On 7/2/05, David 'DJ' Hedley <spyders(a)btinternet.com> wrote: The key words being "as long as there aren't too many." If they're not cut short now they'll continue to grow until they are harming wikipedia. They're already creating disharmony between the "pro-gamers" and the the "anti-gamers". IMO a wikicity especially for wikigames would give the people who like these games a place of their own without having to bother about people wanting to delete the game pages. If I was into the games, I'd take Jimbo up on the offer and start migrating right now. --Mgm

James Gibbon (wikipedia(a)jamesgibbon.com) [050711 00:31]: I look forward to Synchronised Mornington Crescent as a 2012 Olympic sport. - d.

Good point. My guess is that the games make users happy, and thus more priductive, long term. The wikipedia is a mean and rude place (the meanest, rudest, clique-iest place I've been since middle school). Maybe these games (which I will probably never participate in) do more good than bad, assuming the people who play them are happy and nice. Jack (Sam Spade) On 7/3/05, SJ <2.718281828(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 7/2/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote: If users are spending twenty minutes a day on Wikipedia, *editing*, and learning to use MediaWiki's arcane template and table syntax, that cannot be 'entirely in parallel' to encyclopedia building. They have already overcome the greatest barrier to contribution. This is a user who was just introduced to wikis... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3ASandbox%2FChess&… ...and is feeling addicted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/Wikitine It seems likely that once s/he tires of on-wiki games (which is admittedly difficiult, considering what an adrenaline rush our new gaming platform is), with a positive view of the local community, this will be a natural outlet for other notes and work... Which is what we're here for, right? One minor edit and a dozen friendly user:talk comments far outweigh any negative aspects of playing out four games of wikichess. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AMTGsets&diff=14496… Well, we both want to see this happen. -- ++SJ

On 7/2/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote: I would pay good money to hear someone talk about the rise of wiki-gaming as an internet phenomenon. Maybe this is a novel fundraising idea? We've encountered a few, and have entire chapters of process on how to handle them. You'd rather filter them out in advance, according to some set of profiles? You think this is different from the "Child-love article cluster" ghetto? If the notion of a wikigames ghetto that were attractive to people who didn't already admire and use the encyclopedia weren't funny, I would be more worried. Let's wait until we actually have a problem -- say, more than 10% of game-playing users who are not also active wiki contributors or newbies -- and then see what's going on. The very fact that wikigames have cropped up - when there are so many instant-gratification sites online to play these games - is fascinating. I think it may be good for the community; you don't. Let's see where it is going before judging it! SJ

On 7/2/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote: No, 10% of users who have ever played one of these games. Or a single active editor who at some point "plays games and nothing else". Right now, the body of wikipedians is making perhaps a hundred edits a week to game pages. That's comparable to the number of edits we have to pokemon-project stubs. And the reason that a site like the wikicities game-site won't succeed is that wikigames are mainly amusing if you know the other site-users, and have other reasons to work together there! They aren't much fun compared to other game forums unless you're already using the site. Even the user you imagine is 'only playing games' right now is doubless using the encyclopedia regularly. There are so many interesting ideas that one can stop with an exaggerated brinkmanship scenario like this. I don't think a hard-security policy of "stopping things at their roots," when nothing problematic has happened, is efficient... unless you are omniscient. -- ++SJ

On 7/2/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote: [snip] [snip] We also have administrators who make no edits in the main namespace. The point is that our community is now so large that we really can't call people unproductive simply due to lack of article writing, although .. our primary activities should always be encouraged. Comradeship and relaxation are important aspects of building and maintaining a community. If outsiders sometimes come in to play, more often than not they will be eventually sucked into our community. It is inappropriate to squelch a harmless activity because if we all stopped doing every but the activity harm would be caused. Do you suggest we remove all mention of Wikimania from the site? After all.. a conference is completely unnecessary for the direct goals of Wikipedia. Like anything else, we should pay attention to it... and apply breaks if it gets out of hand. --gmaxwell (who has no interest in playing the games himself)

On 7/5/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> wrote: In some cases that is quite debatable, but point taken. :) No argument there, but it doesn't exclude what I said... Again agreed, but I've seen no evidence of it doing anything of the like. Step away from the strawman or I'll have to take out my matches. :) It would also be not harmless if someone took a wikigame too far and actually hung themself after losing a round of hangman. And it would be terrible if users spent all their time on wikien-l rather than working on their content... these things are true but irrelevant. And a large part isn't those things... Do you suggest we ban the things which are not directly productive? As that's what is in effect being discussed for the games, people do many productive things in the wiki, and some things which are not directly productive.. and we're talking about banning those. This would be exactly like banning all the non work events at wikimania. A better solution would just be to put the game players on notice that if there is substantial participation in the games by people who are not participating in the wiki then the games will be shut down (and this thread has already made that clear)... Then peer pressure will keep people participating in the wiki. As far as I can tell, there is currently no problem but if one arises this simple measure should correct it. Which brings up an important point: The detractors here have been complaining about loft what ifs... The wiki is actually a fairly lame environment for most of the games people are currently playing. There are far better sites on the internet focused on these games. The only advantage of playing the games in the wiki is for members of our community to stay close to the community.

On 7/5/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> wrote: Ah, but that assumes they'd be using that time to write articles in the first place, which is a somewhat questionable assumption. In the scale of things, I think "Wikigaming" (which seems to be the apogee of tedium to me, but I'm not one to judge) to be less of a drain on Wikipedia's brainpower than many other outlets. Which do you think does more damage to Wikipedia on the whole: WikiChess or VFD disputes? Of course, the latter can't be cut out, but I think the order of magnitude of distraction, hurt feelings, creation of trolls and vandals, etc. makes the WikiChess thing look fairly innocuous by comparison. Seems to me that there are seveal quasi-arguments for its favor and only a few quasi-arguments to its detriment -- might as well keep it around until some of those quasi-arguments either way become things which can be empirically supported in some way. Who knows what it might lead to eventually? No need to nip it in the bud until it is proven problematic. That being said, it shouldn't be in the article namespace, but I assume that's been taken care of already. FF

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160 Tim Starling wrote: Actually, some of the more "fun" activities/games (eg. N degrees of seperation, Wikifun, etc.) are quite useful - people involved go through articles, often improving them on the way. Alternatively, limit it to user subpages :) Yep, absolutely. Again, moving it into user sub-pages (or an obscure part of the Wikipedia namespace, using templates, tables, piped links, math markup, and other bits of obscure wiki-markup) would solve part of this problem. - -- Alphax OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis