User blog:Atelda/Cabins

Hi, all. There was a topic brought up in the chat that stemmed from a brilliant question pertaining to the cabins. While joining a cabin is awesome, the cabins have absolutely no activity in them nor do they really push users to contribute (IMO). However, I think a way to bring more attention to the cabins is via 'nominations' or 'achievements'.

In short, these 'nominations/achievements' are articles that you have brought up to par and will 'nominate' it to the cabin. The users that have joined in the cabin will comment and decide if it is a good article. Such critiques would be on content, (specifically to this cabin) like whether all of the book mentions have been covered, whether anything needs referencing, any style problems, etc. Should critiques end, the 'nominated article' would go to a vote of which the cabin members would vote and should voting pass, the article would be accepted as a 'quality article' receiving possible ranks such as "Grade A", or "Gold Status", or even personalized to this wiki, "A Zeus article", or something but you get my point.

Not only would this be beneficial to the wiki's content, but it's also a good motive for users. Users who nominate these articles can get recognized for their hard work on the wiki determined by the number of articles they've successfully completed. It's another way to exemplify how much you contribute to the wiki.

If this idea kicks off, we'd need a set of guidelines for the cabin. The guidelines would be like a combination of the Manual of Style and Layout guide although a bit more in depth also outlining the housekeeping needed to maintain an activity like this.

It's just an idea to boost cabin activity and another motive for new users to contribute.

I'd like to first get the personalized items out of the way. What are we going to use for statuses of an article? It could be something like "Gods, Demi-god, and mortals" even possibly throwing in monsters as well, or something else; it's open to suggestions. =) Also, we'd need to figure out personalized "ranks". By ranks, I do not suggest that one person is above another, but for the cabin to be active it needs leaders who will exemplify what the project does. Currently there is a camp counselor, and that's great! But often leaders have to do more work to keep the project active while also balancing nominating articles themselves so to keep up that expectation. So I suggest there be a "co-counselor(s)" or something like that. Another purpose of this is that it gives the leader some wiggle room to be inactive or have the option of retiring. If a leader is to retire, often the oldest "co-counselor" or whatever you want to call it is picked to be the next leader or steps up if the leader becomes inactive for a long period of time. The leader can also appoint a new leader if it sees that the oldest "co-counselor" is unfit to lead or if they're seemingly about to retire. After we decide this, we can move onto creating guidelines. =)

Thanks guys! 21:37, July 4, 2012 (UTC)