the wikipedia adventure: designing for impact

The Wikipedia Adventure

Experiment in gamified onboarding

7-mission interactive journey

Editing, social, and policy skills

Automatic edit API

Guided tours with event logging

Userspace template tracking

1 year script writing

5 months design and usability dev

1 month alpha bugfixing

1 month beta test

Qualitative surveyplayers invited to Qualtrics, 600

responses, 42

age median, 25

women, 11 %

US and UK, 2/3

Overall satisfaction

Satisfaction breakdown

● 89%, TWA made me more confident as an editor

● 89%, TWA helped me understand Wikipedia better

● 77%, TWA made me want to edit more

● 79% TWA made me feel welcomed and supported

● 71% , TWA helped me know what to do next

● 80% , TWA prepared me to be a successful contributor to Wikipedia

● 75% , I enjoyed playing it

● 89% , The game is a good way to introduce new editors to Wikipedia

● 89% , Lots of users should be invited to play TWA

"I enjoyed the idea of editing a fake article for practice - in fact, when I first saw the game, I immediately hoped it would incorporate some sort of actual editing rather than just theory or questions or something."

"TWA was very informative and helped pull back the curtain on some of the fundamentals of editing."

"I didn't know there was talk and discussion among users until I played the game...I just thought you could make comments and report on individual pages."

"I've seen and heard companies, including my own, talk about learning through 'gamification'. I found TWA to be the best example of gamification I have witnessed to date."

"I think TWA at the moment is a great stepping stone for new users such as myself. I would love to see it expand to include more 'advanced' topics that can be optionally covered by the user."

“I wish it gave the impression that editors were expected to be mature and intelligent, rather than idiots who could be entertained and educated with this kind of drivel."

Gamification elements

Design preference

Target demographic

Quantitative data

10,000 invited using hostbot

600 started the game

45% finished the game

2 control groups: not invited, invited no-play

● 20% more edits than a control group of similar but

non-invited new editors

● 90% more edits than those who were invited but did

not play the game

TWA players made more edits

Player group had more 20+ editors

● TWA players were 1.2 - 1.7x more likely to make 20+

edits than either control group

● TWA players were also more likely to make 0 edits

than the control groups, however.

TWA finishers made the most edits

● Players who completed the game made 3.2x more

edits than those who only started the first level of

the game

● Players who completed the game were 2.9x more

likely to make 20+ edits.

Explanation: off and on ramp

1) make test edits within game, leave

2) grow confidence, get highly active

Phase 2

More invitees, more players, more time

Statistical significance, confounds, stage model

Edit persistence and editor retention

Mesh w/ GettingStarted, Teahouse, Mentorship

Questions?

by Jake Orlowitz, Heather Walls, and Siko Bouterse

With help from Jonathan Morgan, Matt Flaschen, and Nischay Nahata through a WMF Individual Engagement Grant

User:Ocaasi

jorlowitz@gmail.com

@JakeOrlowitz

@WikiAdventure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:TWA

All text and images CC-BY-SA 3.0