[Foundation-l] Wikigame

[Rowan Collins]

On 22/08/05, Jody Fulford <jodywysteria at yahoo.com> wrote:
>    I thought of the game while exploring the "random
> article" feature. I consecutively generate two random
> articles and attempt to navigate from one to the other
> using the links in the articles.

Hi,
I'm sorry to have to say that you're not the first person to come up
with this idea, although you're the first I've seen suggesting using
"wikigames" of this sort as a source of revenue. [And I always say
that seeing someone else have the same idea as you just goes to show
it was indeed a good idea...]

One place this is sometimes played is in the Wikipedia IRC chatroom
[1], and somebody even wrote a "six degrees of wikipedia" tool [2] to
automatically find the shortest route between two pages. (That name is
a further play on the common name "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" [3])

One of the interesting things is that not only is it educational, it
tends to improve the content as well, since pages will tend to be
copyeditted on the way past. And if players are allowed to add links
*if those links are appropriate additions to the article*, it can make
the wiki easier to navigate for other users too.

As for creating a revenue stream from such games, I think "six
degrees" may be a little too automatable to become truly competitive
[us AI boffins have spoilt the fun], but in general, "wikigames" of
this sort are an interesting concept. There are more obvious ones, of
course, like trivia quizzes and the like, but "treasure hunt" type
ones that rely on the way Wikipedia works could be good.

And people do seem to like getting *something* for their money, even
if it's just a moment of excitement, and actually means that *less*
money gets through to the causes they're supporting. Look at the
popularity of the UK National Lottery, for instance, which gives some
money to jackpot winners and some to "good causes - the government's
even planning on using scratchcards as one of the ways of raising
funds for the 2012 London Olympics...

==Refs==
[1] see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC
[2] http://kohl.wikimedia.org/~kate/cgi-bin/six_degrees
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon

-- 
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]