If we could somehow create such a good and engaging game that money in our "game" could somehow be valuable enough that Europeans and Americans would buy it from Asian gold farmers who were doing lots of routine updating, or sophisticated editing for that matter, on Wikipedia I wouldn't see that as a bad outcome.
To expand that idea, if substantial routine editing on Wikipedia resulted in payment of a few hundred dollars a month, and we chose to finance that, it would be a sort of wealth transfer to the developing world. And be an international educational mechanism to a certain extent.
Sorry to not address your comment more directly...
Fred
In addition to gender (politics), recruiting more gamers to Wikimedia content and communities may have different cultural and political impacts for Asian regions. Note that although the users from Asian regions are not yet the predominant group of Wikimedia content and communities in general, the largest group of new online users are from these regions. We may want to reconsider how the actual gamers are like in these regions, and what kind of the games they are playing.
The state-supported game industries by South Korea and China have raised some concerns on the rise of "techno-nationalism" . http://www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/c-centre/pdf/Game_Jiang.pdf It is thus also important to see how gaming culture may intensify inter-nation or inter-cultural conflicts.
So going back to the original question (and assumptions) that open this thread of discussion:
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?
Note that it is explicitly assumed that many video game players are of diverse ages, genders, languages and locations. I think it is an open question. Another open question is how Wikimedia communities compare to diverse of game platforms in terms of age, gender, language, geography diversities. It is also prudent to dis-aggregate the big umbrella terms such as Wikimedia projects and the world games without concrete case studies.
Still, I share the belief the promotion and advocacy of Wikimedia content editorship and readership. As *cultural references* and *open-content resources*, I personally believe that Wikimedia should advocate (instead of market) the sharing and making of game-related content, references and resources.
In Chinese Wikipedia, there are users who learn the basic concepts of copyleft through making and re-purposing the East Asian animation/game culture. It is NOT an accident that Chinese Wikipedia picks up the unofficial Wikipe-tan or Wiki-girl (made by a Japanese called Kasuga) during and after the China's "Green Dam Youth Escort" debacle.
For images of Wikipe-tan or Wiki-girl https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Green+dam+Chinese+Wikipedia&um=1&i...
Thus, I think there is some space there to reassert the power andpossibilities of open cultural references and resources when it comes to reaching out the gamers. Through more open sharing and creation of game-related content, Wikimedia norms may even help to influence games as we know today.
Best, han-teng liao
2013/7/8 Han-Teng Liao hanteng@gmail.com
Citation needed?!
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=R__hfWbE3DwC&lpg=PA193&dq=East%20...
"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 PM
*To:* Research into Wikimedia content and communities *Cc:* ee@lists.wikimedia.org *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%3E?
(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%3Eexists for a reason. Maybe if we would send gamers (also) to
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Subject:Games%3Ewe 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%3E
______________________________**_________________ EE mailing list EE@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/ee<
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ee%3E
-- *Sarah Stierch** Wikimedia Foundation Program Evaluation & Design Community
Coordinator
*Donate<
http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Donate/en&utm_source=&a...
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****
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