no	yes	no
Apprentice Editor Userbox	2	x45px	yes	no	yes	no
Journeyman Editor Userbox	2	x45px	yes	no	yes	no
Yeoman Editor Userbox	2	x45px	yes	no	yes	no
Experienced Editor Userbox	2	x45px	yes	no	yes	no
Veteran Editor Userbox	3	x45px	yes	no	yes	yes
Veteran Editor II Userbox	3	x45px	yes	no	yes	yes
Veteran Editor III Userbox	3	x45px	yes	no	yes	yes
Veteran Editor IV Userbox	3	x45px	yes	no	yes	yes
Senior Editor Userbox	3	x45px	yes	no	yes	yes
Senior Editor II Userbox	3	x45px	yes	no	yes	yes
Senior Editor III Userbox	3	x45px	yes	no	yes	yes
Master Editor Userbox	3	x45px	yes	no	yes	yes
Master Editor II Userbox	3	x45px	yes	no	yes	yes
Master Editor III Userbox	3	x45px	yes	no	yes	yes
Master Editor IV Userbox	3	x45px	yes	no	yes	yes
Grandmaster Editor Userbox	4	45px	no	no	yes	yes
Grandmaster Editor FC Userbox	4	45px	no	no	yes	no
Vanguard Editor Userbox	4	45px	no	no	yes	yes
Signator Userbox	2	x45px	yes	no	no	no
Burba Userbox	2	x45px	yes	no	no	no
Novato Userbox	3	x45px	yes	no	no	no
Grognard Userbox	3	x45px	yes	no	no	no
Grognard II Userbox	4	45px	no	no	no	no
Grognard III Userbox	3	x45px	yes	no	no	no
Tutnum Userbox	2	x45px	yes	no	no	no
Tutnum II Userbox	3	x45px	yes	no	no	no
Tutnum III Userbox	4	45px	no	yes	no	no
Tutnum IV Userbox	5	45px	no	yes	no	no
Labutnum Userbox	5	45px	no	yes	no	no
Labutnum II Userbox	6	45px	no	yes	no	no
Labutnum III Userbox	7	45px	no	yes	no	no
Looshpah Userbox	3	x45px	yes	yes	no	no
Looshpah II Userbox	4	45px	no	yes	no	no
Looshpah III Userbox	6	45px	no	yes	no	no
Looshpah IV Userbox	6	45px	no	yes	no	no
Togneme Userbox	4	45px	no	yes	no	no
Togneme II Userbox	5	45px	no	yes	no	no
Gom Userbox	6	45px	no	no	no	no

Also:

border-s changed from 2 to 1 on Labutnum III Userbox.
id-fc changed from #000000 to black on Senior Editor Userbox and Senior Editor III Userbox.
Reordered userbox parameters on Senior Editor Userbox, Senior Editor II Userbox, Master Editor Userbox and Master Editor II Userbox.

See comments below for discussion of the changes. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:31, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

I have restored the service award userboxes image size to the standard x45px (a height of 45 pixels.) This allows the service award userboxes to be stacked with all the other standard userboxes. For userboxes with more than three lines of caption, I have restored the image size to 45px (a width of 45 pixels.) Please let me know if you discover any problems. Yours aye, Buaidh 14:47, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't knoiw. I don't think there is a "standard" userbox size...all of my UBXs seem to have different sizes. I know, personally at least, I prefer the larger version. Achowat (talk) 14:55, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Standard stacking size for userboxes using Template:Userbox is 242 pixels by 47 pixels or 240 pixels by 45 pixels with a border of 1 pixel. Userboxes may be made any size, but the 240x45+1 is by far the most common. Standard image size may be x45px (for a height of 45 pixels), 45px (for a landscape width of 45 pixels), or 45x45px (no more than 45 pixels in either direction.) Yours aye, Buaidh 16:26, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I guess the question I have is "What was wrong with the old system?" If it was causing stacking or display issues, that's one thing. But it seems like tons of Users use the UBXs we had with little or no issue (and definitely without the odd compression the smaller image causes). Achowat (talk) 17:08, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

There were a few other changes besides the image size. I've detailed which changes were made to each template in the table at the top of this section. I don't have a strong opinion on most of the changes; they are mainly a matter of personal taste. Looking at each change:

As Buaidh explained, they changed the image size to a height of 45 pixels for userboxes with a short description (3 lines or less), and to a width of 45 pixels for taller userboxes (more than 3 lines). Template:Userbox uses 45x45px as the default size for userbox images. I am unaware of any guideline that says this should be the "standard" size, and the userbox template is designed to allow userbox writers to set their own sizes. As for my personal preference, when setting up my user page, I deliberately chose userboxes where the left part of the box was the default 45px so they would line up neatly when stacked (I didn't care about the height so much).
Buaidh added "id-w = 0" to the templates with 3 or fewer lines. This reduces the width of userbox reserved for the image to exactly fit the image. (Without this, the userbox default is to reserve at least 45px for the image.) I'm not keen on this, as it prevents userbox images from lining up when userboxes are stacked vertically. In the case of some of the lower level medals (e.g. Apprentice Editor Userbox), this makes the left part of the userbox look ridiculously narrow.
On several of the book userboxes, Buaidh set the id-c userbox parameter to be the same as the info-c parameter. This causes the background colour for the image part of the userbox to be the same as the background colour for the text part. Personally, I preferred the contrast of having two colours. Since only some userboxes were changed in this manner, this is currently inconsistent.
On the medal userboxes, Buaidh centred the text. (The userbox default is to left align the text.) I have no preference on this, though I find it odd that different alignment is used between the book and medal userboxes now.
On many of the medal userboxes, Buaidh added <br/>s to force the text to wrap in certain places. I quite like the effect of this, and think it is an improvement.
Buaidh reduced the border size of Labutnum III Userbox from 2 to 1. This brings it into line with all of the other service award userboxes. I have no preference as to whether a thin or thick border should be used.
Buaidh changed the id-fc (ID foreground colour) parameter from "#000000" to "black" on Senior Editor Userbox and Senior Editor III Userbox. This has no practical effect, since both values mean the same thing, though "black" is more understandable to humans. The id-fc parameter has no effect in these userboxes anyway – the 'ID' part is an image, and foreground colour only makes sense for text.
Buaidh reordered the userbox parameters on a handful of templates. This has no practical effect, though the new parameter order is more logical to my mind. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:31, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Small incongruency question

If I've been an active editor for 6 years 8 months, been through a lot on Wikipedia and know it inside out, but I have an edit count of under 2500, am I really still just a grognard? --Ifrit (Talk) 06:45, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

It's wrong to think of it as you being "just a Grognard". Jimbo, who has been a Wikipedian for a tremendously long period of time, is "just" a Tutnum, only 5500 edits away from your current level. Remove 5,500 pieces of Vandalism or fix 5,500 typos...and you're at the same Level as Mr. Wales himself. The problem arises when we say "Oh, well, this guy is a Labutnum, so he must know what he's doing". You feel like you're an Expert in the parts of Wikipedia you frequent with only 2,500 edits. I feel like I'm an Expert in the parts of Wikipedia I frequent (though I'm trying to get my feet wet in the other areas) even though my account was made just under 1 year ago. The Service Awards are just a fun way to keep track of edit history and time served. When we expect them to do more, the system stops working. Achowat (talk) 13:08, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Does IP "service" count?

I started editing more than five years ago without having an account, and created an account about a year after. Does the time as an IP count as well? FunkMonk (talk) 13:57, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

that's answered here [[5]] under "what's counted" Azylber (talk) 14:03, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Ah, nice! Thanks. FunkMonk (talk) 14:04, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Identical images

This has probably been asked before, but why are the images for Master Editor IV and Master Editor V the same? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 14:54, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

It's not been asked before. The Master Editor V award was added by 게이큐읭 6 days ago, and they don't appear to have created any images for it other than ribbons. If we keep this new award, we'll need some new images... I've notified 게이큐읭 of this discussion. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 17:55, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry for I didnot make two image. But i am not well make image. --게이큐읭 (talk) 13:40, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Looking at the progression, it sort of shouldn't even exist. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 13:49, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I think it should exit. If we lowered ME4 and ME5 to 9000edit and one year, every grade lower than ten year and longrr then fiveyear, there step bevome linear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 게이큐읭 (talk • contribs) 14:01, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Until there are new images, this needs to go. I put a good bit of effort in getting rid of the ugly images with the "wagon wheels". The one image with it now is completely out of place. New levels also require discussion and consensus before being added. VMS Mosaic (talk) 03:54, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

In that case, I've reverted 게이큐읭's changes per WP:BRD (and VMS Mosaic or others, you could and perhaps should have done this. The service awards need to be defended against undiscussed changes by anyone who is willing and able to do that.) 게이큐읭, you need to discuss and get some agreement on any changes before making them (as the edit notice suggests), and if you can't draw graphics you need to find someone who can, before making the changes. I do not really understand your comments starting with "I think it should exi[s]t..." because the English is not too good, but the current scheme, whether it is optimal or not, is the result of compromises hammered out over long discussion, and we should respect that to some extent, I think. Herostratus (talk) 05:49, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I concur. It looks pretty darn nice the way it is. No need to squeeze another into the progression "5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16".

VMS Mosaic, Herostratus, and others, you are hereby charged with the duty of protecting the awards. You shall be known as the Knights of the Looshpah, or something like that. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:14, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I've also reverted the changes to the various related templates. I don't know whether the various Master Editor V and Looshpah V templates should be deleted; they seem harmless enough to keep (feel free to hop over to TfD if you feel differently; I'm not fussed either way). I've stopped them from linking to the main Service awards page since they are no longer official service awards. The ribbon images added by 게이큐읭 should be kept, since they can easily be reused for something else. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 23:59, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I think 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16. is more better --게이큐읭 (talk) 05:37, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm for of 게이큐읭 --Urea1 (talk) 23:17, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I think It get a consensus of reviving master V award--게이큐읭 (talk) 10:47, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

FYI: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/게이큐읭

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 11:35, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Herostratus, I now think you are right that I and others should be bold in reverting these changes. Sometimes I assume too much good faith.VMS Mosaic (talk)

Are you kidding me? It's misundersyanding. --게이큐읭 (talk) 16:51, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Service award notification script

I would prefer to see another award at 9 months plus fill in every year out to 20 years. 20 years would be the new max. I don't think that anyone should get an award just for registering, instead the first award should be at least 1 month (maybe even 3 months). To encourage people to edit more, Wikipedia should run a script every day to notify people when they roll past their service award....heck I didn't even know about service awards until multiple months of editing. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 05:48, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm fine creating a new max. In fact, I think we're going to have to once there are thousands of people who are at Gom levels. As for the script, I believe that there's a software issue in auto-updating non-admin's stats. (And it would be a <huge>HUGE</huge> load on the servers). As to Banaticus' "this is insurmountable, I give up" rationale. Currently the Gom level is insurmountable...do you feel like you might as well give up? Achowat (talk) 20:42, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

The biggest problem with the awards is that few know about them, which is exactly how some of the powers that be want it. They have even tried to have the service awards project deleted twice. Even if there were not the issues with a script you mention, the chances of an automated script being put in place is essentially zero unless those opposed to having service awards change their minds. VMS Mosaic (talk) 21:07, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

On the point of technical feasibility, I'm ~~not~~ sure MediaWiki can provide edit count data to scripts. However, tools on the toolserver can access a copy of Wikipedia's database, which allows tools like X!'s Edit Counter to count edits. (Though I think there's a maximum number of edits for X!'s counter, as high numbers of edits take longer to count.) If the service awards script ran on the toolserver, it should be able to count edits in much the same manner as the edit counters already there.

Regarding VMS Mosaic's comment: I think you might be overstating possible opposition to such a script; both of the deletion discussions you refer to were overwhelmingly keep. The notifications would, of course, need to be on an opt-in basis. I can't see anyone objecting to a bot that only affects the user talk pages of users who opt-in to use it. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:21, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

I've just checked; there is a MediaWiki API scripts can use to fetch a user's edit count. I've struck out the 'not' in my previous comment. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:37, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

In order to understand the depth of the opposition, you need to take a look at the extreme opposition to having any user categories at all associated with the awards. Of course, the supporters of this project can easily defeat any attempt at deletion, but they have failed to get the project integrated into other parts of Wikipedia. Assuming it's opt-in only, then how do you inform users about the option to opt-in? VMS Mosaic (talk) 01:34, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I, personally, would be opposed to a Bot that ran a check of thousands of user contributions every day just for the offchance that the editor had met a certain threshold. Achowat (talk) 13:16, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Good point about running a batch script on a bazillion people, but instead maybe run a small script when each person logs in? If that is still too much horsepower requirements, then it doesn't have to check it everyday. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 19:38, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

If it doesn't update daily, then what's even the point? Achowat (talk) 19:44, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

@VMS Mosaic: Don't assume opposition to the categories to be opposition to service awards. I'm against the categories, even though I quite like the service awards.

Regarding informing users, I agree that opt-in would defeat the goal of letting more users know about the service awards. However, I don't think there is any other way this bot would be accepted. Given that the first service award requires one edit, without opt-in the bot would put something resembling {{Welcome award}} on new user talk pages after their first edit, and welcome bots are something of a no-no. (Try thinking about this from the point of view of someone who isn't interested in service awards: You'd find it pretty annoying if a WikiProject that didn't interest you started posting announcements on your talk page.)

With opt-in, the script would only be used by users who already know about service awards. I still think it would be useful, albeit maybe not for the originally intended reason. I quite like the idea of being notified as I become eligible for each service award.

@Achowat: Are your objections based on perceived performance problems? There is no need to check through a user's contributions to count them – MediaWiki keeps a running total for each user, and the API lets us query it. Try this query. It fetches the edit count and registration date for four prolific user accounts with more than 5 million edits between them. It takes less than a second. In any case, we don't need to worry about performance.

