How to Use TechNet Wiki to earn TechNet / MSDN Recognition Points and Achievement Medals

Welcome to Wiki Life Wednesday!

Let's get one thing straight first... can you use TechNet Wiki to earn Recognition Points and Achievement Medals for your TechNet/MSDN Profile?

 

YES YOU CAN!!!

 

I've seen people who know they can get Recognition Points for Forums, Gallery, or Blogs, but somehow they weren't told that they can earn points for TechNet Wiki contributions as well. So I need to set you folks straight!

So what does that mean?

If you're a...

Blogger - Then turn those blog posts into one or more Wiki articles (depends on how long your blog post is). That way the community can help maintain links, version information, screen shots, etc. Plus the other Wiki articles will start linking to yours as well. Once you get into collaborative authoring, your blog articles will start to feel like "selfish authoring" in comparison! So turn those blogs into Recognition Points and Achievement Medals by making them Wiki Articles. You might want to change the tone a little or add more lists of links to other similar articles as well.

Whitepaper Author - Got white papers? Turn them into one or more Wiki articles (depending on how long your whitepaper is). Not only do you get the community collab benefit, but it's easier to navigate, you get SEO benefits (versus a PDF file up somewhere), and when you divide your white paper into a series of Wiki articles, then the collaboration is in better context (for example, someone leaves a comment and they don't have to say, "On page 23 in section x" -- because the comment is in context when you've broken a long white paper up into sections). Then you can also synergize with the Gallery by uploading your whitepaper there as well and linking to it from the Wiki article (for folks to print, have an offline copy to share, etc.). I wrote a blog post on the benefits here.

Coder - You can post upload your code in the Gallery and then use the Wiki to explain it better and to get interactive sections (like a list of platforms the community has tested it on, FAQ, known issues, feature requests, reviews, etc.). This blog post also speaks to that synergy. As with the whitepaper solution, you get Recognition Points and marks toward Acheivement Medals from two sources!

Forum Contributor - Remember when you wrote that long explanation to how to solve something? Well go add it to the Wiki as an article! Not only are you adding more Recognition Points and marks toward Achievement Medals, but you're also making it easier for your process to be found and read! Plus people can add to it and make it better! And you'll also end up interacting with more folks and growing your network!

 

So, what are Recognition Points and Achievement Medals?

 

Recognition Points show how successful you are in the MSDN/TechNet community. It tells people how trusted of a source you are. So if someone says something, and they've got 100,000+ Recognition Points, and someone disagrees who has 35 Recognition Points, who are you going to believe? Boom.

You get Recognition Points by being successful... In Forums that comes when your posts are marked as answers and when folks vote for them as Helpful. In Gallery that comes from the amount of downloads your contributions have and when folks rate your code snippet/download. In Blogs that comes with views and when people rate the blog posts highly.

And finally (and most importantly), in Wiki they come in views when an article that you either authored or edited gets a certain number of views:

First, the article you authored reached one out of 10 possible page view milestones. The various milestones range between 500 and 1 million page views. Then you get between +5 to +2500 Recognition Points.

Second, the article you edited reached one out of 10 possible page view milestones. The various milestones range between 500 and 1 million page views. You are eligible to receive a portion of an available set of points, depending upon your edit quantity and the milestone reached. Then you get between +1 to +2500 Recognition Points.

Click here for more info about Recognition Points (including specifics about how to get how many points).

 

Achievement Medals show your accomplishments. Where Recognition Points focus on the QUALITY of what you do, the Achievement Medals focus on the QUANTITY of what you do... gotta collect them all!!! As you'll see, you get quick wins with the Bronze Medals, but the Gold Medals take a little more work.

Here's what you can get for TechNet Wiki...

BRONZE:

  • New Wiki Editor - 1 Edited Wiki Article
  • New Wiki Contributor - 1 New Wiki Article
  • New Wiki Commentator - 1 Wiki Comment

SILVER:

  • Wiki Editor II - 25 Edited Wiki Articles, & 10 of those Wiki Articles Receive 500 Page Views
  • Wiki Contributor II - 10 New Wiki Articles, & 6 of those Wiki Articles Receive 500 Page Views
  • Wiki Community Editor - 10 Revision Comments (to explain your edits)
  • Wiki Commentator II - 35 Wiki Comments

GOLD:

  • Wiki Commentator III - 100 Wiki Comments
  • Wiki Community Editor II - 50 Revision Comments
  • Wiki Editor III - 100 Edited Wiki Articles, & 20 of those Wiki Articles Receive 500 Page Views
  • Wiki Contributor III - 50 New Wiki Articles, & 20 of those Wiki Articles Receive 500 Page Views
  • Wiki Ninja - 500 New Wiki Articles (no one has this yet)
  • Wiki Ninja Master - 1,000 New Wiki Articles
  • Wiki Ninja Supreme - 2,000 New Wiki Articles

Click here for more info about how to earn specific Achievement Medals (including for all the social tools).

Rich Prescott was also kind enough to create a list on TechNet Wiki of the medals (it's basically a different way to organize the same list, so it might be easier to read).

 

 

I currently have 53 medals, and Rich has 51. For Gold medals, I have 12 and Rich has 11.

 

- Ninja Ed (Blog, Twitter, Wiki, Profile)