At present there is no easy way to let other know and verify the contribution and participation in Wikimedia projects. The problem increases if someone is active in multiple projects. Endorsement and recolonization the skills or accomplishments of individual Wikipedians should be more standard.
=== Idea ===
Digital badges (Open Badges) will be provided upon the completion/participation in different ares of the Wikimedia movement. It will be similar as the 'Barnstars' but it will be more automated and will be build upon standard tools. A standalone tool will check and maintain the progress to get a new badge. It will also list all the badges of a wikipedian and s/he will be able to share them.
=== Goals & Scopes ===
The main goal of this tool will be to increase participation of new and existing wikipedians. I am ad administrator and founding member of Wikimedia Bangladesh Chapter. We initiated several programs to increase participation, attract and engage new contributors. From these programs and campaigns i have some observations i find increases the contribution, the list if flowing
- A leader board/ competition (Example campaign: List of active wikipedians)
- Short/ easy to achieve milestones (Example campaign: 5 new articles a week)
- Recognition (Example campaign: Barnstars)
- Stat (Example campaign: Article edit count)
- (will add more... )
From these observations i thought it is good to have some standard tools which will encourage the Wikipedians. Then i posted the idea in the Bengali Wikipedia Village pump and got a big support (https://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:VP#Wikibadge). So i am planning to build a tool for the Bengali Wikipedia. If it is successful and other community is willing to use this tool then we will extend out plan, goals and scopes.
=== Background ===
- [[ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Badges | Discussions on meta ]]
- [[ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Open_Badges_for_off-wiki_credentials | IdeaLab page ]]
- [[ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/OpenBadges | page on mediawiki.org ]]
- [[ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:OpenBadges | Extension for issuing OpenBadges in MediaWiki ]]
- [[ http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Achievements | Wikia Achievements extension ]]
- [[ https://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:VP#Wikibadge Discussion on Bengali Wikipedia Village Pump ]]