I think once per day is the ideal interval at which to run the bot. However, even if it were to run less often, it would still be a useful tool. I don't check my edit count very often, and I can easily imagine a whole month passing before realising I'd earned another service award. If a bot could tell me before then, it would have served its purpose, even if it didn't tell me on the day I earned the award. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:28, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I think such a bot should be run once a month. Not on the entire wiki all at once, but rather using the first letter of each person's user name each day. Day 1, A/a... Day 2, B/b... Day 3, C/c... Day 26, Z/z... Day 27, ;!@# or some other such characters? Whatever, let's not get bogged down in implementation. As Achowat pointed out, we don't need to worry about performance. Banaticus (talk) 21:58, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I said that in reply to Achowat. Querying edit counts is very cheap. It is possible to get the edit counts for 500 users in a single query, most of whom won't have crossed an award boundary so won't need notification. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:57, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I think a bot like this should ignore the first level of awards. Brand new editors can stumble upon the awards or be told about it by a mentor, but points #2 and #3 at Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Use_a_bot_to_welcome_new_users are good points and I agree with them. A bot should only recognize people from 1 month and on. Banaticus (talk) 22:02, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I think the bot should give notifications to younger accounts provided the account owner requests it; it wouldn't be working like a welcome bot in that case. In any case, we should not spam people who don't want to know about service awards, as that's a quick way to make many people angry. (Such a bot would never be approved anyway.) To paraphrase some of my earlier comments: I know that an opt-in requirement would defeat the original goal of this discussion (letting more users know about service awards), but I think the bot would still be useful. I quite like the idea of being notified as I become eligible for each service award. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:57, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

New levels suggestion

The following was written with the idea that we want to retain new editors, to give them something to strive for, also boosting the number of people who use this. Currently there's not even 6k people using it -- I don't think it would be too hard to get it up by an order of magnitude. (Or two?) I think the edit count should actually be raised for the very first step, to at least make the first level meaningful, then lowered for every following step. The very first level should basically be when you're autoconfirmed. An award that is given out as soon as you register an account and make an edit doesn't really feel like an "award", it feels like a pointier welcome cookie, a "welcome star". That's nice, but does it really mean anything? The first level should be awarded at 10 edits and 5 days. Thus, when you get your first editing service award, you'll get a host of new powers as well, such as the ability to move pages. The first level will now mean more.

The following levels should have their numbers reduced so that your average person who sticks around and continues to edit at a meandering pace should be able to eventually earn everything. Currently, the required edit counts ramp up fairly swiftly to the point where the "final level" requires an average of just over 23 edits a day, every day, for 16 years. That's an incredible break-neck level of editing in later years. Let's look at the first few levels then use those as a guide to setting the edit counts for later levels. The second level is 30 days (well, 29 2/3, but who's counting). A good goal for that would be 50. That's two or three edits a day. With the general consensus being that the "low lying everyman" edit fruit on Wikipedia already being taken, that would seem to be a decent number for a "regular" contributor. Then we have 89 days, 178 days, and 356 days (or one year) as the next major marks. From there, I'm just going to go every year. This has two advantages, although it gets rid of some of the year marks. 1) The table will end with 16 years just as it currently does. 2) After the first year there will be a bigger emphasis on "your anniversary date", and a yearly draw to possibly bring people back in could be a useful thing. "Oh, it's September again, I bet I've earned the next level now, perhaps I should return to Wikipedia."

So, taking that 10 edits and 5 days then 50 edits and 30 days, we can then simply use an Excel formula to see how many edits should be required. With that bit of data, on either a linear or polynomial trendline, Excel suggests 9k edits. That seems too few for 16 years, so I bumped it up to 50k. That's somewhere between a half and a third of what the current 16-year mark is, but it also seems attainable by a "normal" person. Yes, yes, I know that someone is going to chime up with "but I have that many edits..." yes, I know you do, belive me, but you're also far, far in the minority. 50k edits after 16 years seems attainable by a "normal" editor. With that in the mix, and plugging in a polynomial trendline, I came up with the following rounded formula: =0.0013*DAYS^2+1.5*DAYS where DAYS is the length of time an account has been registered, expressed in days. This gives a nice even expansion from beginning to end and can be used for any length of time.

"But what about me," I hear someone say, "And my 80 kajillion edits?" Well, let's create a new award for these people. Not a series of awards, but rather something that can be tacked onto whatever year award they're currently working on. "The Super Hardcore Amazing Editors Who Probably Never Sleep Barnstar" and they can get an additional barnstar every X edits or something. Let's not get bogged down in what number that should be, what's consensus of what I've said earlier?

"But we'll have to alert every editor that's ever participated and change user pages..." Ok, if someone hears or notices the change but doesn't bother to do anything about it, their lack of initiative is not my problem. If they care, they'll update it when they go up a level, right? So, now they've gone up a level. All we really need is a mention on user talk pages and those can be knocked out fairly quickly. Remember, not even 6k people use this. Even at 5 seconds an edit, that's only about 8 hours of editing talk pages. Presuming that we don't have a sudden influx of hundreds more people using this, I could knock that out next month, so let's not throw that strawman up any more. So, what's the general consensus on my reasoning? Banaticus (talk) 08:13, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Well reasoned, and it's probably the best written way to explain that argument I've heard in a long time. But the reason we've set some awards to be unattainable is because we, essentially, never want them to be attained. We never want to put someone in a position of saying "Ok, now what?". Also, your argument about time+edits is folly, I think, since it is rare (if even possible) for someone to hit the time requirement at the exact same time as the edits requirement.

Service Awards serve as a way to engage new users. In fact, the only reason I still display my medal-and-star is because I want new editors to see that and be engaged like I was when I first put my Burba ribbon on my Userpage. The first 5 levels are pretty easy to get already, and if after 12 months and 4,000 edits, if a User still needs to Service Awards, it means they haven't bought into "The Wikipedia Way", and there's little that can be done to solve that by making the awards easier to win. Achowat (talk) 13:45, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment. :) I think 16 years is going to be pretty unattainable in and of itself for the vast majority of users (and there are edit requirements, as scant as they may appear next to the current requirements). That's just over a decade and a half, roughly 20% of the average life expectancy. We want editors to stick around that long, though, and we want editors to continue editing through that span of time. A person who may have moved away from Wikipedia and who mostly spends their time on other things should be inspired to "catch up" to the amount of edits that they "should have" in order to earn the next service award. If a person hasn't hit the edit requirements yet for that year's (or that time period's) service award, we want to motivate them to actually go do that, not to present some immeasurably monumental task so huge that they simply accept inevitable defeat and don't even bother trying. In essence, to be entirely cold and blunt about it, service awards should function as Skinner boxes because people like rewards and people will continue to return and work to get those rewards once the "honeymoon" period is over. We don't want to really say that the Wikipedia Way is to expect people to essentially work for free, without any rewards or praise, after their first year. The goal should be to build a very large group of dedicated-enough people who feel welcomed and who have something to show for their work, who keep coming back to Wikipedia year after year, no matter what else happens in their lives. Granted, it would be fairly impossible to build the sort of apparatus to truly make Wikipedia into a set of matryoshka doll-like Skinner boxes in the same manner that WoW or any other MMORPG has been designed, but Wikipedia should in general be more approachable and 16 years is a long time. Banaticus (talk) 04:35, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

If we look at other volunteer organisations such as blood donors, the Red cross, and many more, sixteen years is not unusually long service. Employees have a maximum of forty years with an organisation between education and retirement, but the maximum for volunteers is far longer. Of course the vast majority won't achieve the maximum long service award, if they did it would be a sign that you've set the bar too low. I doubt if I will live long enough to be involved in this project for fifty years, but in about forty years time we will start wanting to acknowledge our fifty year veterans. As for the argument that some levels will seem unattainable to some, that is simply the wrong way to look at this. The question we should ask ourselves is Is there an attainable next level for everyone? Currently that's the case, and there will be for several years. Ϣere SpielChequers 18:00, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

It's true. 16 years for many organizations really isn't a very long time at all. For Wikipedia, though, it's a darn long time, four years longer than Wikipedia has been around. Since 2007, the number of editors and the number of edits has been declining. The Wikimedia Foundation is concerned enough that there are several projects whose sole purpose is to attempt to reverse this trend, most notably the Teahouse. People like rewards, especially they like metered rewards that they know they can work towards. The idea that some awards were created with the express intention of users "never being able to reach them" so that "everyone can continue to work towards something" makes no sense. An unattainable goal is unattainable and anyone with sense will quickly put that unattainable goal up on the shelf next to the "actually going to Neverland" goal. We need awards that motivate people and while these do so for the first year or so that a user is around, the awards quickly grow out of the reach of all but the most dedicated, and those who basically run a bot account out of their own account. Banaticus (talk) 21:58, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not arguing for the abolition of the earlier awards, simply pointing out that if we plan to be around another forty years then having a reward structure that allows for that would be a good thing. We have retention problems at many levels of the community, and it makes sense to learn from people who've successfully handled this problem. Someone getting a one year award isn't going to be miffed that there are also longer service awards. But if we decide that we either aren't going to be around twenty years after we started or if we do we aren't bothered about those who are still with us then that could be a self fulfilling prophecy. Ϣere SpielChequers 13:00, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Service awards emphasize quantity and seniority, without regard to quality or impact

Prof EJ Corey, Sheldon Emery Research Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard, and winner of every major organic and most all other relevant chemistry awards—including the 1990 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, a "[p]rize for masterly ... development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis" (ref. 1)—has ≈1025 contributed articles in the scientific literature as of this date. Of these, had a fraction, say 10%, 50 or so, made their way into wikipedia (by extraction and citation, invitation, etc.) the overall quality of wikipedia in the organic chemistry area (where I edit) would have been launched from relative chemical insignificance and inadequacy to a place of wide scientific appreciation and recognition.

By this simple analysis, it is quality, and impact, that are the keys to any livelihood of intellectual contribution.

By this standard, this service award system is a questionable one. And believing this, I will consciously resist it by making very many of my edits anonymously, so as to never approach even the lowest of these levels of editorial service. Quality, and impact, over quantity and seniority, please. The latter values, in isolation, are damaging to any system of recognition.

Reference. 1. "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1990, Elias James Corey, Press Release", http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1990/press.html, accessed 12 Feb 2013. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.175.244.80 (talk) 03:35, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Well that's a reasonable point, the problem being, how do you adjudicate that? The current system has the advantage, by being a simple mechanical count, of being entirely free from politics and therefore contention, and requiring no administration.

An entirely separate system that measured quality and value would be interesting, but I would think that you would need human judges to assign the values, and this would require time-consuming administration, and then be open to arguments and hurt feelings and so forth. All the Service Awards are good for is saying "I've been here such-and-such time and done more or less X amount of editing" which presumably has a certain value (even just correcting typos has value), with no real judgement made beyond that.

It seems idiosyncratic, to me, to deliberately reduce one's edits to avoid the system. After all, using the Service Awards is entirely voluntary, and the great majority of editors ignore them altogether. I suggest you consider editing as best fits your desire, and just ignore the Service Awards, probably. Herostratus (talk) 08:05, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes this particular system ignores quality and impact, perhaps that's why it is such a cinderella compared to those of our processes that focus on quality and impact. We have the Featured and Good article processes to measure quality, and Barnstars to reward impact, quality and occasionally even service. Given the relative profiles of this process and others especially WP:FA I would say that Wikipedia already values quality and impact over quantity and seniority. Take for example the recent discussions about changing the contents of the main page, no one has seriously proposed taking either length of service or number of contributions into account when deciding what goes on the main page; If anything prolific contributors are throttled back in the interest of more diversity and encouraging new "less senior" talent. Equally when you look at processes such as requests for adminship the community has a de facto minimum requirement in terms of service or tenure, but provided you've met that minimum the focus is not on how many edits you have or how long you've been here, instead it is on the quality of what you've done and the impact you've had. Service awards are worth having, and as a community we should celebrate our otherwise unsung heroes who've put a lot of effort in to doing the grunt work and or have been around the block many times and are still with us. But just as in real life a Gold watch has less status than a nobel prize or even a Phd, so we should be aware that a Wikipedia service award means far less than the Bronze star of a Featured Article. Ϣere SpielChequers 12:06, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Service time

I don't think service time should matter. Many editors contribute an amazing amount within a very short period of time; service time is not a meaningful mark of contribution to Wikipedia. 069952497a (talk) 18:20, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Well in that case feel free to ignore service awards! This is a very diverse place, those who care about edit count, or about quality contributions or about Barnstars all have reward systems. This system is for people who think that service time and edit count both matter and have created a hybrid that relies on both. Ϣere SpielChequers 22:02, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

There should be some means by which you can make up for a lack of service time with edit count. You have to go all the way down to #30 on WP:List of Wikipedians by number of edits before you get to someone who has been here long enough for an ME IV (10 years), yet, based on edit count alone, the top 358 would qualify for ME IV, and there would be 105 Vanguards, which makes a lot more sense to me. Devices (like silver and gold "#"s) could be awarded for every 100,000 edits over 132,000.

Why not use a scheme similar to the military and public safety departments, where you have a minimum service time ("hitch"), like 4 years, and award hash marks for service beyond that, with awards based on merit alone. Since we can't conscript editors

, leave the award table as-is for levels up to 4 years (Senior Editor), and then fix the service time requirement for the levels above that at 4 years. Award hash-marks for every year over 4. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 18:56, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

The military may not be the best analogy as they require a large proportion of young fit people and only a tiny minority will be with them for forty years or more. We are a volunteer organisation in its very early days, so a better analogue for us would someone like the red cross or in my country the blood donors. We should be thinking how this will fit us when the pedia is fifty or sixty years old. and we certainly shouldn't be phased by the fact that after our first eleven years we have very few editors who have been here ten years. As for raw edit count, we have userboxen and other things for that - last year I got a barnstar for my 100,000 edit on Wikipedia (never got one for my 100,000 edit on commons though). Ϣere SpielChequers 22:14, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

069952497a and AlanM1, you make reasonable points. As far as I'm concerned, its probably not worthwhile to continue making significant changes to the basic core requirements at this point -- it is what it is. We went through a major reform last year (or so) and it was significant work, changing all the existing awardee's levels, and we don't want to be troubling people with that very often or ever. Exception could be made if there's really a strong agreement, maybe. A fork to a different award system is always possible if someone wants to do all that work, but would be confusing maybe, and I don't think the situation is dire enough to warrant that. Herostratus (talk) 17:26, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Clarification on eligibility

Re. the eligibility table, do you mean:

No. of edits OR years
No. of edits AND years
The lower of edits or years
The higher of edits or years
No. of edits WITHIN the year period?

E x nihil ^(talk) 22:52, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

The second one. Eligibility is based on number of edits and years. I've tweaked the text to make this clearer. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 00:28, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Not sure what the difference is between "No. of edits AND years" and "The lower of edits or years"; they seem to mean the same thing to me. In the main table, it says (for example) "Requirements: 4,000 edits and 1 year of service". That seems pretty straightforward to me: you need to have 4,000 edits AND the date of your first contribution needs to be at least one ago. (It therefore follows that both are limiting factors, and that therefore one's level will be the lower of 1) the level one is entitle too by number of edits, 2) the level that one is entitled to by time elapsed since first contribution.) Should this be made clearer? Herostratus (talk) 00:35, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Encourages editors to perform many small edits instead of in a large single edit via sandbox/preview?

Not sure if the above is true for others, but I find myself changed in my editing pattern. Before paying attention to how many edits I had, I used to use the preview button and my sandbox much more, descending on an article and expanding it a lot in a single edit, followed by only a few disambiguation and spelling edits. Now I stick the under construction template on a "live" article and either edit section by section or source by source, making many small edits.

