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Proposal: Gamification

How can we encourage people to vote or comment on questions? There are 73 followers, which is a potential 365 votes. Currently there are ~ 130 votes cast, plus or minus however many countered up/down votes that are hidden.

How can we encourage people to actively participate, rather than just following?

John

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    I have been thinking of the same thing. This isn't a new problem on A51. Another issue is that we don't have enough questions. Even if half the people posted a single question, we would have 35+ right now, while we have just 23.
    – asheeshr
    Feb 19, 2014 at 2:17
  • maybe gamification is too vaguely defined yet - I - coming from an psychological & computational context think that myself sometimes.
    – definitely undefinable
    Feb 22, 2014 at 16:40
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    It's a bit of irony, that gamification proposal has such a huge problem to gamificate her own followers.
    – Donaudampfschifffreizeitfahrt
    Mar 14, 2014 at 8:00

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There seems to be a built in barrier for entry on A51, where if there isn't enough vocal demand (ie, the number of participants doesn't significantly outweigh the number of lurkers) then the proposal fails? That's likely "working as intended" for the site which only wants to host and commit bandwidth and server space to things that have long term sustainability.

If you want people to become engaged, you have to make them choose to engage, and keep them coming back.

Some suggestions? Google Hangouts for discussion of gamification topics? Actively place everywhere possible "Vote" and "Comment" and reassure people they won't get laughed out of the room

I have a problem with the term "gamification" because it sounds like trendy buzz words for some sales and marketing ideas. Even though I know better now, it's unlikely the masses do. Maybe make it - "Gamification: Beyond Badges" or something to that effect.

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  • I think a lot of the problem is that people are just joining the site because it has nearly 200 followers and it sounds "interesting". Laziness is the main problem that is stopping this site from going anywhere. I am not saying that we need more example questions, just votes right now. Gamification has 188 followers, meaning it has 752 votes if I am not mistaken. We have 11 questions that are needed, a lot of the questions are 8 or more, so why isn't the site in commitment? Because noone visits it after following, meaning no votes.
    – Pobrecita
    Jul 3, 2014 at 22:49
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Ya know... for losely based "gamified" site such as SE, the topic of gamification and asking how to encourage people to do "foo" ... well in-and-of-tself the question misses the big picture.

The irony here is that for a topic such as gamification to not be enticing enough within it's current state of gamification means that the engagement is off and not enough value is placed on the rewards to engourage participation.

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  • Nice point. I was thinking much the same going through the comments here.
    – Mayo
    Apr 21, 2015 at 17:00

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