User:KHarold (WMF)/Sandbox/Learning Patterns/Contest Bots

Learning Pattern Library

Writing Contest Bots

problemI do not have enough time to score, judge and track contest submissions manually.

solutionUse a bot to manage some or all of the scoring, judging, tracking and prize delivery for an online writing contest.

creator• KHarold (WMF)

status:in progress

What problem does this solve?

Tracking and scoring writing contest submissions can be time consuming, especially if there are not many volunteers helping coordinate a contest.

What is the solution?

Bots can be used to complete a variety of tasks to make contest coordination easier and less time consuming. Below are some examples of bots used to track and judge contests.

UKBot: Used in weekly competitions on Norweigan Wikipedia.

"The bot is programmed by our local Python guru. It counts and assigns points based on the number of bytes, words, pictures, references added. It is quite nifty. It can be changed to reflect whatever you are scoring on that week, which a volunteer can do in about 10 or 15 mintutes. The bot tracks everything, it goes through every edit that the participant made that week that falls in one of the categories for the contest. The bot also puts ribbons on the competition page and on the talk pages of the winners, and tracks progress toward contest goals in an info box on the event page."

Scoreboard from a Norwegian Wikipedia editing contest event page.

LivingBot: Used on English WikiCup.

"This bot pulls together all the different submissions, judges make sure they meet the requirements to be included: sufficient length, “good” article, etc. Judged review the work collected by the bot."

Share YOUR contest bot!

Examples

Backup Volunteer for Important Tasks

Last year we had a person lined up to manage the mass upload from Flickr to Commons during Wiki Loves Monuments. The problem was that we just had one person who would take of that and exactly then, when we needed him, he vanished. So, we had to get things sorted out, look for new tools and scripts and get another WMES member involved who is fit with bots but was just not ready to take over. During WLE the next year it worked smoothly and we had a backup person. By now we have at least 4 people (probably 6) wo can take this task over, if needed. So, our dependency of one person is not anymore the case.