habits & gamification on wiki May 22, 2011 1:03 PM   Subscribe

There's now a Habits & Gamification page up on the wiki.

philipy & I noticed the same questions popping up, so we thought we'd wiki it for the folks interested.
posted by leotrotsky to MetaFilter-Related at 1:03 PM (48 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite

Is this about Nuns on the Run?
posted by found missing at 1:15 PM on May 22, 2011 [7 favorites]


Thanks so much. Very cool to have this resource.
posted by bearwife at 3:49 PM on May 22, 2011


I don't even know what the word "gamification" means.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:07 PM on May 22, 2011 [3 favorites]


Are you unfamiliar with pin-up girls?
posted by found missing at 4:16 PM on May 22, 2011 [4 favorites]


I was going to say what Chocolate Pickle said.
posted by cjorgensen at 4:47 PM on May 22, 2011


I don't even know what the word "gamification" means.

It means "to make into a game".
posted by FishBike at 5:09 PM on May 22, 2011 [1 favorite]


Ramification means to cook noodles in a dorm.
posted by found missing at 5:18 PM on May 22, 2011 [11 favorites]


Chocolate Pickle: "I don't even know what the word "gamification" means"

That's worth 2 MeFi ExPee! You're well on your way to becoming a MeFi MasTer!!! Click here to complete the tutorial and gain another 10 MeFi ExPee and a unique Icon for your Profile Page!!!
posted by boo_radley at 5:19 PM on May 22, 2011 [11 favorites]


Now I know why boo_radley doesn't participate at Gamefilter. *sad face*
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:30 PM on May 22, 2011


Are you unfamiliar with pin-up girls?

That's gaminification.
posted by kenko at 6:47 PM on May 22, 2011 [4 favorites]


I thought that was glamification?
posted by dg at 8:09 PM on May 22, 2011 [1 favorite]


Is this about Nuns on the Run?

Holy shit, my former roommate did the art for that. Only on Metafilter...
posted by piratebowling at 8:09 PM on May 22, 2011


Chocolate Pickle, cjorgensen: Here you go.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:22 PM on May 22, 2011


Are you unfamiliar with pin-up girls?

haminahaminahaminafication.
posted by stavrogin at 9:05 PM on May 22, 2011 [2 favorites]


Mefication is the process by which legumes are considered ad nauseum.
posted by mccarty.tim at 4:39 AM on May 23, 2011 [2 favorites]


In every job that must be done
there is an element of fun
you find the fun
and *SNAP*
the job's a game!

posted by overeducated_alligator at 8:23 AM on May 23, 2011 [1 favorite]


In the same spirit as Wikipedia's "don't write about yourself", I'd feel better about the wiki page if it were created/maintained by someone other than you, who has asked before about ways to evangelize Habit Judo and subsequently linked to it twice on that page.
posted by mkultra at 9:58 AM on May 23, 2011 [1 favorite]


Chocolate Pickle, cjorgensen: Here you go.

Don't be a dick. You really think everyone wanders on to that page will know what gamification is? It wouldn't kill you to add a definition to the page.
posted by nooneyouknow at 10:10 AM on May 23, 2011 [1 favorite]


No, let me Google that for you.
posted by unSane at 10:19 AM on May 23, 2011 [4 favorites]


I didn't know what gamification meant either until it was mentioned in answers to my question How can life be made more like games?

And in fact the term doesn't exactly fit what I was interested in, but it's a somewhat relevant buzzword that can therefore be googled to find somewhat relevant info.

What "gamification" appears to mean in practice is "using ideas from gaming (esp video gaming) in non-game contexts (esp non-game websites) to make them more compelling".

But that's not actually my core interest in this, and not what a lot of the links on that wiki page are about.

What the links on the wiki page are about are a bunch of inter-related matters like....

- What makes games so enjoyable, absorbing and compelling?
- Can any of that be translated into other areas of life that are usually less so?
- Can these things be used for self-motivation and altering one's habits?
- What factors determine the development of habits?
- What have people discovered when they tried to do these things?

Note:

That wiki page came about after I made a remark along the lines of "I see a bunch of people are interested in this, it would be good to swap ideas". I think leotrotsky likely took that to mean rather more than I actually meant, maybe something like "Let's start a project".
posted by philipy at 10:48 AM on May 23, 2011


I tried to find garminification but I just kept Turning Left Here and ended up going around in circles.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:28 PM on May 23, 2011 [1 favorite]


I found a lot in this critique of "gamification" to be persuasive.

