Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals/CategoryArchive

The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Standardization of Barnstars: Category stars (Credit for the original idea goes wholly to brian0918) Rather than be faced with a periodic addition of random topic barnstars, I propose that we preemptivey create a series of Category Barnstars, based primarily on the categories listed on the main page, used to reward brilliant work in articles in one of the following categories:

• Culture – Art, literature, music, philosophy, religion
• Geography – Geography, "nation" articles
• History – Archaeology, history
• Daily Life – Education, food & drink, language, sports & games
• Science and Mathematics – The "hard" sciences: Biology, geology, medicine, mathematics, medicine, minerology, physics
• Society – Economics, government & politics, law, media, royalty & nobility, war
• Technology – Technology, transportation
• Oddball – The types of articles listed in Wikipedia:Unusual articles

Implementing this system would, in the end, keep the number of barnstars at a manageable level by providing a number of very categories, thus preventing a "Barnstar Creep" that could eventually result in dozens of "niche" stars. This would also allow us to implement a stylistic standardization to these articles, giving these barnstars a common theme and/or "look and feel". – ClockworkSoul 06:27, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In preparation for a ginormous discussion, I've moved each header up one size, and added sections for each. Please keep discussion in these sections so that nobody's comments are missed and each can be easily archived. Add any image proposals to the appropriate section's gallery along with a number and your name (see example in Technology section). -- BRIAN0918  15:38, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Before we go and choose images, let's decide whether these are really the categories that we want. Anybody have any opinions? I for one, now think that we should roll Mathematics into Science. Also, for convenience and clarification, I took the categories from the scheme used in Wikipedia:Featured articles, and mapped it to an appropriate category. – ClockworkSoul 15:00, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Completed

See archive for discussion.

[edit] Culture

The Barnstar of High Culture Category: Culture (art, literature, music, philosophy, religion) The Barnstar of High Culture may be awarded to an editor who makes particularly fine culture-related contributions. This award was introduced on March 23, 2005 by brian0918 and ClockworkSoul, and was designed by AllyUnion and brian0918.

[edit] History

The Epic Barnstar Category: History (archaeology, history) The Epic Barnstar may be awarded to an editor who makes particularly fine History-related contributions. This award was introduced on April 15, 2005 by brian0918 and ClockworkSoul, and was designed by ClockworkSoul.

[edit] Oddball

The Oddball Barnstar The Oddball Barnstar may be awarded to an editor who creates a particularly fine article regarding a subject that is odd, whimsical, or is otherwise something that one wouldn't expect to find in more traditional encyclopedias. This award was introduced on March 22, 2005 by ClockworkSoul, and was designed by Riffsyphon1024 and brian0918.

[edit] Science and Mathematics

E=MC2 Barnstar Category: Science and Mathematics ("Hard" sciences, biology, geology, medicine, mathematics, medicine, minerology, physics) The E=MC2 Barnstar may be awarded to an editor who makes particularly fine contributions regarding science or mathematics-related topics This award was introduced on April 22, 2005 by brian0918 and ClockworkSoul.

[edit] Society

The Society Barnstar Category: Society (Economics, government & politics, law, media, royalty & nobility, war) The Society Barnstar is intended for those whose work advance the general understanding of any given society one may attain by consulting Wikipedia. Award introduced on March 23, 2005 by Clockworksoul; designed by grm_wnr.

[edit] Technology

The Technology Barnstar Category: Technology (Technology, transportation) The Technology Barnstar may be awarded to an editor who makes particularly fine Technology-related contributions. This award was introduced on March 3, 2005 by brian0918 and ClockworkSoul, and was designed by brian0918.

[edit] Geography

1. Blue Marble Barnstar (brian0918)

• ClockworkSoul, we can use the Barnstar of National Merit for the geography topics. Zscout370 12:10, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I like that idea as well. Less work. -- BRIAN0918  15:32, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Per Redux's request at Wikipedia talk:Barnstars on Wikipedia, I've created a separate barnstar for geography. Here is a rough draft. Because the image of the Earth is nicknamed the "Blue Marble", I think Blue Marble Barnstar would be a good name for it. -- BRIAN0918  14:58, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I think its a bit too soon to entirely take the BoNM off the table: after all, its a pretty good fit for a "Geography & Nation" star (which is pretty much what it is now, more or less). I just want to avoid as much redundancy as possible. – ClockworkSoul 16:29, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• So, this barnstar is supported to represent "Geography, and nation articles". Should we use the existing Barnstar of National Merit, or replace it with another barnstar? For the record, I'm still in favor or reusing the BoNM, and its creator, Zscout370, said it was okay as well. Thoughts? – ClockworkSoul 04:44, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• I'm all in favour of using the BoNM for the same reasons as you give. --Deathphoenix 21:41, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cool, deal. Another proposal then

The Barnstar of National Merit Category: Geography (geography, nation-related articles) The Barnstar of National Merit may be awarded to an editor who creates a particularly fine article regarding geography or nation-related articles. This barnstar was proposed by Redux on February 23, 2005, and was designed by Zscout370.

