Thread:Roranoa Drake II/@comment-36009152-20190325233646/@comment-5262628-20190328130733

I'd like to throw in my two cents here.

Firstly, I think we all agree that not all contributions are welcome. For instance, few wikis would tolerate bad-faith edits (be it vandalism or edit warring).

Secondly, I'd suggest that most wikis are after more quality contributions, and not simply a greater quantity of contributions.

If we're after quality contributions, then chasing engagement for engagement's sake is arguably a fool's errand. I invoke Goodhart's law: "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." In practical terms, this means that the achievements system built for stoking engagement is subject to abuse by contributors whose motivations may be perverted by said system: if your fundamental incentive as a contributor is to earn badges instead of helping to contribute to the completeness and veracity of the wiki, then your contributions run the risk of being of poor quality.

If badges can be earned for performing a large number of categorizations, then we run the risk of some contributors choosing to over-categorize pages for the sake of a badge, and that's not a desirable outcome, as regular editors would then have to devote time to reverting said changes. If badges can be earned for performing a large number of edits, then we run the risk of some contributors performing a large number of useless edits, or unnecessarily breaking up a set of minor changes into individual edits, which amounts to more noise for patrollers. These are situations that we've encountered before, and have dealt with accordingly because they're not harmless contributions.

In this specific contributor's case, whilst it could be argued that editing one's user page for the sake of a badge is harmless, it could also be argued that earning that badge in such a manner dilutes its value for those who earned it by making quality contributions to the main namespace over the same period of time. Additionally, it'd set the precedent that gaming the achievements system is tolerated.

Ultimately, I think the litmus test should be whether you'd make the same contributions if there weren't an achievements system. If so, then great; that'd suggest that said system is incidental to your motives for contributing, and that's arguably the desired position. If not—and I strongly doubt DragonKestrel would've made over 200 edits to their user page if they weren't going after those badges—then the motives of those contributors are at odds with the intended spirit of contributing to a wiki.