Barnstars/Awards in YC?

Hello, I was checking out wikipedia one day, and i noticed something called barnstars.... THey give out barnstars to people who make special achievemnents or posts. Can YC do that too? Maybe the admins and moderators can look around for exceptional compositions or posts or behavior in members, that we can give out awards or that type of thing? Wat do u guys think? Can they be randomly distributed throughout the month, and distributed frequetly?

http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/yc-awards-2008-a-18012.html#post273016

You're late.

Grab your scraggy and get out.

:P

yeah, but that's yearly, too little i think. make it more frequently, like once a week?

eh... who is going to put the effort into THAT? And, amazing threads aren't started EVERY week. Maybe bi-weekly. I mean, the mods could to do it. It just depends on WHO wants to do it. And there should be a reward system for racking up points. Otherwise, it's pointless...

incentives are everything!

Actually, I kind of like the idea... little profile badges or something mods can hand out for various good things.

:dunno:

Probably annoyingly awkward to code...so... NEVERMIND!

PMs (private messages). admins or moderators or editors or reviewers can PM whoever to give them an award in a "literary" way so u could just show u have an award on yur signature, in words? And....uh.....if the admins catch anyone with a false award they didnt have on the signature, they could just ban them?

Hill (bobstolemahcookie) and I already gave this idea a little nudge in the Mikes' directions long ago, perhaps we should nudge again. I think the whole barnstar thing is a good idea. Things can be awarded along the lines of

Wiki editing

- - general maintenance

- - innovation

- - knowledgable contributions to articles

- - quality contributions of opinion articles/essays, etc.

- - nitpicker award

administration/moderation barnstars

- - influencing policies, making suggestions

- - keeping troublesome kiddos in line

- - fairness

reviewer barnstars (not necessarily to Reviewers, but any member that reviews)

- - most opinionated reviewer

- - most objective reviewer

- - most helpful/detailed

- - most prolific/dedicated

composer barnstars

- - prolific composers of high quality works

- - awards based on single outstanding compositions

- - most original, or "setting the example"

plus any simple general community awards, but barnstars should mostly focus on people contributing to the community. The YC Awards is something for fun, a bit informal. Having barnstars to more formally award to people who have contributed to the community could be better because maybe we could have have them displayed on each recipient's member profile to show off. As an incentive for everybody to strive to be better than everybody else, and of course the only way to do it is to make honest contributions - ones that the administrators will personally review for notability.

What do you say, Mikes? (and Jen too... hehe) We could think about it and do some more in-depth planning before we decide to actually implement the idea or not. :thumbsup:

The public could still recommend awards for people directly to the mods/admins. The public recommends (via simply PM) and the higher-ups give the award if they feel it's deserved after investigation. You could get a bunch of supporters together and send a string of PM's in support of a specific person. Obviously if I tried to get 20 people to petition the admins for a barnstar for myself, they probably wouldn't do it anyways because that's just selfish. I don't think it should be sophisticated, or even necessarily democratic, but just something nice. It shouldn't become something like "well if he was awarded for what HE did why didn't *I* get something?" because if you want an award, you go out and earn it, you don't argue about how much you deserve it. It should reward selflessness as opposed to selfishness, and I think the only way to keep it that way is to keep only the admins in charge, or perhaps the mods as well. Obviously in order to keep the whole idea meaningful awards should be given rather infrequently.

The problem I have with this is that it would be left to the decision of the mods. Even if it were made some democratic thing, the public opinion really doesn't always reflect what's the case...especially on here.

Im srry i totally didnt get wat u said...

I feel a Karma system could be in order... But I can see serious possibilities for abuse.

Giving it to the mods does strike as playing favorites... But recognition is good...

Solution? Lurk moar. Find out who YOU think is worth reading.

Precedented complaints regarding "favouritism" would surely arise out of this...if done improperly.

First, it is a very sweet odea. Unfortunately, in real life one rarely receives weekly "barnstars". Usually a good job receives a thank you at best. Consistently excellent work MAY get you a promotion in the long run. In the short run, if you are very good and at a generous workplace you'll get a bonus or gift every so often.

In the composition world it is much harsher. So I think weekly or even bi-weekly barnstars are not that constructive except in a feel-good way. Finally moderators are busy. The biggest compliment you can get from YCer's is when they bump up an old work of yours because they think it is that great.

What I'd like to see is more constructive reviews of works and forethought given before creating new threads (which I am guilty of being redundant or not being sufficiently clear with my reviews)