I made some very minor changes to the wording for the BoNM so that it may be converted into a categorical barnstar. Let me knoe what you guys think. – ClockworkSoul 00:17, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, I do agree that for all practical purposes there's a strong tendency to award the BoNM to geography-related work. But as I've said before, a very particular aspect of this award is that, regardless of the topic or topics edited, they all relate to the coverage of one given country. If it's awarded for geography works (which may not be focused on the geography of any particular country), how is it going to be a national merit? In fact, the award has already been given to a user who did extensive work in favor of our coverage of South Africa, but in this particular case, the focus of the work was in the Armed Forces of South Africa. When I wrote the specifics of the BoNM, I tried to make it clear that the award was not exclusively for work done in one category (although that was not excluded, as long as it was extensive work on behalf of one given country – and in fact, this one category could not even be geography. One can get this award for expanding considerably articles on notable people from one country, for instance), but rather for work done in multiple categories, which would have in common that one country. I don't believe that having a [exclusively] geography-related award would be redundant with the BoNM – there may be an area in common, but then again, so does the Original Barnstar with many of the other awards (I mean, theoretically, you could get the Original Barnstar for Diligence, or for tireless contribution, etc.). Regards, Redux 01:37, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I see what your saying. But honestly, as far as I can tell, nation and nation-related articles outnumber geography articles by one or more orders of magnitude. If we do allow geography articles to be awarded for by the star, it will be used rather infrequently. It would also make things much cleaner and nicer if we would allow geography to be added to it. – ClockworkSoul 02:15, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I too see where you're going. But when you think about it, we are creating category-based awards that are aimed at (but not limited to) preventing the random multiplication of awards on the project. In this process, we are creating some awards that will be scarcely used (I image the Life Barnstar will be one – discussion about it hasn't even started yet), but we have deemed that this is an acceptable side effect. Imho, however, whether an award is "popular" or "forgotten" depends more on the community's willingness to award Barnstars (vis a vis the Kindness Campaign) than the purpose of the award per se. As an example, the Running Man Barnstar: as a sports-related award, I thought it would rapidly become one of the most popular awards around. Instead, it was weeks after we installed it until someone finally awarded it (to the most obvious recipient: Dale Arnett), and since that it's been forgotten again. It is quite possible that a Geography Barnstar could become a sought after award, if we manage to get more people interested in actually awarding barnstars.
But if we make the BoNM a geography barnstar (also), it will make little sense. Picture this: someone does intensive work about the Himalaias, the Andes or the Alps – or, in a "non mountain" example, the Bodensee in Europe or the Great Lakes in North America – this person would have contributed a lot for our coverage of geography-related themes, but not to any one country in special. And as I see it, it would make little sense that this person should get the Barnstar of National Merit for this kind of work. Not to mention that the BoNM's appearence is not evocative of the theme geography, rather it is a medal-like award, something that any one country might give out to people it deems important for its history, culture, politics, national security, etc. As an extra problem, broadening the scope of the BoNM like this would also sort of "blurry" the purpose of the BoNM. In my view, the best way to go would be creating a geography-specific award. Regards, Redux 05:42, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The Barnstar of Geographic Merit, by Redux.

All of this has given me the idea for the image I'm posting now. I merged the Blue Marble image with the ribbon from the BoNM. The problem is that there's no barnstar on this Barnstar (but maybe someone could find some way of inserting it – my abilities as a graphic designer are somewhat limited). Regards, Redux 06:12, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The Barnstar of Geographic Merit 2, by Redux.

How about this one on the left? Redux 06:12, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If we're going to go in a different direction, then I kind of like thee blue marble... – ClockworkSoul 14:35, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Is this discussion going to die here? We do not have a Geography award yet... Anybody has anything to say about it? Regards, Redux 02:44, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Goodness, I hope not! I think we just got distracted by other items. To summarize my view, I advocated the following actions:

1. Refactor the BoNM to change it into the Geography Barnstar.
2. If others are opposed to that, I think we should use the blue marble star. If we do this, though, should we accept the overlap in the two stars?

Those are my current views in a nutshell. – ClockworkSoul 13:13, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, why not we change the crtieria for the BoNM so it includes geography and national topics. Oh wait, the BoNM says this "The Barnstar of National Merit may be awarded to fellow Wikipedians who edit with great distinction articles pertaining to any given country, in topics such as (but not limited to) geography, politics, notable people, etc." Everything is already included, so I think we sahould drop this idea and use the BoNM as the geographic/national topic Barnstar. Zscout370 13:29, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

(Two months later...) Shall we just go ahead with the idea and merge the two, placing The Barnstar of National Merit under geography category? Sango123 July 7, 2005 18:23 (UTC)

Sure, but for the record, I think that the BoNM image should be reverted to the version with the "normal" barnstar image on it, in order to preserve the uniformity. Bratsche^{talk 5 pillars} July 9, 2005 01:00 (UTC)

This new version, done be me, is fine with me. I like this one, since it actually looks like a medal. That was what I was trying to do, and with this one, I got it. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 9 July 2005 01:02 (UTC)

One more thing, all previous versions of the BoNM have been deleted, since I moved it to the Commons. So, pretty much, we have to use what we got. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 9 July 2005 04:21 (UTC)

Ok, I am willing to meet yall half-way. I am redesigning the star to look more closely like a Barnstar, but everything else will stay the same. It's up now. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 9 July 2005 01:09 (UTC)

Hmm...looks like the image is not work just quite yet. I will try to upload it here and see how it works. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 9 July 2005 01:20 (UTC) That looks good. Ok, go ahead and close this off. Seems like the category barnstar creation is finished!! Bratsche^{talk 5 pillars} July 9, 2005 13:05 (UTC)

Yes, looks like it. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 20:25, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Ok, it's all done. I just completed the mergeThe Category Barnstar creation effort is now finished and closed. Wow! What are we going to do now? Bratsche^{talk 5 pillars} 21:01, July 9, 2005 (UTC)

Let's clear everything off of the main BAP page. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 21:09, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.