FAMEPedia:Service awards

Service awards are a simple way of acknowledging an editor's level of contribution based on two specific benchmarks: the number of contributions that the editor has made to FAMEPedia and the length of time registered. One academic has described FAMEPedia's service award schema as a way to award the self. One may also think of them as auto-attained milestones.

This award is unlike other awards given from one editor to another in a show of appreciation; it is intended to be given to yourself, although it can also be given by a second party. It is achieved by a strictly mechanical count of time registered and number of edits. There is no process for receiving these awards; you just determine the grade to which you are entitled, then display it on your user page. Typically, both the time and edit-count requirements are met before considering oneself eligible for each award level.

Please remember that neither the number of edits nor the length of time from when an account was created is a good indicator of the quality of an editor's contributions or diplomatic ability. Hence, service awards do not indicate any level of authority whatsoever; "master" editors are not bestowed with more authority through this award than "novice" editors.

Overview
There are currently 22 award levels. The first level serves as a base level. The "Signator-to-Cardinal-Gom-ATE" track is a humorous alternative for those who find the more formal titles too staid.
 * Signator is from the Latin signātōrius, which means someone who has made a mark.
 * Burba means "recruit" in Venetian.
 * Novato is Spanish and Portuguese for "beginner".
 * Grognard (French for "grumbler") was Napoleon's pet name for his Old Guard.
 * Tutnum, Labutnum, Looshpah, Togneme, and Gom are made-up words that are intended to sound impressive.

For the first five levels, there are also incremental service awards to use between the major service awards. There are 20 incremental service awards, with four levels of incremental service award for each of the first five service awards.

For the sake of variety, three badge variants are provided for each level: a medal, a book, and a ribbon (thanks to FAMEPedia:Ribbons). To keep the validity and status of the major service awards, a ribbon is the only variant for incremental service awards. Editors may display the badge of their preference, a combination of badges, or none at all.

To learn your edit count and the date of your first logged edit, click Preferences where this information will appear under View global account info. A more detailed edit counter is the User Analysis Tool (a replacement for X!'s edit counter); there are also other edit counters and analysis tools. These tools do not always provide equal numbers because they rely on different methods of calculation.

Requirements
The following table lists the requirements for each award level. Both the length of service and total number of edits must be met for each award level.

What is counted?
How to count your edits is up to you. It is generally assumed that all edits, even including edits by bots and deleted edits, are okay to count. If you want to count edits on other Wikimedia projects, that is okay too. If you began as an anonymous IP editor and want to count from the time of your first IP edit, that is also okay. If you run or ran more than one account, you may choose to include the edits for your other user accounts as well. If you are or were an administrator, you can count your administrative actions as edits if you want. You may also begin counting the amount of time you have been an editor from an older account or IP address of yours. It is all based on the honor system, so do what you think gives you the most fair and accurate award level.

To clarify, though, both the edit count and the time for a given level are required to achieve that level.

Rationale for the requirements
The edit count requirements for the levels are based on what, in the opinion of the editors who formulated the requirements, could be achieved by a human editor working with considerable regularity and diligence using the default tools and a fairly typical editing pattern. The awards for the first two years require a considerably lower edit rate than those for the later years.

Bots and editors using certain tools or editing patterns may achieve higher rates, while editors using certain editing patterns (such as mainly posting completed articles with a single edit and so forth) may have lower rates, and of course editors who do not edit regularly may have lower rates.

Thus not all editors will see a good match between service time and edit counts (some editors may be eligible for a high level by service time but not by edit count, while other editors may be eligible for a high level by edit count but not by service time). This is an imperfection which is an inherent consequence of the decision to use an uncomplicated system for determining eligibility for each award.
 * The first seven levels (up to Veteran Editor or Tutnum), which cover the first two years of one's editing career, would require a rate of 4,000 edits per year (an average of approximately 11 edits per day) if one were to advance levels with edit counts and service time in perfect synchronization (except that the very first level, Novice Editor or Burba, requires only 200 edits rather than 333).
 * Levels 8 through 11 (up to Senior Editor or Labutnum), which cover the next two years of one's editing career, would require a rate of 8,000 edits per year (an average of approximately 22 edits per day) if one were to advance levels with edit counts and service time in perfect synchronization.
 * Levels 12 through 21 would require a rate of 9,000 edits per year (an average of approximately 25 edits per day) if one were to advance levels with edit counts and service time in perfect synchronization.
 * Level 22 would require a rate of 12,500 edits per year (an average of approximately 35 edits per day) if one were to advance levels with edit counts and service time in perfect synchronization.

Images, userboxes, and top icons
You can place the Service awards template on your user page to show the image, userbox, or top icon most appropriate for your time of service and edit count. For it to calculate the time you have been registered with FAMEPedia, you must give it year, month and day parameters specifying your registration date. You must also give your edit count using an edits parameter, and update this each time your edits pass one of the service award levels. The format parameter can be used to specify the display format. See the template's documentation for details.

The Service award progress template can show your progress towards the next service award. Like, it also requires year, month, day and edits parameters to specify when you registered and how many edits you have made.

Alternatively, you can pick an award template from the following table: