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Q&A What are the pros and cons of gamifying Codidact.org?

https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235 - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is th...

2 answers · posted 3y ago by System‭ · edited 3y ago by System‭

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#18: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-04-01T17:53:32Z (over 3 years ago)

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[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. Serious platforms don't need gamification to survive because they will survive out of interest in the community. I have visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No nonsense on Accellera's forum. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ User profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by professional engineers and for professional engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated. Professional engineers have very good interpersonal skills since they work in teams.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own. Top users seldom upvote correct answers for fear of losing their top position.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack
---
Update: I have found the weakness of this site, and I am disclosing it here, so it may be fixed and so other users can see it:
1. As Mithical says in their answer:
>"gamification" is a bit of a different concept from "fun".
While it is true they are slightly different concepts, it is also true that they are intertwined.
I will quote the post ["A note on April 1st"](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) which is seen as "fun" and not gamification by Mithical:
> Therefore, for your own safety: DO NOT try to enter any secret code on April 1st. DO NOT play the game ('cause there is none). DO NOT post your high scores in this thread (because you can't get any (as there is no game)). DO NOT let the Codidactyl touch any sugar (not that there is a danger (because there is no game of course))
Hope no one missed the "game" part in this quote. So it is not only fun but also a kind of gamification.
---
Mithical says in their answer:
> Fun, on the other hand, isn't the same thing as gamification. Fun is an optional thing that encourages community building. People can laugh together about a silly April Fools Easter Egg (which participation in is strictly voluntary; you're not required to use the Konami Code whenever you access the site).
But when strange posts such as "A note on April 1st" are found on Meta Codidact, new users, such as myself, feel **alienated** and find this site to be very weird and strange. Another user has also commented:
> I would prefer to not have such uh "fun". This day is annoying enough elsewhere.
- Some users from other parts of the world may not even be aware of Fool's day or Easter Eggs and it is *not* a globally recognized event as Mithical says below.
- Other users may know only one meaning of easter egg i.e. the egg shared on Easter Sunday (a religious event). **Trivialising** a religious event of significant importance to the followers of that religion, might **hurt** the sentiments of the people who follow that religion. While the "Easter Eggs" found in some video games do just that, we should not be following the bad example of such video games.
> We want to build a community.
> Fun events - such as contests, or Easter Eggs - help increase a feeling of belonging and community for a lot of people. It keeps people engaged and people bond over events, or meet new people while comparing high scores.
> There's a reason we call our various sites "communities"; because that's what we're trying to facilitate. And sometimes, that means lightening things up a little (especially around gloablly-recognized fun events like April Fools).
While I agree about the community bonding part, I think it is also important that before doing such events we should ask ourselves: "Are we interested in creating a **diverse and inclusive** global community?"
If yes, this implies we should **not** be giving **importance to any one culture over the multitude of cultures found in the world**. There are so many festivals celebrated by so many cultures, can we celebrate them all? If the answer is no, would it be fair to treat one culture as more important and significant than another? I believe treating minorities with respect is very important for a diverse and inclusive global community.
2. Monica Cellio says in their answer:
> The Codidact team is still very small, and if there's something I can do to help them enjoy what they're doing without diminishing the platform, I'll do it.
> Codidact is by the community, for the community -- please join us if you want to be a bigger part of that.
I don't understand Monica Cellio's point since I have already asked the question and by definition I am already a part of the community. If Monica Cellio is implying that I need to be a part of the development team to "be a bigger part of that", then I can't help but point out it seems there is already a significant conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. It is important that there is no separation nor **conflict of interest** between the development team and the user community. User community *can* contribute to development if they want to, likewise, the development team *can* participate on the Q&A if they want to.
Development teams should focus on building usable applications for the user community. Development teams should **not** focus on building something that they, and *only* they enjoy using, since people who use this Q&A platform might come from **all** backgrounds, including non-software development backgrounds.
Many developers hate using Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange since that community is toxic and lacks focus, quality and inclusivity. Creating a platform that has **better quality** (a high bar for getting a post accepted) and **inclusivity** than Stack Overflow, with **zero tolerance** for **unkind and sarcastic remarks** and **off-topic posts** solves the problems that developers currently face on Stack Overflow.
Monica Cellio says in a comment:
> Similarly, the hidden game here doesn't affect Q&A, profiles, abilities, rep, badges (we don't have badges), or anything else. It's just an extra. Most of the time I neither like nor dislike eggs; they're just there
**The hidden game has already affected my Meta Codidact rep somewhat anegatively, since my posts related to the hidden game tend to get downvoted heavily. The staff user's post related to the hidden game and the posts of those who support the staff user's action of creating a hidden game tend to get upvoted heavily, increasing their rep. Is this side effect good or bad?**

[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. Serious platforms don't need gamification to survive because they will survive out of interest in the community. I have visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No nonsense on Accellera's forum. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ User profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by professional engineers and for professional engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated. Professional engineers have very good interpersonal skills since they work in teams.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own. Top users seldom upvote correct answers for fear of losing their top position.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack
---
Update: I have found the weakness of this site, and I am disclosing it here, so it may be fixed and so other users can see it:
1. As Mithical says in their answer:
>"gamification" is a bit of a different concept from "fun".
While it is true they are slightly different concepts, it is also true that they are intertwined.
I will quote the post ["A note on April 1st"](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) which is seen as "fun" and not gamification by Mithical:
> Therefore, for your own safety: DO NOT try to enter any secret code on April 1st. DO NOT play the game ('cause there is none). DO NOT post your high scores in this thread (because you can't get any (as there is no game)). DO NOT let the Codidactyl touch any sugar (not that there is a danger (because there is no game of course))
Hope no one missed the "game" part in this quote. So it is not only fun but also a kind of gamification.
---
Mithical says in their answer:
> Fun, on the other hand, isn't the same thing as gamification. Fun is an optional thing that encourages community building. People can laugh together about a silly April Fools Easter Egg (which participation in is strictly voluntary; you're not required to use the Konami Code whenever you access the site).
But when strange posts such as "A note on April 1st" are found on Meta Codidact, new users, such as myself, feel **alienated** and find this site to be very weird and strange. Another user has also commented:
> I would prefer to not have such uh "fun". This day is annoying enough elsewhere.
- Some users from other parts of the world may not even be aware of Fool's day or Easter Eggs and it is *not* a globally recognized event as Mithical says below.
- Other users may know only one meaning of easter egg i.e. the egg shared on Easter Sunday (a religious event). **Trivialising** a religious event of significant importance to the followers of that religion, might **hurt** the sentiments of the people who follow that religion. While the "Easter Eggs" found in some video games do just that, we should not be following the bad example of such video games.
> We want to build a community.
> Fun events - such as contests, or Easter Eggs - help increase a feeling of belonging and community for a lot of people. It keeps people engaged and people bond over events, or meet new people while comparing high scores.
> There's a reason we call our various sites "communities"; because that's what we're trying to facilitate. And sometimes, that means lightening things up a little (especially around gloablly-recognized fun events like April Fools).
While I agree about the community bonding part, I think it is also important that before doing such events we should ask ourselves: "Are we interested in creating a **diverse and inclusive** global community?"
If yes, this implies we should **not** be giving **importance to any one culture over the multitude of cultures found in the world**. There are so many festivals celebrated by so many cultures, can we celebrate them all? If the answer is no, would it be fair to treat one culture as more important and significant than another? I believe treating minorities with respect is very important for a diverse and inclusive global community.
2. Monica Cellio says in their answer:
> The Codidact team is still very small, and if there's something I can do to help them enjoy what they're doing without diminishing the platform, I'll do it.
> Codidact is by the community, for the community -- please join us if you want to be a bigger part of that.
I don't understand Monica Cellio's point since I have already asked the question and by definition I am already a part of the community. If Monica Cellio is implying that I need to be a part of the development team to "be a bigger part of that", then I can't help but point out it seems there is already a significant conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. It is important that there is no separation nor **conflict of interest** between the development team and the user community. User community *can* contribute to development if they want to, likewise, the development team *can* participate on the Q&A if they want to.
Development teams should focus on building usable applications for the user community. Development teams should **not** focus on building something that they, and *only* they enjoy using, since people who use this Q&A platform might come from **all** backgrounds, including non-software development backgrounds.
Many developers hate using Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange since that community is toxic and lacks focus, quality and inclusivity. Creating a platform that has **better quality** (a high bar for getting a post accepted) and **inclusivity** than Stack Overflow, with **zero tolerance** for **unkind and sarcastic remarks** and **off-topic posts** solves the problems that developers currently face on Stack Overflow.
Monica Cellio says in a comment:
> Similarly, the hidden game here doesn't affect Q&A, profiles, abilities, rep, badges (we don't have badges), or anything else. It's just an extra. Most of the time I neither like nor dislike eggs; they're just there
**The hidden game has already affected my Meta Codidact rep somewhat negatively, since my posts related to the hidden game tend to get downvoted heavily. The staff user's post related to the hidden game and the posts of those who supported the staff user's action of creating a hidden game tend to get upvoted heavily, increasing their rep. Is this side effect good or bad?** I will leave that to the reader to judge.

