(Warning: blue sky speculation and impratical idea-slinging follows)
So, I was watching a downloaded copy of an interesting talk sponsored by Google (and available on Google Video, natch: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143&q=Human+Com... ) called "Human Computation". It was given by [[Luis von Ahn]], and it was largely about his ideas on [[Human-based computation]], with a lot of attention given to [[ESP Game]] and PeekaBoom.
ESP Game, to summarize, is a quest to label images on the Web by making describing the image the product of a game in which two players negotiate the description.
In his talk, I think he estimated that 5000 players could label every image on the web in about 2 months.
Now, what struck me about this (aside from the ingenuity of figuring out a way to put human cycles to work) was how currently *pointless* this quest was. So Luis now has a database with descriptions of a portion of the web's images. He can make an alright image search engine. Maybe sell the data to Google who could obviously make use of it. Image search might improve a few percent (let's be optimistic). He even admitted as much in the questions section, that the loop isn't closed, but that it's just an "engineering perspective" (should I make a joke about academics here?).
The essential point is that this is an instance where the famous "Read-only Web" or Web 1.0 is a serious barrier to actually using the gathered info on a large scale, since you can't go in and add the devised descriptions to those images lacking them (which is useful for among other things, screen readers). The HTML and images are static. You can't analyse the relevant object and improve it. The source is closed.
But we here are fans of wikis, good ol' Web 2.0, the RW web. Why not apply these ideas to Wikipedia? Disambiguations are one possibility; categorization is another; image tagging or pace ESP Game, descriptions (I know we have to have a bunch of images on en or Commons which need descriptions; even a few disjointed words are an improvement on nothing). It's too bad Luis probably wouldn't want to use Commons instead of Google's image search, since he has everything all set up already. I mean, already we've got plenty of bots and rather complex software specialized for various obscure tasks. Why not a game?
I mean, critics are always saying Wikipedia is a crappy text-based MMORPG masquerading as an encyclopedia... why not prove them wrong and show that Wikipedia is a mediocre text-based puzzle game masquerading as an encyclopedia? :)
~maru
On 8/11/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
I mean, critics are always saying Wikipedia is a crappy text-based MMORPG masquerading as an encyclopedia... why not prove them wrong and show that Wikipedia is a mediocre text-based puzzle game masquerading as an encyclopedia? :)
You mean it's not?
I thought I just levelled up, too.
On 8/12/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
But we here are fans of wikis, good ol' Web 2.0, the RW web. Why not apply these ideas to Wikipedia? Disambiguations are one possibility; categorization is another; image tagging or pace ESP Game, descriptions (I know we have to have a bunch of images on en or
I think there's definitely scope for something like that there. I recently saw a demo of this website "Facebook", a socialising tool for US college students and was blown away by how information-rich it was, and how many endless opportunities there were for users to just "add information". One person would label an image with 3 names, and 2 blanks, someone else could correct one of the 3, and add 2 more etc. People could constantly find friends that they had in common with others etc, and the wealth of information there was amazing.
Granted, an encyclopaedia isn't quite as exciting as building a social network, but a lot of people (like me) enjoy the basic process of categorising, organising, structuring and so forth. If we could come up with some fun tools to make this easier (like Catscan, but integrated into Wikipedia, and made even faster and more powerful), there could be a lot of benefit.
How would you make it a game, though? Do you have any ideas? Can we adapt kittenfight.com? :)
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 8/12/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
But we here are fans of wikis, good ol' Web 2.0, the RW web. Why not apply these ideas to Wikipedia? Disambiguations are one possibility; categorization is another; image tagging or pace ESP Game, descriptions (I know we have to have a bunch of images on en or
I think there's definitely scope for something like that there. I recently saw a demo of this website "Facebook", a socialising tool for US college students and was blown away by how information-rich it was, and how many endless opportunities there were for users to just "add information". One person would label an image with 3 names, and 2 blanks, someone else could correct one of the 3, and add 2 more etc. People could constantly find friends that they had in common with others etc, and the wealth of information there was amazing.
