[WikiEN-l] Game-playing on Wikipedia

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 7/2/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
[snip]
> The issue is that games can exist entirely in parallel to
> encyclopedia-building. For example, the user who created the
> "Wikipedia:Wikigames" project (since redirected) has never made a single
> edit to a Wikipedia article. When the fun activity becomes the primary
> focus and the encyclopedia becomes incidental, a line has to be drawn.
[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)