There are many video game players of diverse ages, genders, languages, and locations. How could Wikimedia editing be made into an appealing activity for people who are currently video gamers? How could Wikimedia market itself to gamers, including console, LAN, FPS, MMORPG, and mobile gamers?
Citation needed?!"Since online gamers are a predominantly male group of excessive internet users, they may be the cause of identified gender gaps. Most studies in this area orginate in East Asia ...."
Note that the Chinese Wikipedia has a strong presence of Animations, Comics and Games (ACG) group contributors that are young, predominantly male. There is some cultural conflicts when some ACG contributors use East Asian ACG-only vocabulary and cultural references to general audience of editors in the village pump.Thus, the Wikipedia gaming question is beyond just interface, we may also consider the existing demographics (using language version as unit of analysis) and their social and cultural environments.For example, it would be interesting to see how far "gaming" as a category has developed across language versions and how such development correlates to gender ratio.For example, based on Chinese Wikipedia and Baidu Baike (Chinese Wikipedia's competitor hosted by Baidu the search engine), the contrast is clear. Note that Baide Baike deployed a point-based system with sort of role-playing categories that sound like online games. It corresponds to the labour-intensive but subject to potential manipulation of the metric system. Some Chinese Wikipedians think it is a good practice while some other think it makes the editorial processes stray away from productive editing.
I understand that the gaming industry is big and its market growing and thus may open doors for more contribution and readership of Wikipedia. However, it is critical to examine and think through how games can change Wikipedia, and more importantly, how Wikipedia can change games.2013/7/7 Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com>
I believe women are well-represented (possibly even the majority) in casual gaming.
From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Han-Teng Liao
Sent: Sunday, 7 July 2013 7:43 PMCc: ee@lists.wikimedia.org
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Recruiting gamers to edit Wikimedia
Will this move (inviting gamers to contribute to Wikipedia in "gamified" interfaces) further skew the gender demographics of Wikipedia contributors? Is there any alternative that provide customized interfaces that are more inviting to existing gender-balanced or even female-dominant sub-cultural groups?
2013/7/7 ENWP Pine <deyntestiss@hotmail.com>
Hi Quim and Sarah,
I should have worded my question more precisely. I'm asking what Wikimedia could do to recruit people who play video games on various platforms and in various types of games (casual, FPS, MMPORG, and so on) so that they convert the time they currently use for gaming into time spent contributing to Wikimedia projects of any kind or subject rather than on the important but narrower subject of video games. For example, what would it take to convert people who currently play crossword puzzles or Scrabble on their smartphones into editors of Wiktionary? What would it take to convert people who play geocaching into photo contributors to Commons? What would it take to convert FPS gamers into NPP or anti-vandalism editors?
The people on the Research list are generating a lot of good discussion about gamification within Wikimedia to encourage more and higher quality participation, and we're also discussing how to recruit gamers to become new Wikimedia contributors. Please come over to the thread on Research-l and let's continue talking there. (:
Pine
> Date: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 07:31:17 -0700
> From: Quim Gil <qgil@wikimedia.org>
> To: ee@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [EE] Recruiting gamers to edit Wikimedia
> Message-ID: <51D6D8B5.4040904@wikimedia.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> On 07/04/2013 12:46 PM, ENWP Pine wrote:
> > I've asked these questions in other ways and places and I'd like to hear
> > what other people on the Research and EE lists think.
> >
> > There are many video game players of diverse ages, genders, languages,
> > and locations. How could Wikimedia editing be made into an appealing
> > activity for people who are currently video gamers? How could Wikimedia> > market itself to gamers, including console, LAN, FPS, MMORPG, and mobile
> > gamers?
>
> Have you asked at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Video_games ?
>
> (as an outsider) I would say that gaming in general is pretty well
> covered, at least in comparison with other areas of knowledge. Or what
> would be the reason to target gamers?
