I think that's a good idea, but I would suggest something different.
You see, there is something difficult about having a vote each month - it may take a good half a month for a decent amount of people to vote, and distinct results. And what if two people contribute significantly in the same time space of a month? Would it be fair to give one person the recognition and not the other? And what if the other doesn't do anything the next month, or forever? Then that person would have missed out on a well deserved recognition.
I propose a sort of criteria system. For example, if somebody meets a criteria, then BOOM! They get the prize. If two people meet the criteria, then BOOM! They both get the prize. (Funny, I don't recall using the phrase "boom" at any stage of my life before…)
Now we need to set criteria. Perhaps we could devise something like a point system:
- 1 point for a minor edit;
- 5 points for an addition;
- 10 points for a big addition;
- 15 points for making a significant improvement (whether it be to the wiki, or fixing an article);
- 20 points for turning an ordinary article into a Featured Article.
Then when somebody gets to a certain benchmark, then we give recognition. For example, 100 points.
Maybe we could make a table on a new page called the "Recognition Table", where there would be a row for each user, and columns for each kind of edit and a total column. This page should only be editable by moderators and admins, and therefore only viewable to members. Each time somebody reaches the benchmark, we put them on a sort of "Recognition Page" or "Milestone Page", kind of like the "Hall Of Fame" for the challenges, including the user, and their stats at that moment, and the moment they reached the benchmark.
However, it is a rather large job to moderate this. Moderators and/or Admins would need to look at the "Recent Changes" page, and manually add points to the table for each thing. They would also need to judge what kind of edit a thing is, and how many edits something is (for example, multiple minor edits on the same page should be considered a "big edit" rather than many small ones).
In this sense, there would be no need for voting and would also eliminate any voting bias. Also, admins could win the prize as well, but perhaps some rules, such as, moderators can't tally their own edits, other moderators would need to do that for them.
What do you guys think?
Cheers ~ James Kanjo
