I don’t think the hard-core gaming community are likely to switch over to Wikipedia editing. I think you are dealing with some extremely different personality types. Indeed, I have always thought it would be interesting to do a study of Myers Briggs (or whatever personality test you prefer) to both gamers, Wikipedia editors and compare that with the community profiles as a whole. I rather suspect that both gamers and editors would cluster in certain parts of the profiles. (Says she, an INTJ wikipedia editor).

 

 But I think you might get more joy if you ask the question

 

“What aspects of games that make them engaging can we transfer to Wikipedia editing?” Then you can draw on gaming literature, e.g. understanding game flow

 

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1077253

 

and do an assessment of where Wikipedia editor does and doesn’t satisfy the game flow criteria. And then look at criteria that are not met and come up with ideas to introduce that aspect of game flow into Wikipedia editing.

 

As a concrete example, we know that people like the competitive aspect of games (getting a personal best score, beating other human/computer players, leaderboards). Now Wikipedia editors have the concept of edit count, but frankly as a new editor, you are competing with people with a lot of years and probably a lot of bot-edits under their belt:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits

 

so it’s hard to see that as a satisfying competition for new entrants. But can you construct some kind of league where new users compete against other new users? Where they can see themselves as having some prospect of “winning” or “doing better”?

 

If you look at Kiva micro-lending (an inherently non-gaming activity), one thing they did that was very successful was allowing people to form arbitrary teams and they have a teams leaderboard. At  the current top of Kiva teams’ leader board are “Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious”  closely followed by “Kiva Christians” (as I recall the atheist team formed as a reaction to the formation of the Christian team), as they attempt to “prove” the value of their beliefs by total loan value! J I am in Team Australia where we exhorted each other to push ourselves up the leaderboard against other national teams and we are currently the top “national” team. Meanwhile on the “last month leaderboard” the winning team is “Guys holding fish” (who affiliate based on “We love fish and/or fishing so much that many of us have chosen to present ourselves on KIVA with a photo of ourselves, holding a fish! “)

 

 http://www.kiva.org/community

 

 Could we do something similar on Wikipedia?

 

That’s just one example of taking a gaming concept into Wikipedia editing. I am sure there are many more. Look for research on gamification:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification

 

Kerry

 

From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of ENWP Pine
Sent: Friday, 5 July 2013 5:46 AM
To: ee@lists.wikimedia.org; Wiki Research-l
Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Recruiting gamers to edit Wikimedia

 

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?

Pine