>
> Editing per se is not the problem. There is no lack of gamers using
> wikis (and MediaWiki!) e.g. http://www.wikia.com/ or
> http://www.minecraftwiki.net/ . The average gamer probably gets the idea
> of crowdsourcing knowledge pretty well. Those wikis are community wikis
> though, as an editor you won't need to deal (much) with relevance,
> references, POV, essay, etc. I don't know what are the conditions to
> upload copyrighted content but probably these wikis are more permissive
> than Wikimedia's.
>
> Well, I guess http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Move_to_gaming_wiki
> exists for a reason. Maybe if we would send gamers (also) to
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Subject:Games we could keep a bit more
> talent around...
>
> --
> Quim Gil
> Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
>
>
> Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2013 08:26:14 -0700
> From: Sarah Stierch <sstierch@wikimedia.org>
> To: WMF Editor Engagement Team <ee@lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [EE] Recruiting gamers to edit Wikimedia
> Message-ID:
> <CAFk0ehVOcyV-N5KMchop-C0r7wY649adXMDHg5U+CVbjGhaVPw@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Hi,
>
> And yes, if you're interested in engaging (or re engaging) with people
> already in the community or who don't edit as frequently perhaps, you can
> contact people who have userboxes on English Wikipedia saying they are into
> video games:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Userboxes/Games/Video_games
>
> I do this for women's history projects and programs. I either use
> EdwardsBot and spam them with a template inviting them to something or
> whatever, or invite them individually (more time consuming of course).
>
> Sarah
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 7:31 AM, Quim Gil <qgil@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > On 07/04/2013 12:46 PM, ENWP Pine wrote:
> >
> >> I've asked these questions in other ways and places and I'd like to hear
> >> what other people on the Research and EE lists think.
> >>
> >> There are many video game players of diverse ages, genders, languages,
> >> and locations. How could Wikimedia editing be made into an appealing
> >> activity for people who are currently video gamers? How could Wikimedia> >> market itself to gamers, including console, LAN, FPS, MMORPG, and mobile
> >> gamers?
> >>
> >
> > Have you asked at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**
> > Wikipedia:WikiProject_Video_**games<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Video_games>?
> >
> > (as an outsider) I would say that gaming in general is pretty well
> > covered, at least in comparison with other areas of knowledge. Or what
> > would be the reason to target gamers?
> >
> > Editing per se is not the problem. There is no lack of gamers using wikis
> > (and MediaWiki!) e.g. http://www.wikia.com/ or
> > http://www.minecraftwiki.net/ . The average gamer probably gets the idea
> > of crowdsourcing knowledge pretty well. Those wikis are community wikis
> > though, as an editor you won't need to deal (much) with relevance,
> > references, POV, essay, etc. I don't know what are the conditions to upload
> > copyrighted content but probably these wikis are more permissive than
> > Wikimedia's.
> >
> > Well, I guess http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Template:Move_to_gaming_wiki<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Move_to_gaming_wiki>exists for a reason. Maybe if we would send gamers (also) to
> > http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/**Subject:Games<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Subject:Games>we could keep a bit more talent around...
> >
> > --
> > Quim Gil
> > Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
> > http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/**User:Qgil<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil>
> >
> > ______________________________**_________________
> > EE mailing list
> > EE@lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/ee<https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ee>
> >
>
>
>
> --
> *Sarah Stierch**
> Wikimedia Foundation Program Evaluation & Design Community Coordinator
> *Donate<http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Donate/en&utm_source=&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=&language=en&uselang=en&country=US&referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3D%26esrc%3Ds%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D1%26ved%3D0CDMQFjAA%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fdonate.wikipedia.org%252F%26ei%3DYpsET93HN6isiQLIoJjSDg%26usg%3DAFQjCNG-7hzT9rkEvAjlNqBIOQ1ZDIpdYA>today
> and keep it free!
>
> Visit me on Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SarahStierch>!
_______________________________________________
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
_______________________________________________
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
