CatFiller, GreenBuster and RedBuster
by nochs

This article is also available in Italian.

The last part of the year in World/Italiano saw the introduction of an idea based on one of merlin1's. Wanting to increase the size of subcategories with one or zero sites in Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom, merlin1 came up with a proposal of collaboration from editors without editing privileges in those categories.

The original idea, called CatGrowers, has been taken back to World/Italiano and renamed Project CatFiller, GreenBuster and RedBuster.

CatFiller corresponds to merlin1's original idea, but has also seen contributions from albovicamp, with the proposal to use a Test category as the initial container of the new sites.

GreenBuster and RedBuster have been added to the project, based on ideas of ettore and albovicamp. Let's go look at the project in detail, because this idea has brought about, in the last few months, two benefits inside World/Italiano: gaining newbies experience in different branches of the directory, and at the same time reducing the number of unreviewed waiting for review.

Catfiller: New editors (0-100 edits) can ask for a category in their name in Test/World/Italiano/Editori/, to prepare and describe a series of sites to insert in categories of their choice. The categories of destination must be selected from amongst those that have one or two sites. The purpose is to develop categories with few sites.

GreenBuster: This proposal concerns the experienced editors (500 or more edits), and it exists in two versions:

- Light (30 sites) - aimed at editors with 0 unreviewed in their categories. It has the specific purpose of widening and improving their editing, allowing them to review sites similar to those in which they have experience.

- Heavy (100 sites) - aimed at editors who want to test their ability by reviewing sites, and improve their knowledge of the tree by being challenged to find the correct category for a variety of sites. This is an important step in the process of growth and application to higher level categories.

After having applied for a category in their name in Test/World/Italiano/Editori, a batch of unrevieweds is sent to the editor. The editor has to do nothing else besides review them and point out their category of destination within World/Italiano.

RedBuster: The last aspect of the project is aimed at very experienced editors (2000 or more edits.) It concerns the sites marked by Robozilla with errors. The editor in question will have to try the various methods of finding new URLs on the sites assigned to him/her. The purpose is to recover as many sites as possible amongst those with Robozilla errors, and it allows the editor to gain the necessary experience for dealing with reds.

Some of you will probably be asking what substantial difference there is between this project, and the simple creation of subcategories in Bookmarks for adding sites to categories in which one doesn't have privileges. There is a difference. The problem with developing subcategories in Bookmarks is that the whole developed set of sites will end up in the unreviewed of the destination category, where they will stay waiting to be reviewed again by the editor of the category, before finally being published. It shows good initiative to propose sites for categories in which you don't have privileges, but the fact is that you don't know when the sites will be published.

One final point, a strong point of the project not mentioned until now: once the category in Test is ready, the whole category will be verified by a meta/editall/catmod/senior editor, who will then effect the move, and publish the sites.

The whole project has been a great success in World/Italiano, showing after just two months a positive impact on the reduction of unreviewed, and contributing in a meaningful way to the growth of experience, and the quality of editing, of all the editors that have taken part in the initiative.

- nochs