Re: Skill badges, mentors, and apprentices

Hi, Chris-

Thanks for kicking this off again. I'd really like to move forward on this.

On 12/7/12 7:14 AM, Chris Mills wrote:
> (Another action item form the last general meeting - write this up as
> a formal proposal. I thought I'd send my initial thoughts around for
> comment first, before recording them on the site anywhere)
>
> We should start a system whereby people are given recognition for the
> skills they possess, as well as the contributions they have made to
> the site. So for contributions, you could have badges for
>
> * Q&A moderator
> * Numbers of answers in Q&A
> * IRC moderator
> * Number of new articles
> * Number of edits
> * Number of template updates
> * Translations contributed
>
> And then for skills, you could have
>
> * Editor
> * Writer
> * Template ninja
> * Design smarts (for those like Seb and Lea, who have contributed styling)
> * International superhero: Germany, or France, etc. (awarded for certain language contributions)
> * Domain expert: HTML, or CSS (you have certain specific knowledge of different subjects)

Am I alone in being a grumpy old man who dislikes the whole "pirate / 
ninja / guru / wizard / cutesy-label-of-the-day" designation? I 
understand that it's meant to be fun, and I don't want to be a killjoy, 
but something about it comes off as simply trying too hard. (I 
especially abhor it when someone refers to themselves with one of these 
monikers.) I'd prefer to play it a bit straight here, and call them what 
they are: experts. It has more gravitas.

Maybe I'm being too much of a stick in the mud?


> This would act as recognition, as well as letting others know what
> skills you have, so they can determine who best to approach if they
> have a query or problem.
>
> Moving on from this, we should also run a system whereby experts in
> different skills should act as mentors for those who want to learn.
> This is especially relevant to WPD specific skills like editing and
> template modification, but could perhaps be extended to other things.
> The idea would be that the mentor could train the apprentice in that
> specific skill, and then once the mentor is satisfied that the
> apprentice has reached a certain level of proficiency, award them a
> skill badge to say so.

This is great.

> This would probably require the creation of a nice new icon set for
> this purpose. Would Mozilla's open badges project have anything to
> help with this?



Regards-
-Doug

Received on Thursday, 24 January 2013 15:33:38 UTC