I was wondering whether amount of data (i.e. amount of green or red) that has been edited rather than number of edits would be a more realistic indicator of editor experience, and might save some space on the servers too? Lesion (talk) 01:24, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

It seems a bit odd to alter your editing style to increase your edit count, but it's your prerogative to do that if you want to, I suppose. I would recommend that editors just adopt the style that's most comfortable for them. There's no real harm in making lots of small edits rather than fewer large edits (in some ways it makes the change history a bit easier to follow). Whatever works for you is OK. I wouldn't pay that much mind to edit counts -- the theory is that one does the work however one likes best, and the edit count piles up naturally, and I suppose that's how most editors work.

Amount of data contributed rather than edit count is an interesting alternative, but I could see other problems with that, and anyway I don't know of any easy way to count that. Herostratus (talk) 07:54, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Sometimes I'm eradicating a particular typo across a hundred articles on Wikipedia and that of course takes a hundred edits. Othertimes I'm doing more thoughtful stuff, and there I go on cycles. I tend to use preview more and more and make fewer more complex edits until I have a system crash or otherwise lose a couple of hours work, then I go back to making more incremental edits. For example on busy pages that auto archive if you put to much time into a complex response you risk finding that the thread has been autoarchived and your edit isn't just edit conflicted but completely lost. My perennial New Years resolution is to never edit for more than twenty minutes without saving. Ϣere SpielChequers 12:15, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

True. I've experienced the same thing. Amount of bytes contributed would be interesting, but no system is in place to measure that. Another problem would be editors simply undoing edits in order to make it seem like they've contributed more, without actually doing any of their own work. Also, references take up a large amount of bytes compared to content. 069952497a (talk) 18:13, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I too will save if I get to a workable spot after a half hour or so. But if do you have a craving for edit counts, there are some ways to rack 'em up in a respectable and productive way: slugging through and assessing thousands of backlog unassessed articles in a WikiProject you associate with, or by categorizing uncategorized/poorly-categorized images at the Commons (they just keep coming!). While doing the former, I then run across articles in need of immediate work (i.e. MoS layout issues, spam link removal, stub-tagging, etc.), which is short work given their short length. Both of those I see as at least necessary grunt work that by its nature involves short edits. And eventually it becomes so tedious that any edit-count-itis subsides. The other thing is I remind myself of the collective-action problem of too many small edits on long pages w/ respect to the project and its finite server space, and feel a duty there. Morgan Riley (talk) 23:42, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Great suggestions, but no good for me because I only want to edit articles within a certain area. I had a further thought that might solve this problem: when you want to rework an article, copy it's content to a temporary subpage of your user domain, then carry out as many small edits as you like until it is finished. Then copy and paste the new content back into the article and finally delete the subpage. This is only worth while if, as I suspect, the edit history is deleted along with the subpage. This will save server space no? Lesion (talk) 17:40, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Obviously check that no one else has edited the article in the meantime, else you might accidentally revert their changes.

Edit history is "deleted" with the page, but deletion on Wikipedia only means hiding from public view; the history still exists in the database. Counter-intuitively, deleting a page actually uses more space in the database, since the action is also logged. I wouldn't worry about server space; storage is cheap.

The edit count shown in Special:Preferences includes your deleted edits, but there are other edit counters you can use that won't count them. E.g, X!'s edit counter shows deleted and non-deleted edits as separate totals. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 20:48, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh really? It seems a bit pointless to keep the edit history of a deleted page...Thanks for your insight anyway. Lesion (talk) 10:34, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

It's kept because sometimes administrators make a mistake or consensus changes, and a deleted page needs to be restored. In many cases, editors can ask for a copy of their work if it has been deleted. Administrators and arbitrators also find it useful to view deleted content when investigating complaints about user conduct. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:37, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Lee Tru. I actuly find a lot of small edits easier and did so even before I learned about the awards.(p.s. please look at and revue my user page.) thanks! —Preceding undated comment added 18:42, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Copyright violations

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Service awards/Table § Copyright violations

– – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 23:53, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Each of the templates in this page carrying an image needs to be modified to permit linking to the picture. The link is the vehicle for providing attribution, as required by the CC BY-SA license. (A more convenient outcome would be if the image authors change the licenses to CC-0, but of course it's their right to require attribution if they prefer.)

I'm happy to do this, but it will be a little time consuming and require messing around with AWB or similar, so I won't get to it immediately. -Pete (talk) 17:32, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Maybe you could just WP:BOLDly change them to CC-0 yourself, and see if anyone objects? I wouldn't for my part (some of the images are mine). I'm not really totally up on all the different licenses and CC BY-SA versus CC-0 doesn't really ring a bell with me -- I probably just picked whatever license came up first or was most convenient. Presumably the creators of the other images have their files watchlisted (if not, their tough luck) and if they object THEN you can either try to convince them to go CC-0 or else modify the templates themselves if they'd be so kind. Herostratus (talk) 17:12, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Only the copyright holder of an image (usually its creator) can choose the licence (it's a legal thing). We can't change other people's licences without their permission. You can't just say "tough if you didn't notice", since it would be a copyright violation to use a licence not permitted by the copyright holder. (If we could just change the licence, we wouldn't have to worry about fair use or getting permission to use images in articles; we'd just give ourselves permission.) I'd hope anyone who spotted an unauthorised licence change would revert it.

As for the differences between CC-0 and CC-BY-SA: CC-0 allows everything without restriction. CC-BY-SA requires that re-users of your image (or derivatives from it) must give credit to the creator of the original image, and must allow others to use any derivative images without any restriction other than attribution. (This is just a rough overview of my understanding of the licenses; IANAL.)

If you're happy for the images to be used without attribution to you, and for other people to create restricted derivatives (including you being restricted from using the derivative yourself), you can change the licence on your own images to CC-0. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 18:05, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Erk. OK, but what is the template? I suppose I also have to look up the components (I made most of the images using parts of others) and check if they're totally free also, I suppose. Urg. Herostratus (talk) 05:36, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

The template for CC-0 is {{Cc-zero}}. And yes, if you based your images on other images, you'll need to check that those images are either public domain or CC-0 (or get permission from their copyright holders). – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 18:43, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you both for taking this up! Herostratus, I think it would be fine if you change the tags on your own files from CC BY-SA to CC0. If they are derived from other works already that are not explicitly credited, making that change will not make things any worse. Also, in order for the attribution of previous works to be necessary, they would have to be copyrightable, and your use of them would have to exceed the COM:de minimis threshold. In short, I doubt it's really a big deal :) If it is, the copyright holders of the previous files can worry about it. -Pete (talk) 18:28, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

If the source images are properly licensed to allow it, any of the ribbons I've created can be freely migrated to CC-0. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 00:01, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Aparently you have to do it yourself, Vanisaac.

OK, further question. Take for example File:Fuzzy squirrel in wiki-land.png. Right now it has {{GFDL-self-with-disclaimers}} (however that occurred), which causes two boxes to appear. The first says "I, the creator of this work, hereby grant the permission to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. Subject to disclaimers." and the second says "This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. This licensing tag was added to this file as part of the GFDL licensing update." If I replace this with {{Cc-zero}}, it generates just one box, which says "This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.". This first box is lost, where it says "I, the creator of this work... and so the demonstration of who created the work ("I") and is donating is lost. Also the "GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2" disappears. Is this OK? Herostratus (talk) 04:55, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

What's important is that Vanisaac gives permission. Since they have done so on-wiki, I think it's fine for anyone to update the licence on the images where there are no other contributors apart from Vanisaac, Herostratus (I read Herostratus's comments here as giving permission) and the person doing the updating. Such a change should probably be accompanied with a permanent link to this discussion, as a record of permission being given.

Herostratus, I really must thank you for the level of detail you've given about the image's history on the file description page! Though attribution is not needed for things in the public domain, it is still very useful to know the sources for an image. Thank you for this!

The Creative Commons bit probably got added to your GFDL licence as part of the big licence migration. (Short explanation: GFDL is compatible with CC-BY-SA provided certain conditions are met. The licence migration identified which GFDL images were CC-BY-SA-compatible and tagged them as such. Rather than use two templates, this was done using a single GFDL template with a parameter indicating whether to also show the CC-BY-SA box.)

If you are happy with what the {{cc-zero}} box says, then you don't need to worry about losing the other two boxes. CC-0 allows everything allowed by both of those licences, plus a lot more. The uploaders of the image (who are also its creators here) are shown in the "File history" section near the end of the page. You could also amend the Summary section to list the image creators, to be more specific about who the creators are.

Note that the current version of File:Fuzzy squirrel in wiki-land.png was uploaded by The Man in Question. Have you pinged them to check they're alright with a licence change? – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:42, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

All -- sorry to drop the ball on this discussion. Glad to see the files are now linked, and that there's been so much good discussion. I haven't reviewed it all yet, but it looks like good things are happening. Here is an example of a place where I've put a derivative work. Because the CMS used on that site doesn't allow me to directly link the image, I've put the license info at the bottom of the page, which I think is slightly confusing for the reader. Herostratus, if you're willing to release that specific image under CC0 (by adding or replacing the license templates with {{CC0}} ) that would be a big help! -Pete (talk) 13:35, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Update: I have just awarded the first WikiSOO Burba Badge based on the above discussion. Thank you for helping make it possible, especially Herostratus and Van~ -Pete (talk) 23:06, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Improper use

Is there any protocol for advising editors who have given themselves service awards for which they do not meet the requirements? While we could all agree it isn't a big deal, it does defeat the purpose of the award if everyone is declaring themselves veteran editors. MezzoMezzo (talk) 11:48, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

If you suspect they've made a simple mistake, let them know on their talk page and leave it up to them whether to fix it. Don't push the issue if they choose not to fix it, since it really isn't a big deal.

Editors displaying awards inaccurately do not defeat the purpose of the awards. The purpose is to give editors goals to work towards, and allow them to show pride at their accomplishment upon reaching each goal. Awards displayed by others don't stop others from using the awards as a goal, nor from feeling pride at their own achievements. Those who deliberately display them without meeting the requirements know they are cheating, so won't feel pride in achieving something they haven't done. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 16:44, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Also – be careful about accusing others of improperly displaying an award. They might be counting edits and/or time under a different user account or on other wikis, which is permitted. See What is counted?. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 16:52, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Ya I second the gnome. When I did the runthru of all the people with the upper awards, I found few fakes. A couple of people showed ALL the awards on their page for some reason, a couple of people apparently didn't get that one needs the service time AND the edit count to qualify, and a couple of people displayed awards that were way above their accomplishments, probably just to be silly. I think a couple of people were also counting edits or time from another-language Wikipedia, which is fine. Not enough to bother about. If you want to, though, I don't see why you couldn't ping them and tell them they're making a mistake and/or that that is annoying. If they don't come around then, though, you've pretty much exhausted your options. Going into dispute resolution would not be recommended and almost certainly would fail and just be sterile drama. Herostratus (talk) 17:20, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Whatever way of counting one chooses, he cannot claim the two highest awards, since Wikipedia exists for 12 years only. And there are users who display those awards on their userpages. Shouldn't we just delete those two highest awards from the list until they are achievable? Vanjagenije (talk) 00:31, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Last two levels

Shouldn't the pictures for the last two levels have 12 and 13 stars respectively to be consistent with the progression of one star being added per level? Double sharp (talk) 10:07, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

I think there is some internal consistancy. The first 2 levels are pure colors (Registered Editor is not a real level) then you have the 1, 2, and 3 baubles. Then no-stars through 5 gold. Then 5-gold, 1 silver through 5 of each. Then wheels with Horizontal/vertical lines, then wheels with diagonal lines, then wheels with all 8. I think the problem, that the wheels intended to solve, was the difficulty in fitting 13 stars in a space so small. I mean, my ribbon is rendered at 55px. 11 stars would just get lost. Achowat (talk) 12:59, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

I meant the pictures like the one to the right. Double sharp (talk) 13:14, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Ah, well that's a different ball of wax entirely. Achowat (talk) 13:17, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

The starred images were lost/never existed. The medals with no stars used to have "wagon wheels" like the ribbons, but it was agreed that they did not look good, so I restored the best images available in the image histories. Unfortunately no starred images existed for the last two. VMS Mosaic (talk) 06:14, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

A comment as the creator of these higher level images. These two levels don't have any stars on the knot. They are above this, a different class, as indicated by the Superstar hologram defacing the main star. Mootros (talk) 09:10, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

...and what happens in 2017 when we actually have been around for 16 years? It's not very extendable: one day we will have been around for 80 years and having a step up to a new class at this number of years would look odd. Double sharp (talk) 12:48, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

80 years? I think not... Herostratus (talk) 02:29, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

(or any other large number really) Double sharp (talk) 04:23, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I guess by that time we will be something quite different, but humans have an inexhaustible desire to reward themselves, so my point still stands. :-) Double sharp (talk) 04:23, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

(just to clarify, I was referring to WP, not us editors) Double sharp (talk) 14:24, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for Service Award changes

I am proposing the following changes to the Service Awards table. I think it will be easier to get people to agree on incremental changes to the existing table than to vote YES/NO on one entirely new table. If it was decided to make changes, I would recommend first changing the tables and text for the existing awards, then go back and incrementally do the work for each new award, in order, from top to bottom. New awards wouldn't be added to the table until everything for that award was finished. Obviously, new graphics need to be created and some existing graphics will need to be changed, but that shouldn't be a stopping point for this discussion. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 23:43, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Goals:

Incremental changes to minimize impact on editors, allow time for editors to meet existing requirements before changes take affect, and allow us to come to a consensus in smaller "chunks".
Increase the number of awards for "newer" editors, and obsolete the Wikipedia:Incremental service awards (Ribbons).
Increase the number of awards for "older" editors.
Increase the number of years to obtain Veteran award.
Change the number of edits per year. Curently increments 4K, 4K, 8K, 8K, then 9K per year. New table would increment 3K, 4K, 5K, 6K, 7K, 8K, 9K, five of 10K, seven of 11K, then 12K per year.

Note:

The following tables don't list the Signator to simplify discussions. Depending on the outcome, new Signators may need to be created.

