[OSM-talk] Gamification and OSM (Was: Upgraded map controls)

[Michal Migurski]

Hi Stefan, I'll switch to this thread as well.

On Jul 28, 2013, at 3:40 AM, Stefan Keller wrote:

> Hi Michal
> 
> To come back this thread I'm interested in what you refer to by "Gamification".
> 
> What was Saman referring to in his talk regarding gamification of the
> OSM UI? I found the video of the presentation but can't find any hint
> in this direction:
> http://vimeopro.com/openstreetmapus/state-of-the-map-us-2013/video/68093877
> 
> I assume that you are referring to some statistics displayed about
> users which to me is only a distant aspect of gamification.


Gamification can refer to a lot of things, but it boils down comparing/pitting users against one another. Around 9:10, Saman highlights Strava, "designed to incentivize activity". At 10:10, the suggestion for OSM includes comparisons to others ("mapper level") and what looks like a leaderboard. The word "gamification" is used at this point in the talk.

Strava and Facebook are example social sites that are not generative in themselves. The product of Facebook and Strava is eyeballs, while the product of OSM is a free and open map. We bring people together for the sake of creating a better, more complete map, and increasing numbers of mappers and changes is just one component of this. It's my belief that game-inspired social mechanics bring all the boys to the yard while discouraging more collaborative, social, and goal-focused mappers.

OSM needs "we" mappers more than "me" mappers.

OSM's social model needs to account for the quality and resilience of the resulting map, and for that we need collaborative social activities rather than competitive ones. Alex's recent US post on editathons explains this better than I can: "a great regular excuse for people to get together to get work done and socialize" (http://openstreetmap.us/2013/07/why-editathons/). I believe that a more fitting model for social activity and groups in OSM can be found elsewhere: Github, Metafilter, and Twitter.

On Github, the comment stream for a pull or issue includes participation from many voices and notifications of references from other parts of the system, for example when a user links to the ticket number with a "#n" in a commit message or post. It's a pretty awesome way to pull together activity around a focus.

On Metafilter, the comment stream is framed as a discussion. All the words there are intentional, without threading or robot-talk. If you read something, you can trust that it was said by someone identifiable and you can respond to that person.

On Twitter, the hashtag started as a free-form way of providing searchable terms in tweets and has morphed to an explicitly-social, long-term gathering point.

Coming back to OSM, I am excited about Mikel Maron's desires for a social stream and I think that hashtag-focused groups feature can support improved collaborative group activities by giving mappers an ad-hoc URL to congregate. We should look at the intentional words that people generate on OSM.org and support hashtags indexes to those. I'm collecting hashtags from changesets, for example:

	http://osm-tags.teczno.com/tag/editathon?callback=do_stuff
	http://osm-tags.teczno.com/tag/hotosm?callback=do_stuff

With the addition of comments on the site and extended hashtag indexes (on diary posts, for example) we should be able to create stream pages on OSM.org that support communication and collaboration rather than competition.

-mike.

On Jul 28, 2013, at 4:24 PM, Stefan Keller wrote:

> Hi Bryce and Janko
> 
> I'd like to fork the above mentioned thread and talk about gamification and OSM.
> 
> There is a paper about "Gamification of Geographic Data Collection"
> from Odobašic et al. [1] and at the same time I presented about the
> same topic in german. And there will be two othre talks (beside mine)
> entitled "" and "" at SOTM in Birmingham.
> 
> 2013/7/29 Kathleen Danielson <kathleen.danielson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> There are a lot of ways to approach gamification. I'm not saying whether or
>> not we should,  but we probably should avoid blanket statements that all
>> gamification is bad.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
>> Personally,  I'd like a way to more easily scan what my friends are up to on
>> OSM. I can get a feed of their recent changesets, but even that is pretty
>> well hidden.
> 
> That's an important thing to consider also for OSM. But again, I would
> just call this "social interaction" - not gamification.
> 
> Yours, Stefan
> 
> [1] http://giswiki.hsr.ch/Gamification
> 
> 
> 
> 2013/7/29 Bryce Nesbitt <bryce2 at obviously.com>:
>> On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 11:42 AM, Janko Mihelić <janjko at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I think statistics are enough for gamification. You can have lots of
>>> badges like
>>> 
>>> "Biggest contributor in Belgium" - most nodes in Belgium
>>> "Road admiral of Alabama" - most roads in Alabama
>>> "Power man of  Bavaria" - biggest contributor of power tags (power=line,
>>> power=substation etc.) in Bavaria
>>> "Forester of Croatia"
>>> "Ski instructor of Switzerland"
>>> etc..
>>> 
>>> Then if you have a question about tagging a power station in some region,
>>> you could quickly find "the power man" of the region, and ask them. That way
>>> the badge comes with some responsibility and influence in decision making.
>>> The bigger the region, the more responsibility.
>> 
>> 
>> Games can be... gamed.
>> As a pipsqeak in the power pole mapping influence peddling ring, I could
>> zoom to the top with a few evenings of shifting nodes that did not really
>> need shifting.  If the game is important enough to be gamed... it will be
>> gamed.
>> 
>> Better to say that my edits are respected.  I make an edit and someone else
>> says 'thanks, that looks great', or maybe 'could we talk about the inclusion
>> of bird nests on power poles a bit?'.  Then you've got a system that has
>> both games and social features.  For those who don't want either there can
>> be achievement levels: perhaps certain capabilities, like bulk uploads,
>> could require hitting certain contribution milestones.  It works great for
>> stack exchange and other similar sites.
>> 
>>          -Bryce
>> 
>> Note: the badge list above shows a gender-specific skew... trying giving the
>> 'power man' badge to a professional female lawyer.
>> 
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>> 
> 
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