Feedback from the Gamification Network Google Group

[Esteban Romero Frías]

I share our project in the Gamification Network Google Group and got the following feedback from Mario Herger. Below is my reply to him.

Mario Herger <mario....@gmail.com>	Jan 10 (1 day ago)
to gamification-r.

Hi,

ok, I looked quickly at the wiki-site and first thing I see are badges and competition! Please not! This is a collaborative website, not a competitive. 

Second: one of the largest problems today there on the wikipedia can be basically nailed down to that there is only a master-level, but no rookie- or even a regular user-level anymore. The editor and the requirements of what has to be done to contribute are so complex that you loose the rookies right there and demotivate the regulars.

One of the things to look at the player dimensions, and one of them is the skill level. Also players in such a system like the wikipedia tend to be motivated by fun-motivators like "collecting", "creating order out of chaos", "being a wise old man/woman".

First understand the players and what motivates them, then frame the problem properly.

Then think of what is the motivation and if you need rewards. I would shy away from rewarding activities that the users a) are interested in doing anyways and b) could encourage them to do too much of them for the rewards sake. Better give them feedback how well the contribution was and how they can improve on that (to become a master). This is the infinite struggle between the right mix  of and connection between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards.

One thing that I always found odd was that Wikipedia basically gives no credit to the users. With that I mean that good contributors are never really popping up as experts. And get this recognition. I think we slowly have to nudge this model towards one, where the human side comes a little bit more into the game. Who are the people behind the great articles on Wikipedia?

Just some food for thought, there is a lot more to say…

Mario

BTW: I never introduced myself:  

http://www.enterprise-gamification.com

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Esteban Romero Frías <e...@ugr.es>	4:06 PM (10 minutes ago)
to gamification-r.

Thank you Mario for your very interesting points.

Understanding of motivations and the issue of authoring, of giving credits to users, are key for me. 

The gamification of Wikipedia is such a complex challenge that it is difficult that can be done or even at some points desirable . That's why Wikipedia is a great starting point to reflect on this topic, but experiments needs to be implemented in smaller Wiki projects, where some of these Wikipedia features are or could be different. Taking this experience as a reference, improvements could be suggested to Wikipedia.

As you say competitive badges seems to be a contradiction when we are in a collaborative platform and an article can be modify at any point. We go back to the authoring issue. This is something to fix.

Thank you for your ideas.

Esteban