Proposed Group 1 Changes (takes effect ASAP)
°	Old Award	Old Edits	Old Period	New Award	New Edits	New Period
X	Registered Editor	1	1 day	Registered Editor	1	1 day
X				Registered Editor II	100	15 days
X	Novice Editor	200	1 month	Novice Editor	250	1 month
X				Novice Editor II	375	45 days
X	Apprentice Editor	1,000	3 months	Apprentice Editor	500	2 months
X				Apprentice Editor II	1,000	4 months
X	Journeyman Editor	2,000	6 months	Journeyman Editor	1,500	6 months
X				Journeyman Editor II	2,250	9 months
X	Yeoman Editor	4,000	1 year	Yeoman Editor	3,000	1 year
X				Yeoman Editor II	4,000	11⁄4 years

Proposed Group 2 Changes (takes effect January 1, 2014)
°	Old Award	Old Edits	Old Period	New Award	New Edits	New Period
X				Yeoman Editor III	5,000	11⁄2 years
X				Yeoman Editor IV	6,000	13⁄4 years
X	Experienced Editor	6,000	11⁄2 years	Experience Editor	7,000	2 years
X				Experienced Editor II	8,250	21⁄4 years
X				Experienced Editor III	9,500	21⁄2 years
X				Experienced Editor IV	10,750	23⁄4 years
X	Veteran Editor	8,000	2 years	Veteran Editor	12,000	3 years
X	Veteran Editor II	12,000	21⁄2 years	Veteran Editor II	15,000	31⁄2 years
X	Veteran Editor III	16,000	3 years	Veteran Editor III	18,000	4 years
X	Veteran Editor IV	20,000	31⁄2 years	Veteran Editor IV	21,500	41⁄2 years
X	Senior Editor	24,000	4 years	Senior Editor	25,000	5 years
X	Senior Editor II	28,500	41⁄2 years	Senior Editor II	29,000	51⁄2 years
X	Senior Editor III	33,000	5 years	Senior Editor III	33,000	6 years

Thoughts:

We could do 2 Yeoman Editor awards, instead of 4?
We could do 2 Experienced Editor awards, instead of 4?

Proposed Group 3 Changes (takes effect January 1, 2014 or later)
°	Old Award	Old Edits	Old Period	New Award	New Edits	New Period
X				Senior Editor IV	37,500	61⁄2 years
X	Master Editor	42,000	6 years	Master Editor	42,000	7 years
X	Master Editor II	51,000	7 years	Master Editor II	52,000	8 years
X	Master Editor III	60,000	8 years	Master Editor III	62,000	9 years
X	Master Editor IV	78,000	10 years	Master Editor IV	72,000	10 years
X	Grandmaster Editor	96,000	12 years	Grandmaster Editor	92,000	12 years

Thoughts:

Adding the Senior Editor IV award will require changes to the number of "small stars" in all Master Editor awards and the one Grandmaster Editor award, thus is why I split this into another group. The only reason I added the 4th Senior award is to round it out to 4 like the other award levels.

Proposed Group 4 Changes (takes effect January 1, 2015)
°	Old Award	Old Edits	Old Period	New Award	New Edits	New Period
X	Grandmaster Editor First-Class	114,000	14 years	Grandmaster Editor II	114,000	14 years
X				Grandmaster Editor III	136,000	16 years
X				Grandmaster Editor IV	158,000	18 years
X	Vanguard Editor	132,000	16 years	Vanguard Editor	180,000	20 years
X				Vanguard Editor II	240,000	25 years
X				Vanguard Editor III	300,000	30 years
X				Vanguard Editor IV	360,000	35 years

Thoughts:

We could make the Vanguard Editor award be the highest award instead of having multiple versions of it?
We could create new award names to expand this group. Discussion.

Proposed Group 1B Changes
°	New Award	New Edits	New Period
X	Journeyman Editor II	3,000	9 months
X	Yeoman Editor II	5,000	15 months (11⁄4 years)
X	Experienced Editor II	7,000	21 months (13⁄4 years)

Thoughts:

If everyone is against changing the existing edit counts, then I offer these 3 new awards that would be inserted into the table, and require NO changes to any other awards.

General Discussion

Before discussing the merits, are you prepared to do all the work and/or find someone else to do it? Make the new graphics with at least the same quality as the current ones, etc? VMS Mosaic (talk) 01:17, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I am willing to do as much as possible and attempt to find people to help. I think we can break this up into phases and subphases to incrementally do it. The scope of work will vary for each award. I might be able to do a lot of the Novice through Experienced myself. I might be able to do the rework of the stars for the Senior / Master / Grandmaster. All of these would be easier if graphics are available without the little stars, but I would have to do more looking to see if they are available. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 02:48, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

The only images known to currently be available are those in the edit histories of the current images. That is how I was able to remove the 'wagon wheels' from the the high level images in the last significant image change. Finding other versions (e.g. having no stars) of the various images will require getting in contact with editors who may no longer be active on Wikipedia and who may no longer have the needed images. VMS Mosaic (talk) 08:09, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I think I should be able to do the badges for the Registered / Novice / Apprentice / Journeyman / Yeoman / Experienced. There are existing incremental ribbons for Registered / Novice / Apprentice / Journeyman / Yeoman at Wikipedia:Incremental service awards (Ribbons), so those are already done. There isn't incremental ribbons for Experienced, so those would need to be created. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 02:48, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

The problem with adding Senior Editor IV is that it affects the number of tiny stars on all the Master Editor awards and the Grandmaster Editor award. It would be easier to do if there are any of these awards without the little stars on them. Initially we could leave Senior Editor IV off the list, then add it later after we overhaul the Master and Grandmaster graphics. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 02:48, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

The highest level awards will likely need to be created from scratch, so I would have to pass on them. If we can't find someone to help with Group 4, then we could postpone it until we do. This should NOT be a reason to avoid doing Group 1 or 2. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 02:48, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Might as well support this; it's not a big deal to me, but Sbmeirow appears to be much more interested in it than I am, and the idea of increasing the number of levels in order to improve differentiation sounds good. Nyttend (talk) 04:23, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I like the Group 4 proposal, moving from 12 to 35 years as a top level is definitely move in the right direction. Though 35 is an odd number for this and I'd prefer 50 in line with other longterm volunteer organisations. I'm not so keen for the proliferation at the lower levels, I'd prefer that we don't add service awards that can't be measured in whole years, unless we go for fractions of a century - 12 years 6 months, 16 years 8 months, 20, 25, 33 years 4 months 50. But for the awards in the first decade there is a lot to be said for leaving unaltered for a while, as it is it has changed so often as to lose credibility. Ϣere SpielChequers 05:11, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I tend to agree that any changes should be at the high end, if for no other reason than that few if any editors would be affected in regard to rewards they currently claim. The last major reorg (which included levels claimed by a lot of editors) required a great deal of work by one and only one editor (who I suspect would have preferred not having to do all the work). As I have stated here before, I strongly oppose any change which ends up dumping work on one editor who would have otherwise left well enough alone. VMS Mosaic (talk) 08:20, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I feel the top awards should be expanded, but I'm likely not the one to do it. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 19:01, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I added a new Group 1B option (at the bottom). This group consists of new entries and NOT require changes to any existing awards. I think these would be helpful milestone awards for newer editors. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 19:01, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Per ϢereSpielChequers, I don't think we should be mucking around with the lower level awards either. The awards seem less credible if we keep making changes to awards when they are being used by tens of thousands of editors. It would also be a lot of work to notify all the editors affected by the changes. With some of the proposed changes some editors would have their award downgraded, which could upset some people.
We probably need to come up with some better names for the awards. Simply adding "II", "III", "IV", etc. to their names seems lacking in creativity... – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 23:13, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Some comments. I don't want to sound discouraging, but:

Why? What is broken here that needs to be fixed?
I'm extremely leery of making any changes to levels that have been achieved and displayed by any significant number of people. In fact, I'm basically against it. Any changes that actually change the requirements for an award (that have been achieved by any significant number of people) is out of the question, but this is not exactly what's being proposed. Even so, under this proposal some Experienced Editors would (say) now be eligible to be an Experienced Editor III, giving us these the issue of whether you are going to inform everyone or not.
- If not, you'll have people with the same achievements at different levels (according to how current their understanding of the Service Awards is). This is not good.
- If you are going to inform everyone, that's a lot of work, plus it will bother a lot of people. I'm dead set against messages going out every six months to the effect of "We've changed the Service Award levels again, please stop your editing for a bit to learn about our new system again". This is annoying and makes us look flighty. The Signpost will not carry an announcement I don't think.
I've seen pushback against having any levels for which no one is currently eligible. I think that's silly, but some people are apparently appalled by that. IIRC this is why the highest level is now 16 instead of 20, as it once was, as a compromise. Going much beyond that might be pushing it.
Whatever is done, someone else will come along soon enough with an entirely different scheme.

OK, I'm conservative. I don't have any objection on the merits to adding levels to the end (within reason -- not to 35 years!) or to making changes to upper levels that have not yet been achieved by any significant number of people, provided that they're actual improvements. I'm leery of changes to the lower levels. Herostratus (talk) 03:43, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Continuation from May 2013

Though some time has ticked along since my proposal in May 2013, I still agree the Service Awards need refinement of the lowest awards and expansion of the higher awards, even if they don't match my proposal. These issues do need to be addressed, but I'm not into political head banging, so I'm now going back to editing articles again. • Sbmeirow • Talk • —Preceding undated comment added 18:04, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes OK but, there was a fair amount of objections based on various reasons, so I dunno. For my part, as I said "What is broken here?", and also I'm against most changes, as a general rule, except for improving some of the graphics maybe and improvements of the higher levels (and by that I do mean actual improvements). Looking at the archives, I see where I said (after making a change) "It's getting rather late to be making any changes to this...". That was in 2006. I certainly think it'd be impossible and wrong to do stuff like change the requirements for Experienced Editor and so on, for reasons I've stated before.

However, your proposal was well thought out and sensible. (I tend to think that it'd be too much clutter for to have more levels at more frequent intervals, but that's a subjective opinion and I could be dead wrong.) So here's a counter-proposal: it it's really true that the service awards are flawed to the extent that a major overhaul is truly needed, maybe it'd be better to build a separate system instead.

They do this in engineering: rather than taking apart an active system, you build the improved system next to it, run them in parallel, and slowly let the new system take more of the load as the old system is taken off-line. It's a much less disruptive way to make major changes, and also allows for testing and tweaking the new system before it has to carry a full load.

Of course you wouldn't copy any of the names and images from this one, that'd be confusing. But if you wanted to keep the formal/informal track paradigm, you could use images and titles from honors systems (see Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Kingdom and so on for ideas) for the formal track, and for the informal track, anything. Food, maybe. Many volunteer organizations, unlike the Wikipedia, at least offer snacks to the volunteers. You could have the snack for which the editor is eligible range from a bag of chips and a coke up to the most sumptuous feast imaginable, and beyond (Hippogriff d'Orange?), and getting pictures would be easy. Or anything else that you and other editors can imagine.

Assuming that such a system is indeed clearly better than this one, it'd eventually catch on, and either this one would die out, or the two systems could run in parallel indefinitely. I'd have no objection to this, and so why not go for it? BTW you don't need anyone's permission to do this: it's a wiki. (I'm not trying to blow you off regarding changes to this system, and if enough other editors support you we should consider it, but I haven't seen that, and so a separate system might be the answer.) Herostratus (talk) 06:09, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Militaristic... and ethnocentric style

I had a good laugh and a continued chuckle when I recently found the page about the awards. I love the humor and the celebration of the bizarre displayed in several of them!! At the same time, they made me very uncomfortable: They have just a very militaristic style, copying so much from the military without reflecting why the military should be the model for recognition of people's work. Besides, it's of course also quite an ethnocentric style, given that it closely mimicks certain military rewards. Any chance of making them a bit more civilian... and intercultural, given this is the English Wikipedia and not a Wikipedia written in a dialect spoken only in one tiny corner of the world? :o) ... --Ibn Battuta (talk) 20:24, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

The fact that I don't really know which "certain military rewards" these "closely mimic" or which "tiny corner of the world" they appear ethno-centered around, I'm having a hard time responding to your concerns. Achowat (talk) 20:46, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

My response would be that there are multiple options for displaying each of the levels, some of which are militaristic - medals and ribbons - some are distinctly more literary - books and compendia, and the others are just userbox versions of the others. The only real option for demilitarizing the setup is the medals; ribbon alternates are made for basically every award - my about page uses ribbons to signify every banstar, service award, and Did you know I've accumulated. So, if you want to create another option to the militaristic and the literary, please do so. I'd kind of like to see an option based on academic dress - caps, tassels, cords, stoles, etc. - but it's obviously up to you if you want to start making another series. I do, however, agree with Achowat that there really seems to be no ethnocentrism here. Medals and ribbons are a part of every modern military custom I can think of and are found in nearly every country of the world. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 21:01, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Agree. Feel free to create another style. I suspect most of the regular contributors here will support any reasonable series. VMS Mosaic (talk) 05:25, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I would be happy to write up templates and userboxes for an alternate series as well. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 06:13, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

A modest proposal for better consistency

I think there is a slight inconsistency in two of the lower levels. Especially in terms of the initial distinction between the more "sober" and "fun" version (notably, Yeoman is a little bit out of place: a free man who owns his own farm? or a guard, guarding what?), and the way the two versions correspond to each other in these two instances.

So, I propose to simply replace:

(5) Yeoman Editor (or Grognard Extraordinaire)
(6) Experienced Editor (or Grognard Mirabilaire)

this with following:

(5) Journeyman II (or Grognard Extraordinaire)
(6) Journeyman III (or Grognard Mirabilaire)

This will retain the (a) emphasis on learning and experience that level 4 (Journeyman) already sets, (b) sets the tone of the idea of mastering at the higher levels, (c) fits in with the four sub-level style of the higher levels, (d) would neatly link all Journeymen to all Grognard, (e) and if the grand proposal from May 2013 were ever to require further sub-levels in the future we will readily have an additional combination of "Experienced Editor (or Yeoman Editor)". Mootros (talk) 10:43, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Done Mootros (talk) 04:37, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Great idea! • Sbmeirow • Talk • 05:34, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

~~Erm, no. Slow down cowboys.~~ There's no need to hurry on any changes. In fact, there's probably not a great need to make any changes. Any changes that aren't clearly an improvement are just roiling the project to no benefit, so lets not do that. Lots of people over the years have come here and been like "Well, if it was me, I would have worded it this instead of that" but just making changes on this basis is not helpful. Stability is a virtue here. Note that changes here populate down to pages where the templates are in use.

Mootros, I'd rather not have to fully protect all these pages, but I will if it's necessary. There's already an edit notice on all the pages requesting consensus for changes. I do see that you posted some weeks ago and didn't get any objection (I guess I missed it) but you didn't get any support either. Absent clear consensus to support I'd rather not see changes made.

As the merits of your case: meh. Tomato/Tomahto. "Yeoman" has meaning beyond those you describe, such as "A subordinate, deputy, aide, or assistant" (per Wiktionary, the free dictionary} and (as an adjective) "performed or rendered in a loyal, valiant, useful, or workmanlike manner" (dictionary.com) and these are senses in which the term was originally employed.

Removing useful and established terms with levels of already-used terms is not necessarily an improvement. This changes the established scheme where all the levels up to "Veteran" are separate terms. Correspondence between the levels of formal/informal schemes are not particularly useful -- they're pretty much separate things. Given that, as a matter of policy changes shouldn't be made based on these matters based on individual whim, I don't see this as helpful. A lot of these things have been discussed and hammered out in years past, although I'm not sure if that applies to these particular cases.

