Proposal: Gamification
Previous Run: Gamification
What went wrong the last time and what can we do to solve those problems?
Screenshots of the Community team feedback.
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oops, sorry for my close-vote.– SF.Commented Nov 8, 2013 at 9:31
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Also, you can join the chatroom to discuss the proposal.– asheeshrCommented Nov 8, 2013 at 16:12
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4 Answers
Part of the problem is/was that many people (including myself), are either complete novices to gamification, or are/were in the process of implementing game elements for the first time. This led to one of the main knocks of there not being enough "real world" examples and problems for the community to hash over.
I believe the quote from the meta post was concerning not enough questions about problems from people actually implementing gamification systems/concepts. If we had had more of those questions with solutions and analysis from the get go, it might have gone a lot differently in the evaluation.
So what can we do?
We can either introduce our own systems and problems on an up front basis, rather than theoretical questions, or we can gather real world examples from various sources and figure out/ask how to adapt them for X situation.
We can reach out to current gamification leaders, and encourage them to support the proposal and (hopefully) eventual beta.
We can reach out to fellow managers that are considering the systems and implementation and encourage them to follow as well.
If we can get a higher percentage of people that are actually implementing the system compared to those of us that are on the lower slopes of the learning curve, then I think we can approach the "real world" solution repository that they seem to want to be emphasizing.
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1I'm actually quite experienced with gamification. But it's impossible to actually attract people who are experts to a site that closes down in 2 weeks. There were some good questions which could use good answers, but good answers take a while to write up.– MuzCommented Nov 10, 2013 at 5:38
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4@Muz - True, but I think because of the newness of the field and the dearth of experts, we got a lot of theoretical rather than practical questions. And now is when we should be reaching out to experts. Get them engaged before we have a limited life span private beta.– JohnPCommented Nov 11, 2013 at 22:35
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Totally agree with this sentiment. And not to bring up old blood, but that's why I'm still confused as to why the beta was shut down so quickly: it seems like the Mods were flying by numbers, only focused on the stats in their dashboard panels, failing to recognize the immaturity of the Gamification field and the unique position this site had to top Google search results by being first, right as gamification hits puberty. Perhaps time will be the best factor for growth.– IT BearCommented Mar 25, 2014 at 17:11
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1I can't help thinking that the guys at SE are actually some of the best experts here...– LiathCommented Jul 24, 2014 at 11:48
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1UGH... We gotta clear this up FAST... Gamification is NOT new... Just a new "buzzword" on an long standing idea. "The Monopoly Game" was first introduced in the 80's as a way for McDonalds to entice people to buy their food. Cereal have used fun boxes and prizes on the inside as marketing tools for years. Radio has used "Secret decoder rings" and messages to sell products for nearly 70 years... It is our PERSPECTIVE On the types of games played that is new... not the idea of gaming for engagement.– PhlumeCommented Jan 5, 2015 at 16:57
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Personally, I disliked the too theortical approach of some answers. Some answers sounded like whitepaper knowledge for me and people still insisted on knowing the truth. It wasn't a helpful, but competitive atmosphere. Especially, if one is skeptical about the gamification approach. Like I am. For me, to close the board (because of the atmopshere) was right! So, I will take a look at the new start, but wait until I am going to participate.– FrankLCommented Apr 16, 2015 at 8:21
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@FrankL That is the wrong approach. In the early stages of a beta you have the ability to shape the questions and culture of the site. You should definitely participate in order to make it the kind of site you'd like to visit!– MokoshaCommented Apr 21, 2015 at 23:19
Expand the proposal to a taxonomically broader scope. I feel if the proposal failed as a result of low activity, starting it up again immediately under the same conditions isn't going to yield a better result. If anything, I should suspect that previous supporters have lost faith and backed out.
I feel it would be wiser to cast a larger net this time. I believe the next higher taxonomic scope above gamification would be "Behavioral Economics" (though admittedly, I base this assertion on all of 15 minutes of research) - this is in fact what I believe the proposal should become.
From the Wikipedia article on Behavioral Economics:
Behavioral economics and the related field, behavioral finance, study the effects of social, cognitive, and emotional factors on the economic decisions of individuals and institutions and the consequences for market prices, returns, and the resource allocation. The fields are primarily concerned with the bounds of rationality of economic agents. Behavioral models typically integrate insights from psychology with microeconomic theory; in so doing, these behavioral models cover a range of concepts, methods, and fields.
In this scenario, gamification would become a tagged focus of the SE site rather than the entire scope. I don't know much about gamification, but I struggle to come up with tags that would exist to classify questions under the topic of Gamification, which to me indicates that the scope may be too narrow.
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Maybe the last time was just poor timing? "Cast a wider net" could be as simple as trying to pull together people registered for the Gamification course on Coursera. There were close to 200K interested students in the most recent round. That's significant growth over the last two times it was offered as far as I know. If this is a field that is gaining momentum, I would expect word to be spreading.– JosephCommented Mar 14, 2014 at 3:39
I am going to point this question to my other related answer:
How should we go about preventing failure this time?
The thing we need is exposure. We have to get as many individuals involved in the topic as possible; not just those interested in learning what the (horrible) term means. To quote that answer:
What we need are users interested in gamification. People asking and answering questions about gamification in use... not just the idea of gamification.
If we have some known expert part of gamification group then we could be more helpful to users. One of such name I have Yu-Kai. If he can be motivated to spare some of his time for our group, that can be fantastic.