#17: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-04-01T17:52:35Z (over 3 years ago)

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[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. Serious platforms don't need gamification to survive because they will survive out of interest in the community. I have visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No nonsense on Accellera's forum. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ User profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by professional engineers and for professional engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated. Professional engineers have very good interpersonal skills since they work in teams.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own. Top users seldom upvote correct answers for fear of losing their top position.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack
---
Update: I have found the weakness of this site, and I am disclosing it here, so it may be fixed and so other users can see it:
1. As Mithical says in their answer:
>"gamification" is a bit of a different concept from "fun".
While it is true they are slightly different concepts, it is also true that they are intertwined.
I will quote the post ["A note on April 1st"](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) which is seen as "fun" and not gamification by Mithical:
> Therefore, for your own safety: DO NOT try to enter any secret code on April 1st. DO NOT play the game ('cause there is none). DO NOT post your high scores in this thread (because you can't get any (as there is no game)). DO NOT let the Codidactyl touch any sugar (not that there is a danger (because there is no game of course))
Hope no one missed the "game" part in this quote. So it is not only fun but also a kind of gamification.
---
Mithical says in their answer:
> Fun, on the other hand, isn't the same thing as gamification. Fun is an optional thing that encourages community building. People can laugh together about a silly April Fools Easter Egg (which participation in is strictly voluntary; you're not required to use the Konami Code whenever you access the site).
But when strange posts such as "A note on April 1st" are found on Meta Codidact, new users, such as myself, feel **alienated** and find this site to be very weird and strange. Another user has also commented:
> I would prefer to not have such uh "fun". This day is annoying enough elsewhere.
- Some users from other parts of the world may not even be aware of Fool's day or Easter Eggs and it is *not* a globally recognized event as Mithical says below.
- Other users may know only one meaning of easter egg i.e. the egg shared on Easter Sunday (a religious event). **Trivialising** a religious event of significant importance to the followers of that religion, might **hurt** the sentiments of the people who follow that religion. While the "Easter Eggs" found in some video games do just that, we should not be following the bad example of such video games.
> We want to build a community.
> Fun events - such as contests, or Easter Eggs - help increase a feeling of belonging and community for a lot of people. It keeps people engaged and people bond over events, or meet new people while comparing high scores.
> There's a reason we call our various sites "communities"; because that's what we're trying to facilitate. And sometimes, that means lightening things up a little (especially around gloablly-recognized fun events like April Fools).
While I agree about the community bonding part, I think it is also important that before doing such events we should ask ourselves: "Are we interested in creating a **diverse and inclusive** global community?"
If yes, this implies we should **not** be giving **importance to any one culture over the multitude of cultures found in the world**. There are so many festivals celebrated by so many cultures, can we celebrate them all? If the answer is no, would it be fair to treat one culture as more important and significant than another? I believe treating minorities with respect is very important for a diverse and inclusive global community.
2. Monica Cellio says in their answer:
> The Codidact team is still very small, and if there's something I can do to help them enjoy what they're doing without diminishing the platform, I'll do it.
> Codidact is by the community, for the community -- please join us if you want to be a bigger part of that.
I don't understand Monica Cellio's point since I have already asked the question and by definition I am already a part of the community. If Monica Cellio is implying that I need to be a part of the development team to "be a bigger part of that", then I can't help but point out it seems there is already a significant conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. It is important that there is no separation nor **conflict of interest** between the development team and the user community. User community *can* contribute to development if they want to, likewise, the development team *can* participate on the Q&A if they want to.
Development teams should focus on building usable applications for the user community. Development teams should **not** focus on building something that they, and *only* they enjoy using, since people who use this Q&A platform might come from **all** backgrounds, including non-software development backgrounds.
Many developers hate using Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange since that community is toxic and lacks focus, quality and inclusivity. Creating a platform that has **better quality** (a high bar for getting a post accepted) and **inclusivity** than Stack Overflow, with **zero tolerance** for **unkind and sarcastic remarks** solves the problems that developers currently face. More developers will then be interested in solving the problems the site is facing and will be eager to contribute.
Monica Cellio says in a comment:
> Similarly, the hidden game here doesn't affect Q&A, profiles, abilities, rep, badges (we don't have badges), or anything else. It's just an extra. Most of the time I neither like nor dislike eggs; they're just there
**The hidden game has already affected my Meta Codidact rep somewhat anegatively, since my posts related to the hidden game tend to get downvoted heavily. The staff user's post related to the hidden game and the posts of those who support the staff user's action of creating a hidden game tend to get upvoted heavily, increasing their rep. Is this side effect good or bad?**