If you or other editors want to make a case that this is an improvement sufficient to justify again roiling the existing schemes, OK. If you can get a consensus for this that's different. Herostratus (talk) 06:28, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, why not engage in the discussion and voice your concern, rather than hastily reverting things. Do you except people to canvas editors; if no one replies that's a silent consent. If you have missed my posting, you can respond here and voice your concern. Mootros (talk) 06:43, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Please try to use more courteous language when posting here. Mootros (talk) 06:52, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, sorry, will try to be more courteous.

I understand the point that no reply == silent consent. It's a valid point. Still, hey, I just missed it, and caught it at the moment of implementation, where I went "whoa" and reverted per WP:BRD. I think that for this page silence == consent should not be in play, since the cost of making many significant changes is high. The only costless changes are to those levels that very few people have yet attained, or adding levels above that. By "cost" I mean, among other things, the confusion engendered when significant numbers of editors see that their current level has changed its name. Although I grant that if this occurs automatically, as with the change you've proposed, it's quite a small cost. But it's still a cost. And there may be, probably are, some non-zero number of people who don't choose to use the templates but copy the template code directly to their userpage.

To engage on the merits more fully, let me address each of your points:

(a) emphasis on learning and experience that level 4 (Journeyman) already sets,
- I don't get this. I don't mean that it's wrong or anything, I just don't understand how it emphasizes learning and experience.
(b) sets the tone of the idea of mastering at the higher levels,
- Again, I don't get this, not saying it's wrong, just don't understand.
(c) fits in with the four sub-level style of the higher levels,
- Right, I understand. Here's my counter-perspective: the lower levels are treated differently than the higher levels, to make it quicker to move up and as rewarding as possible for newer editors. This is why advancement comes more often and requires a lower edit rate (for the first two years especially). Part and parcel of that, each level gets a separate shiny new name rather than just a "II" or "III" added to the existing level, which is (I'm arguing) more exciting -- although, granted, the difference if any is impossible to prove and probably miniscule at best.
(d) would neatly link all Journeymen to all Grognard,
- OK. As far as I'm concerned, meh. But OK. It's a point.
(e) and if the grand proposal from May 2013 were ever to require further sub-levels in the future we will readily have an additional combination of "Experienced Editor (or Yeoman Editor)".
- OK. Missed the grand proposal of March. Had to go back to look at that. Hmmmm. I don't see an answer to my question "what is broken here that needs to be fixed?". In fact, that sets up an good segue into my overall objection to this current small change you've proposed: if it ain't broke, don't fix it, as the saying goes.

Your points are valid but so are some of the rebuttals, leave IMO a condition insufficient to overcome inertia. Others may differ and if so let them speak. Herostratus (talk) 20:01, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Tip of the day: Avoid drama by posting a message like "I will make the changes above if no one objects in 3 days" before acting on a silent consensus. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:17, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree that silence is not a go ahead, and advance notice in order to break the silence is a drama avoider. I didn't miss your proposal, but decided to remain silent since you got no support. VMS Mosaic (talk) 06:53, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Good to see you MS Mosaic; please see this: silent consensus. I agree I should have placed an advance notice. Sorry. Mootros (talk) 07:12, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I am now addressing Herostratus's concern from above

(a) emphasis on learning and experience that level 4 (Journeyman) already sets,

Herostratus: I don't get this. I don't mean that it's wrong or anything, I just don't understand how it emphasizes learning and experience.

There is a historic system of craftsmen: apprentice, journeyman, master. It's a system of practical learning through guidance and experience. It fits well with the below and above levels of apprentice and (grand)masters.

(b) sets the tone of the idea of mastering at the higher levels,

Herostratus: Again, I don't get this, not saying it's wrong, just don't understand.

To become a master you have to have a lot of experience, and the journey is that which will prepare you for this higher level. Please read here

(c) fits in with the four sub-level style of the higher levels,

Herostratus: Right, I understand. Here's my counter-perspective: the lower levels are treated differently than the higher levels, to make it quicker to move up and as rewarding as possible for newer editors. This is why advancement comes more often and requires a lower edit rate (for the first two years especially). Part and parcel of that, each level gets a separate shiny new name rather than just a "II" or "III" added to the existing level, which is (I'm arguing) more exciting -- although, granted, the difference if any is impossible to prove and probably miniscule at best.

We would already have three different level, with different "shiny" novel names.

(d) would neatly link all Journeymen to all Grognard,

Herostratus: OK. As far as I'm concerned, meh. But OK. It's a point.

Thanks.

(e) and if the grand proposal from May 2013 were ever to require further sub-levels in the future we will readily have an additional combination of "Experienced Editor (or Yeoman Editor)".

Herostratus: OK. Missed the grand proposal of March. Had to go back to look at that. Hmmmm. I don't see an answer to my question "what is broken here that needs to be fixed?". In fact, that sets up an good segue into my overall objection to this current small change you've proposed: if it ain't broke, don't fix it, as the saying goes.

All I am saying is that this a modest proposal that may not have any effect with regard to the discussion in May. I am personally sceptical about some of these ideas from May, but I want to make clear that this modest proposal his nothing to do with the proposed grand changes from May 2013. Mootros (talk) 06:58, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I hear you. Give me a couple days and I'll return to this presently. Herostratus (talk) 16:57, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Inclusionist bias

Would it be imprudent if I counted my deletions (not deleted edits) as edits? Only 16000 edits in 10 years qualifies me as "Veteran Editor III (or Most Perfect Tutnum)" but adding my 20000 deletions as administrator would make it 16000+20000=36000 or "Senior Editor III (or Labutnum Deletiorum of the Encyclopedia)". Anyone else out there who has deleted more than edited? :-) jni (talk) 15:28, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with that. Per the What is counted? section, how you count your edits is up to you. I've updated that section to specifically mention that counting admin actions is okay. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 16:02, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

A template to display service award progress

Also posted at the misc. village pump.

I recently made Template:Service award progress, which shows your progress towards the next service award. If anyone is interested in testing it out and reporting any bugs on the talkpage, it would be much appreciated. Thanks! APerson (talk!) 03:26, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Inviting other editors to get involved in the review of Template:Service award progress. Thanks! • Sbmeirow • Talk •

{{Service award progress|year=year|month=month|day=day|edits=edits}}
The first four parameters (|year=, |month=, |day=, and |edits=) are all required, and are the same as those required in {{Service awards}}.

Am I missing something? A template that shows progress which I need to update for each edit? Once I have updated the "edits" field, it will be out of date as I already have one more edit. What is this all about? Mootros (talk) 04:16, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

To avoid this issue, you can just use the template like {{User contrib}} is often used, i.e. rounding edits to the nearest 100, or 500, or 1,000. APerson (talk!) 17:20, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Suggested changes to book versions

I'm not liking the book versions associated with the levels of Grandmaster Editor & above; there's something underwhelming about the improved version of Book of All Knowledge being marked "second edition" & "third edition". And what do we do when we come to the time when more levels need to be added? What I'd like to suggest is instead signify these valumes with descriptors such as "revised & updated edition," or "Teacher's edition" (in the US, many textbooks are published with a student's edition, & a teacher's edition -- which has the answers in the back), or a "Variorum edition" (idea based on the Variorum Shakespeare, but using variorum also acknowledges Wikipedia's WP:NPOV rule). That way when it is time to add more levels to the service award, these can be much more easily expanded. (Then we can have a Book of All Knowledge, newly revised & updated second teacher's edition, with extended commentary.) -- llywrch (talk) 17:05, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

First of all, prior to that point, you are only allowed to display the Book of All Knowledge, while at the Grandmaster level, you are entitled to write the new edition. I agree that the second edition/third edition thing is a bit weak. So I'm thinking that we go with something like "This editor is a Lord High Togneme Vicarus and is entitled to copy edit the new edition of the Book of All Knowledge." and "This editor is a Lord High Togneme Laureate and is entitled to write the new edition of the Book of All Knowledge, and attach the library barcode." and leave the Teachers' Edition in our back pocket for now. Van Isaac_WS^cont 20:43, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

I believe everyone here is open to improvement, but all too often no one is willing to actually commit to doing the required work. Show us something and if it is an improvement, it will get done. VMS Mosaic (talk) 06:26, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Small ribbon file name changes

I was looking to do a name change on the small editor ribbons for the last three as follows:

I have filemover permission on commons, so I'm just looking for any feedback on these moves. Van Isaac_WS^cont 05:03, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Sounds sensible. These are the ribbons for the higher levels, so there should only be a small handful of pages to update (across all wikis). Since it doesn't show up in the global file usage, please note that Template:Service awards/core will also need updating. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 20:20, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Done Van Isaac_WS^cont 03:36, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Alternate for Senior Editor II small ribbon.

Currently, the Senior Editor II small ribbon is based on the level 11 Senior Editor small ribbon where gold stripes are added from level 7 (0 stripes), to 8 (1), to 9 (2), to 10 (3), to 11(4), to 12 (5). I've made up an alternate that is based on the level 13 Senior Editor III small ribbon where there are silver stripes and a gold fringe, with level 13 (1 stripe), to 14 (2), and 15 (3) . I think the new one - gold fringes, with no silver stripe - works better from a distinctiveness perspective (distinguishing no stripes from 1, as opposed to 4 or 5) but I obviously don't want to make a change without consultation. Van Isaac_WS^cont 08:06, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

So does anybody have a preference?

	Wikipedian Editor Ribbon 10.svg	Wikipedian Editor Ribbon 11.svg	Wikipedian Editor Ribbon 12.svg	Wikipedian Editor Ribbon 13.svg	Wikipedian Editor Ribbon 14.svg
Current
Old

I don't have a preference. Your version is fine. Thanks for asking first. As far as I'm concerned it would be OK to implement this. Herostratus (talk) 23:40, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
- Ok, I did it. Van Isaac_WS^cont 10:05, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Alternative service award scheme to inspire larger numbers of editors?

In light of the "Rise and decline" of Wikipedia participation (Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-09-24/Recent research), I think we should create a new set of awards that would apply to and inspire a larger fraction of editors. I think we should strongly encourage and reward editors with a steady stream of contributions, even e.g. as little as twice a week for a year (probably in a set of little bursts), where the emphasis is more on continued contribution than on dozens of edits a week. The theme could be something other than the career/guild theme here, e.g. one related to impact, like how many views their edits presumably get (hmm - anyone with edits on a bunch of pages probably gets an impressive number of views each year....)

Has anyone looked at what it would take to reward a good percentage of all editors that continue to be active over a year or two? I think most of them merit a nice kudo. There may be some appropriate barnstars, but they seem meant for giving to others, not self-awards or automatic awards which is why I'm thinking of an award more like these.

Has anyone looked at how many editors would qualify for each award? Or perhaps more interesting, what fraction of the total number of edits are made by people who would qualify for an award? ★NealMcB★ (talk) 16:04, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

This'd be fine. One of things about the Service Awards is that you have to be really really productive to keep edits in step with service time. I mean, I edit all time, almost every day and usually for a fair amount of time, and still my Service Award level eligibility by edit count lags well behind that for my service time. Granted I took a couple of breaks and hardly use automated tools at all. To make them match you either have to be maniac or use automated tools I guess.

Although for the first two years it's easier. Still, 4,000 edits a year. That's eleven edits a day, so if you take a week off you're 80 edits behind.... that's a lot of edits if you have an actual life and are not deliberately inflating your edit count. So seems reasonable. Herostratus (talk) 17:10, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes - exactly! Another reason we want to attract and inspire more people is so we can get more depth in more specialized topics from experts. So again the folks just doing an occasional edit or burst of edits may be making just the sorts of changes that we really need to fill gaps in our coverage. ★NealMcB★ (talk) 13:47, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. I would be very reluctant to change the qualifications for these awards since they're stable. It would be huge project since it would change the current levels for many people. So that's out I'd say. However, a separate award system would be fine. What might it look like? Like this one, but predicated on much lower edit count requirements? That'd be fine. Or something else? You mentioned something about the number of page reads the articles one has worked on has achieved, but I don't know how that could be implemented. Or maybe there's some other outside-the-box way I haven't thought of. Herostratus (talk) 16:03, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Awards aren't meant to be given away like candy, otherwise they have NO value, just like worthless participation awards given to kiddies these days "just for showing up" for school events. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 16:34, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

What has that to do with what we're talking about here, grouchyface. Many major organizations (public safety, military) have length-of-service awards or campaign ribbons.They're generally displayed with pride. Herostratus (talk) 18:48, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

"grouchyface", wow, I wasn't aware Wikipedia was a grade school blog. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 20:03, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Right - changing this set of awards is not what I'm thinking of. And I wasn't expecting to implement an actual calculation of the number of page reads achieved by the articles that each editor has worked on, though that would be cool. Some samples and back-of-the envelope calculations could produce some illustrative numbers, which we could use as a guide. Or we could frame some awards around something else that would be inspiring. And I'm not worried about the award being valueless. People would give it to themselves. The analogy with school (a non-volunteer activity where we invest a lot and expect significant effort from students) is very weak. I would want to reward folks for a level of contribution which is significant and helpful, giving them a sense of its impact. And I think that people contributing at the levels I noted are indeed important, and in fact necessary for us to address our editor retention issues. ★NealMcB★ (talk) 22:17, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm all for that. I don't have any great ideas myself at the moment. All I can think of is like these except with significantly lower edit counts (and different names and pictures). Of course, there already are userboxes for strictly time-of-service ("This editor has been an editor for 5 years 3 months 11 days" or whatever they say) which I think are updated automatically. Ideas welcome, maybe you could as the Pump or something. Herostratus (talk) 22:47, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Alternative award system idea

Carrying forward in the spirit of some of the ideas and concerns forwarded in the above sections, I was wondering; what about an award system that is perhaps based more on the presumable contribution of total edits rather than simply the quantity thereof? Admittedly, there is no processor currently more capable than the human mind of determining what are meaningful contributions, and even then opinions differ, but perhaps one systematic way of approximating such would be an award system based upon the total number of characters or bytes; a summation of all of an editor's edits (perhaps add the total number of bytes deleted, then added to a total number of bytes added, to equally reward editors who perform deletions and help remove any notion of "inclusionist bias").

One plus side of such a system, is that there is a large degree of preexisting quality control. Wikipedia is excellent at preventing and reversing vandalism and other non-contributory edits. Spamming particularly large edits (the type that would threaten the integrity of such an award system) would naturally garner the most attention and be the most likely to be corrected. It could be decided whether edits done in special places such as sandboxes or user pages would count toward such an award or not.

