[WikiEN-l] Game-playing on Wikipedia

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 7/5/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We also have administrators who make no edits in the main namespace.
> 
> Almost all of which still perform janitorial tasks that help us toward our
> primary goal.

In some cases that is quite debatable, but point taken. :)
 
> > Comradeship and relaxation are important aspects of building and
> > maintaining a community.
> 
> The purpose of that community is to generate and maintain content.

No argument there, but it doesn't exclude what I said...

> > It is inappropriate to squelch a harmless activity because if we all
> > stopped doing every but the activity harm would be caused.
> 
> It is not harmless if it misdirects a sizable part of the community away from
> our primary goals.

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.

> > 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.
> 
> A large part of Wikimania is hacking sessions and WikiJam activities. So that
> is a completely invalid example.

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.