Pull quote:
What we’re currently terming gamification is in fact the process of taking the thing that is least essential to games and representing it as the core of the experience.
And here's a stronger critique from a writer at Slate, explicitly linking gamification to corporatism.
posted by nobody at 1:48 PM on May 23, 2011 [3 favorites]


I added a definition of gamification to the wiki page, and the links that nobody posted here have been included in a new category under "Criticisms."

mkultra: "In the same spirit as Wikipedia's "don't write about yourself", I'd feel better about the wiki page if it were created/maintained by someone other than you, who has asked before about ways to evangelize Habit Judo and subsequently linked to it twice on that page."

Yeah, I have to agree.
posted by zarq at 3:07 PM on May 23, 2011


Oh FFS,

I have been completely above board on this. I've emailing mods asking them to yank the links to Habit Judo in my AxMe post to avoid the appearance of link baiting.

I THINK GAMIFICATION IS COOL. THAT'S WHY I MADE THE WIKI PAGE.

Yanking any reference to Habit Judo in the wiki. Really appreciate having my motives questioned.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:43 PM on May 23, 2011


Dammit,

mkultra & zarq are right. I shouldn't have included my own personal system on the page.

F*ck, I really wasn't trying to be deceptive or self-linky, at least consciously. It's just that my eagerness got the better of me.

Someone else please take over the page.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:56 PM on May 23, 2011


Looks like leotrotsky disabled his account. Seems like someone is disabling their account every couple of days recently. And always after starting an innocuous MeTa.

Sigh. MeTa is becoming our Bermuda Triangle. Stay away!
posted by Admiral Haddock at 6:12 PM on May 23, 2011


Ramón strikes again. "Do not kill him! This man has a story to tell."
posted by unliteral at 6:30 PM on May 23, 2011


I love how even the most innocuous thread can turn into shitpile.

And by "love" I mean "utterly disappointed."

Because that's what "love" really means, right?
posted by slogger at 7:28 PM on May 23, 2011


To avoid easily preventable tragedies, the new policy moving forward is as follows:

1. If a Meta thread is starting with the theme "something fun", "thank you", or "sunshine and hugs", under no circumstance shall non-mods / little people make any attempt to reformulate the thread as a "ban this fucker" or "callout bad thing" or "fuck you".

2. If a non-mod / little person has reason to believe that there is something nasty under the surface of a thread as described in (1) above, that person shall make her doubts known ONLY through private email / phone / postal mail to the mods.

3. Nobody is allowed to disable their account based on a Meta that they have started.

"Can everybody please stop getting shot?"
posted by Meatbomb at 8:13 PM on May 23, 2011 [14 favorites]


Note... to... self... slogger ==mom??? Check out.
posted by boo_radley at 8:22 PM on May 23, 2011


I got eaten by a grue.
posted by running order squabble fest at 4:27 AM on May 24, 2011 [2 favorites]


In every job that must be done
there is an element of fun
you find the fun
and *SNAP*
the job's a game!


Julie Andrews meant that eating a lot of speed makes chores easier to get through.

leotrotsky, mkultra's comment was pretty innocuous, and your own involvement was too, and easily solved. It's a shame to disable your account as a result.
posted by OmieWise at 6:15 AM on May 24, 2011 [2 favorites]


leotrotsky: "Really appreciate having my motives questioned."

I think it's a shame you've disabled your account and I do hope you'll be back soon. FWIW, I'm glad you created the wiki page.

I also agree with OmieWise. mkultura's comment (and my seconding of it) seems to me to be an incredibly mild concern.
posted by zarq at 6:38 AM on May 24, 2011


*sigh* At the risk of alienating my supporters...

I think leotrotsky's motives are/were benign, but that page really just needs to go. Consider the other "Collected AskMe's" listed on the front page:

EatMe, ReadMe, GiftIdeas, Books, Mac OS X, Travel guides, Depression, Personal Finance, FrenchMe, WearMe, Frequent Questions

In the realm of oft-discussed topics, those are all well in another league from "Habits & Gamification". Instead, that page is more of a curated collection of Metafilter links from someone passionate about a specific subject. There are even a significant number of non-MeFi "more on this topic" links that other pages in this category don't (and should not, IMO) have.

Again, I appreciate the effort that went into it, but my personal barometer falls back on the spirit of Wikipedia's standards. Aside from the "don't write about yourself" rule that leotrotsky acknowledged, I think the page also fails the "noteworthiness" test.
posted by mkultra at 7:53 AM on May 24, 2011


Instead, that page is more of a curated collection of Metafilter links from someone passionate about a specific subject.

What's the problem with that, we're running out of wiki? Other than his own links and the off-site links, it does seem like something people talk about with some frequency on AskMe.