One down side of such a system, is that a means of determining an editors total characters/bytes added and/or deleted would need to be devised. Although, with such information already existing within each user's list of edit contributions, the task should be a fairly straightforward one. Perhaps the good folks at Wikimedia Tool Labs could create such a thing?

Does this idea have any merit or is it simply wishful thinking? I'm sure there are many other aspects to this, both positive and negative, I can't currently see. Buddy23Lee (talk) 21:36, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Excellent idea!! We just need to write the code. Sounds like a fun project for learning how to work with big data in new frameworks like Spark :) ★NealMcB★ (talk) 15:51, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Though I have a feeling that this idea, and/or many similar ones, have probably arisen on many long past talk pages only to meet with eventual dereliction. I suppose if this generally finds enough support here, or at least doesn't meet with the vehement opposition of editors who can see some fatal flaw, as I've been half expecting, I'll try to compose a more formal proposal. Any more opinions prior to this would be greatly appreciated. :) Buddy23Lee (talk) 23:03, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Tutnum weirdness

It's weird. When you Google "tutnum" the results include the image for this award - plus dozens of images of inverted nipples. WTH? Lightbreather (talk) 17:31, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Things that make you go huh ! Mlpearc (open channel) 17:48, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

That is weird. I introduced "Tutnum" here and I can assure you it's not intentional. I got it from an old Gilbert Shelton comic, where one panel features "The American Tutnum" which is an Uncle Sam whose head is made of hundreds of tiny heads, same sort of concept as original cover of Hobbes's Leviathan. AFAIK Shelton made up the word. Apparently "Tut num" means "inverted nipple" (or something) in transcripted Vietnamese which is why you are getting that. Herostratus (talk) 11:34, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Edit and day

For those awards, the number of edits should me made in that particular period of time mentioned aGainst it?
aGastya ✉ let's talk about it :) 05:07, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

You need both, is how it's treated. You don't need to do it in that time frame, but it has to be both. Achowat (talk) 07:46, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for informing @Achowat:
aGastya ✉ let's have a constructive talk about it (: 19:18, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

How many editors qualify for each level?

I would like to see an automated table displaying how many editors qualify for each service award, with those who qualify for a higher award removed from all the lower awards, so that the total number is accurate. Binksternet (talk) 05:20, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately, we have no means of knowing for sure, since a user with multiple accounts, or who had a long IP editing history before creating their account, will have a lower "aparent rank" than their real one; and I don't think there's any good reason to prevent a user from holding on to old awards here. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:22, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Good idea - it would help give us a sense of how well the award limits relate to the folks we're trying to engage! We couldn't use it as the definitive authority on who qualifies, since it would be hard to be exact, as noted, but we could come very close prettily easily. ★NealMcB★ (talk) 15:48, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't think we should be designing this just based on what existing editors already qualify for, the project is barely 14 years old, our service award scheme might still be in use in thirty years time. There is an element of aspiration in the scheme and that is healthy. Ϣere SpielChequers 11:20, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Length of time since account created

The "in a nutshell" box reads "...service award, which denotes time served and ..."

Is that deliberately humorous? Maybe something else, like "active time" or "time investment"? Shankarsivarajan (talk) 16:12, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Much of this is tongue in cheek, including the book version of the awards, however "Time served" is usually used to measure how long one was in a particular position, job, service or jail, length of service would be equally accurate, but a nutshell should use the shorter phrase. Active time and time investment I would understand as measuring the time actually contributed to the project. Since we don't do timesheets, active time or time investment in Wikipedia is hard to measure. If we were running a charity shop one might do things differently, the volunteer who does a two hour stint every Saturday morning for two years has donated as much of their time as the person who for 6 months was in the shop for 8 hours every Wednesday. Writing an encyclopaedia is a very different undertaking, we can readily measure how many edits someone has made and how long ago they first made an edit. So Time served should stay as neither active time nor time investment would be accurate. Ϣere SpielChequers 06:04, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

It is the "time since you first created your account". • Sbmeirow • Talk • 18:58, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Personally I think it's hilarious that it uses "time served". — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 04:55, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

~~Do editors get parole after a certain amount of time served?~~ Ah sorry, yes it's time since account created. Mootros (talk) 06:20, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

We also have Barnstars

How about creating some new medals, ribbons, etc., for editors who have passed, say, 500,000 and 1,000,000 edits respectively? With the help of automating tools, any fool can "earn" the awards we've got now, but only four people have passed a million edits, and IMO deserve to be recognized as having done so. David Cannon (talk) 10:21, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

The Service Award is not meant for bots. Also people who run and maintain bots are usually no fools, but tend to contribute to this project in a meaningful way. If you want to honour them --or anyone else-- just go to their page and give them a Barnstar or two. Mootros (talk) 10:36, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I didn't call them fools. I use automating tools like AWB myself. But it certainly doesn't put me in the league of people like User:Koavf. Methinks we need some specific way to recognize users like him. David Cannon (talk) 12:14, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

We need a moratorium on changing the requirements

The requirements (in time or edits) keep randomly changing, and have been for years. Just leave it alone. The recent massive expansion at Wikipedia:Incremental service awards (Ribbons) has introduced new date requirements that directly contradict those of Wikipedia:Service awards in some places, which is going to give some users the impression that others are falsifying their "editing credentials". Please fix this (by using the more stable requirements in the main page), and just let this lie as it is and quit monkeying around with it. After these requirements are normalized, any further changes should be done by RfC, or reverted, the same way unilateral additions to the main barnstars pages are reverted if they don't have consensus. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 00:30, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I think this recent addition by AlexTheWhovian should be rolled back. The WP:Incremental service awards are intended for newer editors, not veterans who typically don't need this kind of goal. After rolling back, I agree that a moratorium is needed. However, the final/top service award has always been out of reach for 99.99999% of contributors, made so by adding new levels underneath it. At some point, the out-of-reach service award should be shelved, as it is not used by any who actually deserve it. Instead, it's used by by people such as this one, as a joke. Binksternet (talk) 02:38, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I disagree. Let it be. If they want to use them, they want to. If they don't, they don't. I put a lot of hard work into making these, and I feel that they can be used. And if you see a mistake which apparently contradicts the main service awards, perhaps you should fix it instead of believing you own this page and have the right to roll it back. :) Alex|The|Whovian 02:42, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, except multiple editors are objecting to what you've done without WP:Consensus and the problems introduced thereby. You should read that page and WP:OWN and revise your statement. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 04:54, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes should be rolled back. It looks like a blatant attempt to create a parallel scheme with its own time levels. Mootros (talk) 06:03, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

If it's a parallel scheme with its own time levels, then the entire thing should be removed, since what I've given i merely an expansion, not a new system. There's no such need for "consensus" when expanding the Wiki. If you see a problem, you should fix it, not remove it - removing valid edits can and will be considered disruptive. Each level of edits and each level of time served is in exact quarters of the increments between the main awards, just as the original five increments were. If the valid increments I've implemented have to be removed, I'm afraid I'll be faced with the issue of requesting a deletion of the entire incremental system, based entirely and fully upon the "arguments" you've presented here, as they apply exactly the same. Alex|The|Whovian 07:34, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

The fix in this instance is the rolling back of your work. You did something that was never needed, so it doesn't really matter here how hard you worked on it. If you nominate the awards system for deletion you will be disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. Is that what you want to do? Binksternet (talk) 07:48, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Wait a sec... I would support your nomination for deletion of the incremental service awards; in my above post I assumed you meant the main service awards. I don't think the incremental awards are useful enough to keep. Binksternet (talk) 07:52, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

"requesting a deletion of the entire incremental system". Alex|The|Whovian 07:56, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

User:AlexTheWhovian, on this page a "Novice editor" needs 200 edits and 1 month. On the page that you worked on, it looks like the same "Novice editor" needs 400 edits and 1 month 15 days. Its rather confusing to call these sublevels levels. Either way, you should establish consensus that the "incrementals" should go up all the way. You have have altered the main idea that these incremental awards were merely to encourage new editors. You have unilaterally altered a long standing agreement of the community not to have a more fine-grading scheme---and with it more (sub)levels. If I remember correctly, the "incremental awards" were some sort of compromise over exactly the question whether to have a finer grading or not. Please revert and try to establish consensus. Mootros (talk) 07:50, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Funny thing - I didn't change the Novice editor. You can see it's exactly the same as the old versions here for the main rewards page, and here for the incremental rewards page. Alex|The|Whovian 07:55, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, you didn't but it looks like it. The main point is that there is no consensus of going up even further with these incremental awards that were in the first place controversial. Mootros (talk) 07:58, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Colour me confused. It looks exactly the same as it did before I came along. (Because it is.) So, I'm not sure why you're bringing that up when it makes no sense? Alex|The|Whovian 08:00, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

OK, but the main issues remains: there is no consensus of developing further the incremental awards that were controversial in the first place. Mootros (talk) 07:58, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

If they were so controversial, why have they existed for over four years with nary a removal? And you still haven't concluded your reasons for the edit summary that it "aims to alter the time levels of Service Award". Alex|The|Whovian 08:05, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

The "Incremental Award" page existed as a compromise out of a discussion to have a finer grading of the main award. I'm sorry to have summarised the issue incorrectly. Forgive me! We appreciate your effort and hope you will stay with us in the future editing articles on this encyclopaedia. All the best, Mootros (talk) 09:07, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

All of this looks like WP:BRD. AlexTheWhovian, you made a bold edit, then it was reverted. Instead of immediately restoring it and crying "disruption," it should be discussed to completion. Lost on Belmont ^3200N_1000W (talk) 12:31, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

To be clear, I wasn't objecting to there being sublevels, but rather to mismatches in the requirements. A proper sublevel structure would look like this:

Title Foo requires A time, B edits
1. Title Foo Sub1 requires A × 1.25 time, B × 1.25 edits
2. Title Foo Sub2 requires A × 1.5 time, B × 1.5 edits
3. Title Foo Sub3 requires A × 1.75 time, B × 1.75 edits
Title Baz requires C time, D edits
1. Title Baz Sub1 requires C × 1.25 time, D × 1.25 edits

...

[Edited to reflect correction below.] With no overlap of sublevels of one title with any other level or sublevel, and no conflict between the numbers. I don't really think that adding sublevels for every level is useful; it's not necessarily bad, but it seems pointless because the levels are for noob encouragement, not experienced editors' preening and editcountitis. What is bad is getting the numbers all bollixed up and overlapping/conflicting, or having titles and sublevels with conflicting names. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 07:15, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually, there's only three sublevels per reward. So it should be:

Title Foo: X time, Y edits
1. Title Foo Sub1 : X × 1.25 time, Y × 1.25 edits
2. Title Foo Sub2 : X × 1.50 time, Y × 1.50 edits
3. Title Foo Sub3 : X × 1.75 time, Y × 1.75 edits
Title Baz: X × 2 time, Y × 2 edits

Alex|The|Whovian 07:22, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Okay (and sorry, I just changed the formatting to use different variables and stuff; edit conflict!) I'll edit the original table to reflect the correction. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 07:28, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

MfD

Please see here: Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Incremental_service_awards_(Ribbons)

Thank you for your input. Mootros (talk) 06:49, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

@JohnCD: So, you're going to close the discussion but not do anything about the now-useless templates or images? Great job! Alex|The|Whovian 05:58, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

@AlexTheWhovian: I didn't set about deleting them yesterday because (a) it looks like a fair bit of work understanding what needs to be done, and it was quite late where live, and (b) I thought I should see whether you want to do the "D" bit of WP:BRD and start a discussion here to see whether you can get consensus to restore them. JohnCD (talk) 20:38, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

TfD for service award templates

See Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2015 September 14#Service award templates. JohnCD (talk) 12:43, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Awards You're Not Entitled To

So, I have a question. Is there a penalty for displaying an award on your page you're not entitled to? Is there someone who goes around and checks? I'm just curious, is all. I Feel Tired (talk) 17:13, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

No. It is strictly on the honor system. One would hope the number of dishonorable people is quite small, but there will always be some. VMS Mosaic (talk) 11:51, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

There is one, but it's unofficial: other Wikipedians won't take you seriously. You may find your edits reverted more often or questioned more closely, & your comments on articles & in discussion areas like the Village Pump & WP:AN ignored. At least that's what I assume: people who display an award that she/he is clearly not entitled to rarely make more than a handful of edits, & are gone months before anyone notices what she/he has done, so it's always been more of a hypothetical situation than a serious problem. -- llywrch (talk) 17:59, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

That makes sense. If someone lies about what they've done on here,I can see why people would take them less seriously. Plus, it's trivially easy to find out if someone's faking something like that, so it's not like they'd really be able to fool anyone anyway. Anyway, thanks for the answers guys! I Feel Tired (talk) 16:57, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

The fact that service awards have a connection to editcountitis and the fact that there is no accepted way of evaluating edits to determine if some edits are superior to others, leads some editors to make fun of them by adding inflated awards to their userpages as a form of humour. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 17:14, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

That's one reason that the service awards also require years of service. No matter how bad the editcountitis is, the editor still has to have been around 5+ years for the higher awards. There are also humorous versions of each award for editors who want to show their service while not taking the rewards all that seriously. If the rewards keep more editors around longer, then that is very likely all to the good. VMS Mosaic (talk) 02:03, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Well said. I agree completely. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 03:54, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Deletion to Quality Award

I've created the WP:Deletion to Quality Award.

This recognizes editors who've taken a page previously considered for deletion — to Featured Article or Good Article quality.

The award is inspired by the Wikipedia:Million Award, the Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron, and the Wikipedia:WikiProject Quality Article Improvement.

Please see Wikipedia:Deletion to Quality Award.

Thank you,

— Cirt (talk) 10:27, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Very important disrespect

I've noticed a very significant lack of respect in these titles: the title "Lord Gom, the Highest Togneme of the Encyclopedia". As any fule kno, the higher aristocrats absolutely insist on their "The" (with CAPITAL "T"). For example, long ago a newspaper referred to "Princess Margaret"; they promptly received a letter, not from the princess of course but a minion, pointing out in offended terms that the correct usage was "The Princess Margaret". Consequently we should rectify the reference throughout to "The Lord Gom, the Highest Togneme of the Encyclopedia". I haven't done this myself in case it might break something somewhere else (not there are many Lord Goms). Perhaps someone who knows if these terms can safely be changed will do this, if deemed acceptable? Best wishes Pol098 (talk) 10:25, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, but there's not only one Lord Gom, so calling someone The Lord Gom seems inaccurate. Achowat (talk) 20:02, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Indeed so: there aren't any. Double sharp (talk) 09:09, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

There are already a couple of hundred editors who meet the edit count for this, but with the pedia only fifteen years old it will be at least a year before we start getting Lord Goms. I think we can leave it to their Lordships to declare fine details of the suitable mode of address, but there are two issues we should think about, firstly can we make this gender neutral? Second a volunteer service award system needs to cater for volunteers who put in long service; Judging from other more established organisations that should include 25 and 50 year awards. We have a few years before such are needed, but no harm in designing them in now. Ϣere SpielChequers 04:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

How to count edits?