Gargh, Facebook is both old (we used to use it for meetups) and evil (it's been taken over by commerical interests and is now completely useless).
Granted, an encyclopaedia isn't quite as exciting as building a social network, but a lot of people (like me) enjoy the basic process of categorising, organising, structuring and so forth. If we could come up with some fun tools to make this easier (like Catscan, but integrated into Wikipedia, and made even faster and more powerful), there could be a lot of benefit.
Fun? You're not allowed to have /fun/. Having fun results in making uniforms, badges, stickers, awards, ranks, logos, and "cool" names for yourself like "Idiot Counter Unit".
How would you make it a game, though? Do you have any ideas? Can we adapt kittenfight.com? :)
I heard there's a really fun game you can play on Wikipedia already - vandalise something and wait to see how long (if ever) it takes for someone to fix it!
In all seriousness, "offically" turning Wikipedia into a game is a Bad Idea, because too many people already think that it is, for all the wrong reasons. They seem to forget that we're meant to be writing the world's most comprehensive, and better yet, FREE (as in Speech) Encyclopedia. WP:NOT a game.
On 8/12/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote: ...
I heard there's a really fun game you can play on Wikipedia already - vandalise something and wait to see how long (if ever) it takes for someone to fix it!
In all seriousness, "offically" turning Wikipedia into a game is a Bad Idea, because too many people already think that it is, for all the wrong reasons. They seem to forget that we're meant to be writing the world's most comprehensive, and better yet, FREE (as in Speech) Encyclopedia. WP:NOT a game.
-- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Well, I was trying for a funny conclusion there. I doubt we could turn *all* of Wikipedia into a game - how would that even work, anyway? You'd have people presented random paragraphs and asked where the error is (in some cases added by computer, and in some cases not)? That's the best I can come up with anyway, although it might be interesting to have competitive article writing-based games - but rather that we might as well formalize some otherwise tedious and repetitve aspects of Wikipedia that do need to get done and put them in game form so they can get done and free up editor effort for more worthwhile things like writing new articles or rewriting old ones.
~maru
maru dubshinki wrote:
On 8/12/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote: ...
I heard there's a really fun game you can play on Wikipedia already - vandalise something and wait to see how long (if ever) it takes for someone to fix it!
In all seriousness, "offically" turning Wikipedia into a game is a Bad Idea, because too many people already think that it is, for all the wrong reasons. They seem to forget that we're meant to be writing the world's most comprehensive, and better yet, FREE (as in Speech) Encyclopedia. WP:NOT a game.
Well, I was trying for a funny conclusion there. I doubt we could turn *all* of Wikipedia into a game - how would that even work, anyway? You'd have people presented random paragraphs and asked where the error is (in some cases added by computer, and in some cases not)? That's the best I can come up with anyway, although it might be interesting to have competitive article writing-based games - but rather that we might as well formalize some otherwise tedious and repetitve aspects of Wikipedia that do need to get done and put them in game form so they can get done and free up editor effort for more worthwhile things like writing new articles or rewriting old ones.
Oh, people have certainly made games out of Wikipedia; see [[Category:Wikipedia games]].
maru dubshinki wrote:
Well, I was trying for a funny conclusion there. I doubt we could turn
*all* of Wikipedia into a game - how would that even work, anyway? You'd have people presented random paragraphs and asked where the error is (in some cases added by computer, and in some cases not)? That's the best I can come up with anyway, although it might be interesting to have competitive article writing-based games - but rather that we might as well formalize some otherwise tedious and repetitve aspects of Wikipedia that do need to get done and put them in game form so they can get done and free up editor effort for more worthwhile things like writing new articles or rewriting old ones.
Why does the game need to be competitive?
A game that teaches co-operative skills in developing an article would be a very helpful educational tool.