I think it should be extended to include all Behavior Modification questions with Habits/Gams. as a subsection. And with that, I'm going to make myself a sandwich and not do anything about it. You're welcome.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:05 AM on May 24, 2011


mkultra: "Instead, that page is more of a curated collection of Metafilter links from someone passionate about a specific subject."

Why is that a problem? Seriously.

I'm working on a long-term project on the wiki compiling links to all the Obits on MeFi. There are people here who hate obitfilter but I happen to find them interesting. It's doubtful that wiki page will ever get too many hits or pique too much interest from MeFites. But does that mean it should be deleted?
posted by zarq at 8:53 AM on May 24, 2011 [2 favorites]


If you take away the non-Metafilter-related stuff on that page, it's pretty darn thin.

I don't manage the wiki, so I don't know where it stands on the quantity-vs.-quality side of new content, but the content there to-date covers things that get discussed over and over rather than attempts to organize threads about every topic. Once more- I'm just applying Wikipedia's rules-of-thumb here, not pulling this out of thin air.
posted by mkultra at 9:12 AM on May 24, 2011


Once more- I'm just applying Wikipedia's rules-of-thumb here, not pulling this out of thin air.

But our wiki is not Wikipedia, and doesn't have even remotely similar goals. While we're certainly free to borrow rules from Wikipedia if we think they're good for our wiki, I don't think the default assumption should be that Wikipedia's rules apply, or are even a good idea, for the MeFi wiki.

If someone wants to claim that pages on the MeFi wiki should address a topic that is notable, they'll need to explain why that should be the case rather than just saying that's how Wikipedia does it.
posted by FishBike at 9:34 AM on May 24, 2011


FishBike: "But our wiki is not Wikipedia, and doesn't have even remotely similar goals. While we're certainly free to borrow rules from Wikipedia if we think they're good for our wiki, I don't think the default assumption should be that Wikipedia's rules apply, or are even a good idea, for the MeFi wiki."

Actually, whether you realize it or not, it's been the de-facto convention of the MeFi wiki. I'm just putting it to words.

FishBike: "If someone wants to claim that pages on the MeFi wiki should address a topic that is notable, they'll need to explain why that should be the case rather than just saying that's how Wikipedia does it."

Uh, sez you. I'd say the complete opposite is true.
posted by mkultra at 9:53 AM on May 24, 2011


From leotrotsky: "Folks, my heart hasn't been broken; I took a break from MeFi because I'm starting my summer associate gig and it's the easiest way to keep me from wasting too much time. I've tried to just not log in, but the pull is just too strong & my willpower breaks. Getting into another bicker-fest on Meta just clarified it for me. That said, if anyone's feeling particularly guilty, they can take over the wiki page for me."
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:55 AM on May 24, 2011


Thank you, Jessamyn. I was worrying that we'd run him off the site.
posted by zarq at 10:02 AM on May 24, 2011


That's good. Good luck, leotrotsky; we'll see you in the fall. Ah, to be a summer again. Although when I was a summer, the lunch stipend in NYC was around $80 per person, which was insane.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 10:03 AM on May 24, 2011


mkultra: " I don't manage the wiki, so I don't know where it stands on the quantity-vs.-quality side of new content, but the content there to-date covers things that get discussed over and over rather than attempts to organize threads about every topic. Once more- I'm just applying Wikipedia's rules-of-thumb here, not pulling this out of thin air."

Habits and behavior modification in particular have come up repeatedly in AskMe. While gamification has barely been mentioned on MeFi, some MeFites do participate in services like Health Month, which incorporates it.) I don't manage the wiki either, but I see no reason why we can't have a nice, curated page there aggregating some of the best of that info.
posted by zarq at 10:16 AM on May 24, 2011


If it has to go, I propose a page on motivation and habit forming AskMes, which are similar but less entrenched in the specific field of taking elements of games and applying them to real life.

I'd make it myself, but I'm not motivated to do so.
posted by mccarty.tim at 4:51 PM on May 24, 2011


I'd make it myself, but I'm not motivated to do so.


How about if you could win a badge?
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:42 AM on May 25, 2011 [3 favorites]


I'll do the page on Gamahuchification.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 1:07 AM on May 30, 2011


Gamerafication is made of meat. Gamerafication is really neat!
posted by mccarty.tim at 10:46 AM on May 30, 2011


The thing about "gamification" (which I had to look up too) is that every. single. time. I read it, it gets pronounced gaam-ih-fih-cation, instead of game-i-fi-cation. So I keep thinking about 'gams'. What are 'gams'? According to M-W.com, late 18th-century slang for legs.
posted by leahwrenn at 10:11 AM on June 1, 2011


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