Can't find where or how my current number of edits is tallied. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Regards, DPdH (talk) 05:04, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Found a couple of offline ways, but not a live counter that I can add to my user page... still need help please. DPdH (talk) 07:37, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Within Wiki: visit your userpage, go to "Preferences" (up right, between "Sandbox" and "Beta"), click and see ("Basic information") the number of edits you made in that particular language version of Wikipedia. If you want to see the number of all edits in all language versions + Commons + Wikidata + etc.: click on (last line of "Basic information") Global account: View global account info. All well hidden, but it's there. Good luck. Vysotsky (talk) 15:32, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Out of idle curiosity

Instead of doing something useful, I decided to investigate an idle question I had: just how many people currently qualify for the highest service award, Grandmaster Editor First-Class? If one has the time, one can figure it out: at the moment I write this, 295 editors have made at least 114,000 edits, so all one would need to do is to find out how many of these folks have been editing 14 years or more.

After a couple of hours, having first gone thru the top 50 on the list (which allowed me to identify 5 Grandmaster Editors, 16 Master Editor IVs, 16 Master Editor IIIs, & several lesser awards), I skipped down to look for usernames in this group of 295 whom I remember being active when I joined in 2002. Doing that, I was able to identify a total of two editors who could correctly & properly add that award to their page. And neither one has bothered to do so. (Out of respect for their privacy, I won't mention their names here.)

FWIW, the only person who has the Grandmaster Editor First-Class template on his page claims to have been editing Wikipedia for over 15 years. A quick investigation revealed said person has a whopping 352 edits to his credit.

Not sure what my investigation shows. I did notice that while a lot of people will boast on their user page how many edits they've made, far, far fewer mention how long they've been on Wikipedia. And most of those folks simply indicate they've been here "over 10 years". Like me. -- llywrch (talk) 22:24, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

You can give the award to other people (on their talk pages) and maybe to these high personages you should. Also, if there are editors eligible for the highest award, it might be time to think about adding a couple levels. Herostratus (talk) 14:06, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Since then, I've identified a total of 6 people who qualify for the highest possible service award, Grandmaster Editor First-Class, & only two of them have added it to their pages. One of these days I may query the four who don't have that template why they don't. (There is a third person who has added the template to his page that does not qualify for it, but since that editor hasn't edited since 2014 I didn't remove from his page.) However, all have the 10-year template on their page. I guess that shows which really is important to us long-timers. -- llywrch (talk) 16:32, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Mainspace bytes not Talkspace edits

It seems odd to base awards on a flat number of edits when we all have different contribution styles (e.g. long paragraphs added each week vs. small daily copyedits) and definitely very different ratios of namespace, admin, talk, etc. edits. A simple bot could be made quickly to count the bytes of new material added – plus a flat tick for minor edits, deletions, and reverts – in mainspaces, followed by the remainder and any other numbers you might think relevant, like large byte counts for page migration or admin tasks. The final numbers tally can be posted on your User Page via Template. Also, just for fun, since Conservapedia loves to cite their "90–10 Rule" – that 90% of editing be to articles and at most 10% to talk, which RationalWiki then loves to debunk – it'd be interesting to get numbers for us on that, not just by edit count. Anyway, I haven't done bot programming on WP before but I can try Saturday morning I guess, but this is the right thing to do, yeah? SamuelRiv (talk) 02:08, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Sometimes a positive contribution is achieved by removing or correcting material which can result in a net sum of bytes removed. How would your idea take that into account? — Jkudlick • t • c • s 11:55, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

"Plus a flat tick for minor edits, deletions, and reverts," and of course the thing is always up for tweaking. SamuelRiv (talk) 13:01, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Need for an article count based Service Award

It takes me about two hours to write an article. And I write the entire article in the main space at one go. After I publish the article, I mostly do only minor changes to the article. In my case, I have made about 21 articles but still have less than 1000 edits. To put that into perspective, user Godsy, who recently applied to become an administrator has around 15000 edits but has created only around 7 articles. Source. Is it not unfair to editors who research and make new articles to not have any recognition to show for their mettle. I would therefore like to make a suggestion for a new class of service awards which recognises article creators (articles should not be stubs to be counted). Jupitus Smart 08:46, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I have this page on my watchlist because of a discussion above. I was quite shocked to arrive here and find myself mentioned.— Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 08:55, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

No offence intended. I just happened to see your proposal for adminship and remembered the numbers. 15000 edits is a good number and I am sure you must have made Wikipedia a better place with that. I only wanted to show that article creation can also be counted as a valid metric of contribution. Since you are here, why don't you weigh in with your opinion. Jupitus Smart 10:03, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

@Jupitus Smart: The closest thing is the awards for Did You Know nominations, which features newly created or expanded articles on the Main Page. There's a list of awards at Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of DYKs#See also. It's a pretty lightweight process; articles only need to be 1500 characters (two or three paragraphs) and there's a basic review against core policies. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 06:04, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

The active repository of article statistics, Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count, is, without a doubt, a most valued resource for such details. While those of us who spend time examining such matters are grateful for its existence in any form, in its present state, however, it does have have certain imperfections. The "Non-redirects" column, which can be sorted from the highest to the lowest number, combines talk page creation with article creation, thus making it seem that those with high numbers for non-redirect creation (the highest number, as of this writing, is 96,761) have created that number of articles, without indicating how many of those are actually talk pages, most of which take as little time to create as redirects.
An even more inconvenient technical imperfection restricts each sorting to 1000 entries, thus preventing users from sorting 1–10,000, but only 1–1000, 1001–2000, 2001–3000, etc. Moreover, since the default sorting of all 10,000 user names is by the combined total number of non-redirects and redirects, even if one were to sort each of the ten separate columns by the highest number of non-redirects, those columns would not be directly comparable to each other because the sole sorting which unites them is the "Total" column. As an example, #20 on the list, Sethbot, has created 1 non-redirect and 40,901 redirects, for a total of 40,902, while #9988 on the list, Sjeans, has created 127 non-redirects and 1 redirect, for a total of 128 and yet Sethboth and Sjeans cannot be directly compared with each other, other than in the total number of 40,902 for Sethbot and 128 for Sjeans, because Sethbot is in the 1-1000 column and Sjeans is in the separately sorted 9001–10,000 column. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 07:03, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

There is a whole menagerie of awards for content contributors, ranging from DYK to Featured Articles. Those awards include the highest ones available on this site. I'm not convinced we need more, and especially not one unrelated to quality assessment. Ϣere SpielChequers 09:19, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Support. These awards are, after all, made to oneself. Personally, I've started about 400 articles. To me, this is a greater source of pride/distinction/self-aggrandizement than the number of edits I've made. After all, correcting 1,000 typos = 1,000 edits, while creating 1 new article on something or somebody important = 1 edit (unless you save your work frequently on the way to creating it). Creating an article, IMHO, almost always increases the value of the encyclopedia. Making an edit may, or may not, do that. The award as I envision it should be based on the Non-redirects totals HERE. It would be pretty hard to inflate one's own numbers, except by lying about it. Lou Sander (talk) 15:38, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Comment: Not sure about that. There are many high-article count editors who created articles that are one or two-sentence stubs. These stubs are often unreferenced. On the other hand, there are many low-article count editors who created long articles. This award would tend to favour the prolific stub creators. Dr. K. 16:37, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, but it would be better than nothing. I'd suggest the awards be for 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, then take it as high as you'd like, bearing in mind that some folks create hundreds of stubs. The first award would acknowledge a beginning article creator. The others would represent meaningful progressions. Maybe the first one should be 5, since many new editors create a user page and a talk page. Also maybe the wizards who do the article count processes could introduce a screen of some sort to differentiate between tiny stubs and more substantial articles. Lou Sander (talk) 16:58, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

All this is reasonable. Any award scheme is going to be either 1) fairly simple, but very imperfect and "unfair", or 2) very complicated, but only somewhat imperfect and "unfair"... At any rate, this'd be fine, but it ought to be separate from this page, which is mature. Also, I think awards for "X articles create" (which again, why not? sounds great) maybe need not be tied into service time. But that'd be up to the person(s) creating the award system. Herostratus (talk) 04:33, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Thinking more about this, even those who create large numbers of stubs are helping build the encyclopedia. Those stubs can, and often do IMHO, grow over time. Also, there might be some sort of barnstar(s) or similar awards, specific to creating articles. The idea would be to have others look over your articles to evaluate them. 100 unreferenced stubs is quite a bit different from 100 longer and fully referenced articles. There could be a guideline for awarding the barnstars (or whatever), hopefully to help differentiate the two types of article. I'm interested enough in this to start a page, or a project, or whatever is the best way to propose it and get opinions. I've not done such before, but I'll look into it. Ideas and help from folks with experience will be appreciated. Lou Sander (talk) 15:22, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Support: I'm always in favor of finding new ways to recognize editors. And there are plenty of good pushes for article creation either being run now, or being worked on for the near future. This is exactly the sort of thing that could help to foster some goodwill. A thought: maybe a special award geared towards new editors who create articles for edit-a-thons? We might try that out to see if it can help some with editor retention. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:59, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
Support: There is the challenge of creating stubs. I have created 341 articles, some are solid researched and many are stubs. I've been chastised for creating stubs, even though the individuals meet notoriety requirements and I provided intro wording and a solid reference, they are even mentioned on other pages. But creating an article that gets accepted, or withstands the test of time, is a noteworthy result. The Ukulele Dude - Aggie80 (talk) 17:31, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

"Stub" is a social construct. :-) Sometimes a very short article says all there needs to be said about its subject. People can mark it as a stub, but it's sometimes very hard to say any more. Lou Sander (talk) 17:42, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

What about disambiguation pages though? I personally don't count them for my own records. There's no automatic way to distinguish them from regular pages that I know of, though. Herostratus (talk) 01:45, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Interesting question. I don't keep track of them, either, but I suppose I've created a few. I DO keep careful track of the articles I've started, and my total tracks pretty closely with Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count. Lou Sander (talk) 04:53, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Shouldn't time of service reflect actual time of service?

In theory, an editor could make 100,000 edits over three or four years, retire, and continue to rack up levels without continuing to contribute to the encyclopedia in any meaningful way. Shouldn't the years of service component include some mechanism for excluding excessive periods of time (say, a year or more) during which an editor is inactive? bd2412 T 02:33, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Not in my book. It's simple, it works. Its all on the honor system, so if a person doesn't want to count a gap they don't have to. Herostratus (talk) 21:37, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Burba Level 3 Typo

I found a typo on the Template:Burba lv3 Ribbon where it said lv 3 instead of lvl 3. I personally thought "lvl" sounded correct, and as such I changed it to where it said lvl instead of just lv. If anyone feels like this is wrong, contact me explaining why. You could be right, where as I'm wrong. -The Phase Master 19:21, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

@The Phase Master: All the other templates use the abbreviation "lv" in the hover text. Thank you for your initiative, but I'm going to change it back for consistency. — Jkudlick ⚓ t ⚓ c ⚓ s 22:40, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

It is time

The project was founded in 2001, so IMO it is not too early to think about adding levels to for 18 and 20 years of service.

I believe at one time we did go to 20 years, but people thought it was silly to have awards that no person could yet achieve. I don't think it's silly. But at any rate the 18 year level at least we could reasonably address soon. The main problem is coming up with a new metal, and the hardest task a new graphic. Also the names. Herostratus (talk) 20:50, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

The main problem is coming up with a new metal, and the hardest task a new graphic. Also the names. So the whole thing, then. ;)

I think this is a good idea. While we are at it, we should probably plan for a few more future awards (e.g. 25 and 30 years). The problem with waiting to design an award until someone is eligible for the award is that soon you are scrambling to design said award. At least we have a couple years before anyone is eligible for an 18 year award. I'm willing to lend a hand. — Jkudlick ⚓ t ⚓ c ⚓ s 22:36, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, the names are easy, just a matter of coming up with something. The metals or gems are a matter of research, there either are or aren't more more entries in the Periodic Table of Imaginary Elements, and research ought to be able to figure that out. The images take actual skill (I made most of the images for the lower levels, but they are poor compared to the upper levels, and I'm not up that skill level).

I know that in the past editors have been against the the idea of having awards that are far beyond what a current person could achieve. I don't think that we should make the gaps between levels more than two years; two years is a long time. So 16-18-20-22-24... is my thought. That's a lot of elements. Maybe just continue with the unobtainium... 18-20-25-30.... it would be easier but five years is a loooong time, so I dunno... Herostratus (talk) 12:50, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Lord Gom with ring

Frivolous indeed, but why not? Should the award for Lord Gom read "its ancient access keys (with ring)"? Wikiain (talk) 02:16, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

? Herostratus (talk) 10:30, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

A keyring, of gomium and in diameter one part of a fubit. Wikiain (talk) 10:48, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Özür dilerim, bahsettiğiniz önemi anlamıyorum. Bununla birlikte, kırmızı bir kalem kutusu var. Herostratus (talk) 02:26, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Do lighten up. Wikiain (talk) 08:37, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

regarding the level requirements

It seems to me that the longer you spend on this site, the less you actually care about getting your next service award. Additionally, you get more and more likely to meet the requirements in time (fairly obviously), but not in edits. (Compare my 2011 posts here with my current 2016 post here!) I don't particularly mind the requirements up to 10 years, and anyway those would be impossible to change now. But I think it would be a little more fitting if the ending 10-12-14-16 became something like 10-12-15-20, going up more exponentially than linearly. Double sharp (talk) 12:33, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

I like the current system. I enjoy updating my badge once a year (from now on every other year)... I really don't like the idea of an escalation of the timetable — nor should there be anything beyond Vanguard Editor @ 16 years. That's our top black belt... Carrite (talk) 01:30, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

The project is about to become 16 years old. In 34 years it will be 50 years old, somehow I doubt I will still be around to see that, but many of our younger editors will. By the end of the century there could be long service awards for people who have been here from adolescence until long after what now would be considered retirement age. I think we should be designing a system that works for the foreseeable future. Other volunteer organisations that start young but last a lifetime have a service award program that reflects that, we should too. As for edit count, faster processing and multi edit tools such as twinkle mean that the edits per hour figure is likely up a lot since the early days and may go up further. Perhaps at some point we should be creating special awards - has edited in 1,000 different weeks or has edited on 10,000 different days. Ϣere SpielChequers 19:32, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

@Double sharp, Carrite, Lou Sander, and WereSpielChequers: -- Generally agree with user:WereSpielChequers, but after 16 years, the next award shouldn't occur until 20 years, then 25, then 35 and finally for 50 years, for the fortunate soul that remains active for that long. After 16 years, making an award for every two or three extra years of service would be redundant and sort of frivolous. Also, edits created by bot usage should not be counted. Without mentioning names, I have seen cases were a bot user racks up 100's of edits inside the space of 10 minutes, day after day, and then has the audacity to give him or her self an award for '100,000+ edits'. That demeans the meaning of the edit count, as many editors write a number of sentences for one of their edits. This may be getting on to a different topic, but bots should be made so that a user gets one edit for one bot session. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 17:51, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

I doubt many bot users count their bot edits towards awards. If someone is running a bot they should do so on a separate bot account. But semi automation is common, with twinkle, starting an AFD is one action that generates three edits. I don't use catalot on wikipedia, but I use it on commons and one batch can easily involve over 200 edits in a very short space of time, of course all 200 files have to be looked at and ticked or otherwise before you start that catalot recategorisation, and no one but the editor knows how much work went into that. So historically edit count is a non serious metric, of far less importance than things like Featured content. Also combining it with tenure filters out the people who learn AWB or Huggle and do tens of thousands of edits in a few months. Ϣere SpielChequers 21:35, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

It's been a while, but I can think of one bot user who not only boasted an incredibly high number of edits, but also boasted about being one of the most active users. It trivializes Wikipedia. Yes, writing articles, featured or otherwise, and time spent (i.e.# of years) say much more about an editor's activity than number of edits. Don't want to sound disparaging about editors who do a lot of maintenance and use the various automated tools to do it with. Lord knows we need these people. Cheers. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 16:45, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps. But was their bot use from their main account or their bot account? As for Featured content, that has its own rewards and kudos, and on Wikipedia today an FA star has more kudos than a million edits. Ϣere SpielChequers 17:15, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Two proposals: a Million Edits Award, and service awards for admins.