[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. Serious platforms don't need gamification to survive because they will survive out of interest in the community. I have visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No nonsense on Accellera's forum. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ User profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by professional engineers and for professional engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated. Professional engineers have very good interpersonal skills since they work in teams.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own. Top users seldom upvote correct answers for fear of losing their top position.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack
---
Update: I have found the weakness of this site, and I am disclosing it here, so it may be fixed and so other users can see it:
1. As Mithical says in their answer:
>"gamification" is a bit of a different concept from "fun".
While it is true they are slightly different concepts, it is also true that they are intertwined.
I will quote the post ["A note on April 1st"](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) which is seen as "fun" and not gamification by Mithical:
> Therefore, for your own safety: DO NOT try to enter any secret code on April 1st. DO NOT play the game ('cause there is none). DO NOT post your high scores in this thread (because you can't get any (as there is no game)). DO NOT let the Codidactyl touch any sugar (not that there is a danger (because there is no game of course))
Hope no one missed the "game" part in this quote. So it is not only fun but also a kind of gamification.
---
Mithical says in their answer:
> Fun, on the other hand, isn't the same thing as gamification. Fun is an optional thing that encourages community building. People can laugh together about a silly April Fools Easter Egg (which participation in is strictly voluntary; you're not required to use the Konami Code whenever you access the site).
But when strange posts such as "A note on April 1st" are found on Meta Codidact, new users, such as myself, feel **alienated** and find this site to be very weird and strange. Another user has also commented:
> I would prefer to not have such uh "fun". This day is annoying enough elsewhere.
- Some users from other parts of the world may not even be aware of Fool's day or Easter Eggs and it is *not* a globally recognized event as Mithical says below.
- Other users may know only one meaning of easter egg i.e. the egg shared on Easter Sunday (a religious event). **Trivialising** a religious event of significant importance to the followers of that religion, might **hurt** the sentiments of the people who follow that religion. While the "Easter Eggs" found in some video games do just that, we should not be following the bad example of such video games.
> We want to build a community.
> Fun events - such as contests, or Easter Eggs - help increase a feeling of belonging and community for a lot of people. It keeps people engaged and people bond over events, or meet new people while comparing high scores.
> There's a reason we call our various sites "communities"; because that's what we're trying to facilitate. And sometimes, that means lightening things up a little (especially around gloablly-recognized fun events like April Fools).
While I agree about the community bonding part, I think it is also important that before doing such events we should ask ourselves: "Are we interested in creating a **diverse and inclusive** global community?"
If yes, this implies we should **not** be giving **importance to any one culture over the multitude of cultures found in the world**. There are so many festivals celebrated by so many cultures, can we celebrate them all? If the answer is no, would it be fair to treat one culture as more important and significant than another? I believe treating minorities with respect is very important for a diverse and inclusive global community.
2. Monica Cellio says in their answer:
> The Codidact team is still very small, and if there's something I can do to help them enjoy what they're doing without diminishing the platform, I'll do it.
> Codidact is by the community, for the community -- please join us if you want to be a bigger part of that.
I don't understand Monica Cellio's point since I have already asked the question and by definition I am already a part of the community. If Monica Cellio is implying that I need to be a part of the development team to "be a bigger part of that", then I can't help but point out it seems there is already a significant conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. It is important that there is no separation nor **conflict of interest** between the development team and the user community. User community *can* contribute to development if they want to, likewise, the development team *can* participate on the Q&A if they want to.
Development teams should focus on building usable applications for the user community. Development teams should **not** focus on building something that they, and *only* they enjoy using, since people who use this Q&A platform might come from **all** backgrounds, including non-software development backgrounds.
Many developers hate using Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange since that community is toxic and lacks focus, quality and inclusivity. Creating a platform that has **better quality** (a high bar for getting a post accepted) and **inclusivity** than Stack Overflow, with **zero tolerance** for **unkind and sarcastic remarks** and **off-topic posts** solves the problems that developers currently face on Stack Overflow.
Monica Cellio says in a comment:
> Similarly, the hidden game here doesn't affect Q&A, profiles, abilities, rep, badges (we don't have badges), or anything else. It's just an extra. Most of the time I neither like nor dislike eggs; they're just there
**The hidden game has already affected my Meta Codidact rep somewhat anegatively, since my posts related to the hidden game tend to get downvoted heavily. The staff user's post related to the hidden game and the posts of those who support the staff user's action of creating a hidden game tend to get upvoted heavily, increasing their rep. Is this side effect good or bad?**

#16: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-04-01T17:50:35Z (over 3 years ago)