Each student uses the Random article generator (perhaps with the help of a bot) to generate a list of ten articles that already exist on Wikipedia. He does not see the articles, only the titles. He then proceeds to write a first draft of an article on a chosen topic from that list. He uploads the article to a local wiki where the other students can view and edit the article. Marks can be allocated for different types of writing and editing, including big marks for achieving NPOV on a controversial topic and marks taken off for getting into an edit war.
Ec
On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Each student uses the Random article generator (perhaps with the help of a bot) to generate a list of ten articles that already exist on Wikipedia. He does not see the articles, only the titles. He then proceeds to write a first draft of an article on a chosen topic from that list. He uploads the article to a local wiki where the other students can view and edit the article. Marks can be allocated for different types of writing and editing, including big marks for achieving NPOV on a controversial topic and marks taken off for getting into an edit war.
It'd be better for us if they worked on articles that *don't* already exist on Wikipedia...
(Incidentally, anyone ever think of trying to contact teachers of translation classes to set them Wikipedia articles as translation exercises? There are lots of articles, including featured articles, waiting to be translated from other wikipedias...)
Steve
Steve
On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
maru dubshinki wrote:
Well, I was trying for a funny conclusion there. I doubt we could turn
*all* of Wikipedia into a game - how would that even work, anyway? You'd have people presented random paragraphs and asked where the error is (in some cases added by computer, and in some cases not)? That's the best I can come up with anyway, although it might be interesting to have competitive article writing-based games - but rather that we might as well formalize some otherwise tedious and repetitve aspects of Wikipedia that do need to get done and put them in game form so they can get done and free up editor effort for more worthwhile things like writing new articles or rewriting old ones.
Why does the game need to be competitive?
Well, most previous examples are competitive, and competition certainly is its own reward - I've noticed that cooperative games have a hard time delivering whatever ther intangible reward is (like the regard of one's peers) over the Internet. They work fine in person, but online...
A game that teaches co-operative skills in developing an article would be a very helpful educational tool.
Kind of like practice essays and articles, except your final product goes on-wiki and you are graded by how much other editors feel needs to be revised or added?
Each student uses the Random article generator (perhaps with the help of a bot) to generate a list of ten articles that already exist on Wikipedia. He does not see the articles, only the titles. He then proceeds to write a first draft of an article on a chosen topic from that list. He uploads the article to a local wiki where the other students can view and edit the article. Marks can be allocated for different types of writing and editing, including big marks for achieving NPOV on a controversial topic and marks taken off for getting into an edit war.
Ec
Meh. Edit wars are hard to generate on a small wiki AFAIK, and if the other editors are fellow students, I don't see'em lasting long. Wouldn't it be more effective to draw on the lists-of-missing-articles like the Missing Encyclopedic Articles Project maintains, and get the feedback from Wikipedia at large? Feed'em through Peer Review, if normal processes aren't enough.
~maru
maru dubshinki wrote:
On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Each student uses the Random article generator (perhaps with the help of a bot) to generate a list of ten articles that already exist on Wikipedia. He does not see the articles, only the titles. He then proceeds to write a first draft of an article on a chosen topic from that list. He uploads the article to a local wiki where the other students can view and edit the article. Marks can be allocated for different types of writing and editing, including big marks for achieving NPOV on a controversial topic and marks taken off for getting into an edit war.
Meh. Edit wars are hard to generate on a small wiki AFAIK, and if the other editors are fellow students, I don't see'em lasting long. Wouldn't it be more effective to draw on the lists-of-missing-articles like the Missing Encyclopedic Articles Project maintains, and get the feedback from Wikipedia at large? Feed'em through Peer Review, if normal processes aren't enough.
A couple years ago a professor at Dartmouth had his students put articles on Wikipedia as part of a class project. These kids promprtly fell into the notability meat grinder. While it would obviously benefit Wikipedia to generate articles from that list, I don't think that that many of these kids are ready for some of the abuse that's so frequently doled out. Such abuse does nothing to encourage co-operative work among people who might never edit Wikipedia anyway.
Ec