1. Can we get a Million Edits Award? Because I just earned one last month.

2. Also, how about a set of service awards for administrators? I'd think six or eight or ten years as an administrator, with all the extra stress that brings, is worthy of some recognition. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:29, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Maybe when you reach a million, your counter should reset to zero, just like the odomoters on cars. ;-) Lou Sander (talk) 12:35, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

I am sure that there is at least a theoretical upper bound to the number of edits that Wikipedia software can count and report. bd2412 T 13:27, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

"One... million... edits?" (said in best Dr. Evil voice). Write back when you have one billion edits.

FWIW, when these awards were first proposed, it was mooted to make admins not eligible, because they already have gone down the admin path. It's kind of like choosing College or Career in the Game of Life. One or the other. But of course that's not a good idea and was shot down. Herostratus (talk) 13:42, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

If someone has made a million edits from writing, making citations, participating in Talk page/Article improvement, doing clean up, looking out for vandalism, etc, i.e.a manual and cognitive effort, then I would congratulate such an editor for his or her effort. However, if someone has 'made' a million edits simply by operating a bot every day, racking up 100's, perhaps 1000's of edits every time they run a (pre-set) bot with a click or two, the effort is certainly appreciated, but I wouldn't toot my horn too loud, expecting an award for a "million edits". It's taken me more than ten years to make 60,000 edits, and I edit almost every day. I would suspect most editors who have a million edits got most of them running a bot (e.g.100's-1000's inside a minute or two). If they come up with a 'million edit' award, there should be a stipulation that edits made by a bot don't count, as it would demean the idea of an edit count for the greater majority of editors who make them the 'not-so-easy' way. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 18:01, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

That's one way to look at it. Another way is, an edit is an edit. If one editor writes a bot that upgrades 10,000 instances of http to https, and another editor makes 1,000 edits doing this by hand, is not each edit of equal value? Herostratus (talk) 00:50, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Insert: Hardly. Many edits involve adding information, citations, etc, whereas the edits made by bots most often involve the fixing of a link, or adding m-dashes, etc, and are not nearly of 'equal value' to the readers, whom are our primary concern. Clicking on a pre-set bot is one action, resulting in a minor change or tweak to numerous different pages. There are cases where I have renamed an image file, resulting in a change to a dozen articles. Is the name change counted as one edit, or twelve? Counting these single actions as more than one "edit" is misleading in terms of receiving an award, imo. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 20:48, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

In theory, an editor could create a page in their own userspace and program an assisted editing program to add a space, then delete a space, then add a space, then delete a space, etc., etc., until the editor hits a million edits. As a practical matter, however, assisted edits are edits that are of value to the encyclopedia. I have used assisted editing to fix countless disambiguation links (really the only way to address large numbers of them) and to create entire classes of decent articles. bd2412 T 15:25, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

All edits have 'some' value, but it's sort of disingenuous to receive an award for '1000 edits', when all one has done is click on a bot, once. This is why service awards have a time factor requirement. Oh well. Don't want to sound like I don't appreciate the efforts made by bot operators. Cheers -- Gwillhickers (talk) 20:48, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

I think you seriously underestimate the work that goes into making a bot that can correctly make a thousand useful edits with the click of a button. In any case, I have a bot account for bot edits (User:BD2412bot). My million edits were hand-made, with an assist from AWB. In short, even if all I did was to click a button, I would have had to click the button a million times. bd2412 T 21:03, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I agree with the need for a million edit award (excluding bot accounts), especially as a sixth editor is likely to finish their first million edits in the next month or two. Ϣere SpielChequers 00:36, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Incremental service awards, Registered Editor level 4

Shouldn't the time requirement be 23 days instead of 18 days? 123957a (talk) 20:44, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

That would make the progression more linear. I've made the change. — Jkudlick ⚓ t ⚓ c ⚓ s 12:40, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Background of stars (medals)

Upto vetran editors, it is good. But after that, they look like they are abandoned, disowned, forgotten, and placed (thrown) somewhere dingy, dark, dusty place. The background is too dark. Can/should we make it bright? What do you think Herostratus? —usernamekiran(talk) 00:25, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

I think only the "Veteran Editor" (I-IV) are really poor. Master Editor and above, they're OK. And below Veteran Editor is fine.

I made the Veteran Editor files more than ten years ago and long ago lost the original layered master file (and additionally my Photoshop was stolen bu a blackguard long ago although I have Gimp now), but anyway I'm not really doing graphics much anymore so for those reasons I, the original file creator, am not really up to the job. (The Master Editor and above graphics were made by somebody else). But if anybody wants to do a Photoshop/Gimp job on them for practice, fun, or to the aid the project, yes that'd be great, at least for the Master Editor files. (In fact the foregrounds could be better too). Herostratus (talk) 03:53, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Lord Gom, the Highest Togneme of the Encyclopedia QR code?

Is the image for Lord Gom, the Highest Togneme of the Encyclopedia supposed to be a valid QR code? I can't decode it. Or do you only get the ability to decode it once you reach that level? -- RoySmith (talk) 16:48, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

@RoySmith: It is a valid QR code, but it is slightly squeezed horizontally (or stretched vertically) so your QR code reader might not be able to interpret it. If I remember correctly, it brings you to the Main Page. — Jkudlick ⚓ t ⚓ c ⚓ s 15:31, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

alignment within userbox (Userboxtop)

I've got my little ribbon at the top of my right-aligned userbox (using Template:Userboxtop) but I'd love to center-align the ribbon. Is there any way to do that please? Any help much appreciated. --Philologia (talk) 19:17, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I myself don't know much about that... maybe somebody else will. But if you go to the template, end edit source, you will see that the file is [[File:Journeyman Editor lv3.svg|120px]]. You can put that on your page instead of the template, and maybe play with that... but I don't know how. Herostratus (talk) 21:34, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

@Philologia Sæculārēs and Herostratus: I'm just a little late to this conversation, but {{Service awards}} has an alignment parameter, so you can set |align=center. I use it in my userbox. — Jkudlick ⚓ t ⚓ c ⚓ s 15:46, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia awards CONLEVEL discussion

FYI

– Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wikipedia Awards#Barnstar bureaucracy
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 11:08, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

awards

I have been registered since February 2008 and have about 4400 edits. Even if we (probably over-generously) add 50% more edits made on other Wikis and while not logged in, that only qualifies me as the service award that signals 1.5 years of service. Furthermore, I have no realistic hope of ever achieving another level - it will take me another ten years!

There is only one way to interpret this: that people like me has no business being on Wikipedia, and that our contributions are insignificant. My only tactic would be to turn every edit I make into five - committing a "save" after every sentence, rather than posting a coherent whole.

I certainly will not award myself a badge the kids reach in a year's time (level 5 if I'm being strict) award when I feel I have a good grasp on Wikipedia and have been around essentially "forever" (over ten years).

The only "service" these awards encourage is giving over your life to Wikipedia, and I heartily wish there was an alternate set of awards for regular people like me where I don't have to compete with compulsive Wikipedians.

Best regards, CapnZapp (talk) 10:22, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

@CapnZapp: It's the quality of your edits that matters, not the quantity. Thank you for all your edits. For an alternate set of awards, have you looked at Wikipedia:Userboxes/Wikipedia/Personal statistics? Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 16:40, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

I mean, I see what you're saying Cap'n, but that would be kind of an argument against any awards, here or in real life -- "So and so got an award for perfect attendance, and this is wrong, because the rest of us occasionally get sick or need a day off school, and he was just lucky and/or obsessed; so let's eliminate such awards". And this is something with which reasonable people can disagree. Herostratus (talk) 19:48, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

I believe you're mistaking my position :-) Am I saying "I want existing rewards for hyper-competitive people removed"? No. But is Wikipedia really a place where most or even many editors are like that? No, I would argue this is a place where the overwhelming majority of editors are not. So why not offer rewards for the editors that actually make up Wikipedia? Regards CapnZapp (talk) 09:43, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Repeat: "For an alternate set of awards, have you looked at Wikipedia:Userboxes/Wikipedia/Personal statistics?" — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:38, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Change in templates... I mean let's talk about this?

An editor, @Gwillhickers:, changed the templates... at least, she changed {{Master Editor}}, so I assume she changed the others as well. I'm not seeing any discussion of this? Maybe it's somewhere else and I missed it. If not...

This is a template that is transcluded on many pages, so I mean I'm skeptical if it should be changed without discussion. In addition, I'm not convinced on the merits that this an actual improvement. It's OK; so was the old one. I think I like the old one a wee bit better. Also, the sizes are not identical, so this may affect some people's formatting, and for a heavily transcluded template... I'm willing to be convinced, and I'm not averse to stuff being changed from time to time for the sake of it; organizations do this all time with their logos, etc. But I'd like to see what others have to say.

Here's the previous version:

This editor is a **Master Editor** and is entitled to display this **Platinum Editor Star**.

And here's the proposed new version:

So, what say you? Herostratus (talk) 17:52, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Hello Herostratus. Thanks for your friendly words. Imo, the overall appearance has improved greatly with lettering in the captions centered and not staggered, while instead of a plain white background for every award the colors now correspond with the color themes of the ribbon and star in most cases. As these are awards, a more formal presentation seemed in order. The full sized stars and captions already had varying sizes to begin with (see below). Since almost all editors only display one such award on their user-page, there is really no need for every such award to be identical in size. Also, the awards in user-box form stack nicely together with other user-boxes, as their widths have remained unchanged. It was at least my impression that editors would approve of these changes, and since I began doing this more than a year ago, thousands of editors have seen the changes and no one has objected. Hope this isn't anything that will cause anyone disappointment or other issues. Of course if there is a clear consensus to revert everything back I will abide by it. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 19:09, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Original awards had sizes that also varied:

"Experienced Editor, awarded for being a registered editor for at least 1.5 years and making at least 6,000 edits" — This editor is an **Experienced Editor** and is entitled to display this **Service Badge**.

This editor is a **Veteran Editor** and is entitled to display this **Iron Editor Star**.

This editor is a **Grandmaster Flash** and is entitled to display this **Philosopher's stone Editor Star** with the Neutronium Superstar.

This editor is a **Master Editor IV** and is entitled to display this **Orichalcum Editor Star**.

This editor is a **Vanguard Editor** and is entitled to display this **Unobtainium Editor Star** with the Neutronium Superstar hologram.

When I updated my service award a couple weeks ago (from VE to VE II) I thought I was just losing it. Personally, I like the new versions a little better than the previous ones. -- Dolotta (talk) 23:38, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Incest

Is there an award for working on these awards? E Eng 03:20, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

	The Barnstar Barnstar
	You have received the Barnstar Barnstar for being a barnstar star. A world without barns, or stars, is a world with no place to keep animals and no way to navigate at night if you're an 18th century mariner! So keep on "barning"! Herostratus (talk) 01:46, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

How foolish of me to have doubted. E Eng 04:31, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Result	Small Ribbon Code
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=2012-04-21\|edits=1}}
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=2012-02-21\|edits=150}}
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=2012-02-21\|edits=250}}
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=2011-04-21\|edits=1000}}
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=2009-04-23\|edits=3000}}
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=2008-04-23\|edits=90000}}
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=2001-01-15\|edits=132000}}
	{{User:とある白い猫/Service\|type=small-ribbon\|date=1999-01-15\|edits=132000}}

[fine graded] Incremental awards?

Additional top level/ possibility of reverting to 3rd of March version

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

1 for all

Even higher?

very hard to tell apart

Categories

Years of service

Excessive categorization

Moving forward: complete, copy to meta, protect

Those few new awards

Proposal to delete categories for service awards

edit notice?

I can see the humour in it

moving forward

Orders of Chivalry

ribbons

Do only en-Wikipedia edits count?

Table of contents

Service awards by time and edit count?

False Award

Vanguard Editor (or Lord High Togneme) Image

re the Wikipedia:Incremental service awards (Ribbons)

Incremental service awards misnomer

Spelling of "Most Pluperfect Labutnum"

Duplicate titles

Rhodium and Platinum

Levels suggestion

Edit Count Update (and back on topic)

Improved template

Examples

Discussion

Service award userboxes

Details of changes

Discussion

Small incongruency question

Does IP "service" count?

Identical images

Service award notification script

New levels suggestion

Service awards emphasize quantity and seniority, without regard to quality or impact

Service time

Clarification on eligibility

Encourages editors to perform many small edits instead of in a large single edit via sandbox/preview?

Copyright violations

Improper use

Last two levels

Proposal for Service Award changes

General Discussion

Continuation from May 2013

Militaristic... and ethnocentric style

A modest proposal for better consistency

Inclusionist bias

A template to display service award progress

Suggested changes to book versions

Small ribbon file name changes

Alternate for Senior Editor II small ribbon.

Alternative service award scheme to inspire larger numbers of editors?

Alternative award system idea

Tutnum weirdness

Edit and day

How many editors qualify for each level?

Length of time since account created

We also have Barnstars

We need a moratorium on changing the requirements

MfD

TfD for service award templates

Awards You're Not Entitled To

Deletion to Quality Award

Very important disrespect

How to count edits?