Wikicup is highly structured and targeted towards improving quality and attracts only a small number of participants. It appears to be targeting existing editors to make better quality contributions. So it’s certainly an example of gamification, but not one that’s likely to find “mass appeal” or attract/motivate new editors.

I think if we are looking for “mass appeal” then I think we need to look at “casual gaming” and what makes them tick. Why do people play little short-play games? What’s the equivalent for Wikipedia? Could we create a “game” that throws up a random “citation needed” (perhaps in a particular category) and asks for a URL that supports the claim? The game would have to have other “players” checking the citation or else people would upload any old URL. Maybe it could be structured along the lines of Yahoo Answers, where the “players” get Best Answer statistics and can be on leaderboards for different categories of content. There’s a nice match here to Wikipedia since we already have categories.

Kerry

From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Laura Hale
Sent: Friday, 5 July 2013 4:53 PM
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Recruiting gamers to edit Wikimedia

From a gaming perspective, WikiCup is kind of good. It works well in terms of setting goals and targetting specific topics. It also generally requires reading guidelines to maximize success.

On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 10:39 PM, Stéphane X <stef.deneubourg@gmail.com> wrote:

Personnally, I'm a gamer and I use to edit wikimedia projects.

I think it may be interesting if we create a game around some wikimedia projects.

Another option may be to let people learn about the "open-source-idea" and what that could do with the world. I think this idea could stimulate a lot of people to take part in the wikimedia projects.

We should take care that we not only stimulate gamers to edit only game related articles.

Kind regards,

Stéphane

2013/7/4 ENWP Pine <deyntestiss@hotmail.com>

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

_______________________________________________
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

--
mobile: 0412183663
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com