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[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. Serious platforms don't need gamification to survive because they will survive out of interest in the community. I have visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No nonsense on Accellera's forum. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ User profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by professional engineers and for professional engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated. Professional engineers have very good interpersonal skills since they work in teams.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own. Top users seldom upvote correct answers for fear of losing their top position.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack
---
~~Update: I have found the weakness of this site, and I am disclosing it here:~~
~~I would like to refute a few claims in Mithical's and Monica Cellio's answer, and add my perspective after reading their answers.~~
~~1. Mithical says in their answer:~~
>"gamification" is a bit of a different concept from "fun".
While it is true they are slightly different concepts, it is also true that they are intertwined.
I will quote the post ["A note on April 1st"](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) which is seen as "fun" and not gamification by Mithical:
> Therefore, for your own safety: DO NOT try to enter any secret code on April 1st. DO NOT play the game ('cause there is none). DO NOT post your high scores in this thread (because you can't get any (as there is no game)). DO NOT let the Codidactyl touch any sugar (not that there is a danger (because there is no game of course))
Hope no one missed the "game" part in this quote. So it is not only fun but also a kind of gamification.
---
Mithical says in their answer:
> Fun, on the other hand, isn't the same thing as gamification. Fun is an optional thing that encourages community building. People can laugh together about a silly April Fools Easter Egg (which participation in is strictly voluntary; you're not required to use the Konami Code whenever you access the site).
But when strange posts such as "A note on April 1st" are found on Meta Codidact, new users, such as myself, feel alienated and find this site to be very weird and strange. Another user has also commented:
> I would prefer to not have such uh "fun". This day is annoying enough elsewhere.
- Some users from other parts of the world may not even be aware of Fool's day or Easter Eggs and it is *not* a globally recognized event as Mithical says below.
- Other users may know only one meaning of easter egg i.e. the egg shared on Easter Sunday (a religious event). **Trivialising** a religious event of significant importance to the followers of that religion, might **hurt** the sentiments of the people who follow that religion. While the "Easter Eggs" found in some video games do just that, we should not be following the bad example of such video games.
> We want to build a community.
> Fun events - such as contests, or Easter Eggs - help increase a feeling of belonging and community for a lot of people. It keeps people engaged and people bond over events, or meet new people while comparing high scores.
> There's a reason we call our various sites "communities"; because that's what we're trying to facilitate. And sometimes, that means lightening things up a little (especially around gloablly-recognized fun events like April Fools).
While I agree about the community bonding part, I think it is also important that before doing such events we should ask ourselves: "Are we interested in creating a **diverse and inclusive** global community?"
If yes, this implies we should **not** be giving **importance to any one culture over the multitude of cultures found in the world**. There are so many festivals celebrated by so many cultures, can we celebrate them all? If the answer is no, would it be fair to treat one culture as more important and significant than another? I believe treating minorities with respect is very important for a diverse and inclusive global community.
2. Monica Cellio says in their answer:
> The Codidact team is still very small, and if there's something I can do to help them enjoy what they're doing without diminishing the platform, I'll do it.
~~From this part of the answer, I think I get the jist is "I'll let the developers do what they want as long as it creates no harm" even if goes against the *broader* community's interests.~~
> Codidact is by the community, for the community -- please join us if you want to be a bigger part of that.
I don't understand what Monica Cellio is trying to say since I have already asked the question and by definition I am already a part of the community. If Monica Cellio is hinting that I need to be a part of the development team to "be a bigger part of that", then I can't help but point out it seems there is already a significant conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. It is important that there is no separation nor conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. User community *can* contribute to development if they want to, likewise the development team *can* participate on the Q&A if they want to.
~~Development teams should focus on building usable applications for the user community. Development teams should **not** focus on building something that they, and *only* they enjoy using.~~
If development teams focus on building something they enjoy using, there is nothing stopping them from giving themselves extra reputation points for building the platform. In fact, this is already done on Stack Exchange Inc. where **employees** get 101 free reputation points and privileges just for being on the community management team.
**This will not be fair if it is also implemented on Codidact, because the community might also contribute to Codidact.org in some small way like bug fixes without getting anything like "reputation" or "abilities" in return.**
I would suggest instead of trying to get developers to contribute with a fancy pitch or by promising extra special "abilities' or reputation points, try getting developers to use the platform first, so they will automatically be interested in contributing. Many developers hate using Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange since that community is toxic and lacks focus, quality and inclusivity. Create a platform that has **better quality** (a high bar for getting a post accepted) and inclusivity than Stack Overflow, with **zero tolerance** for **unkind and sarcastic remarks** and you solve the problems developers currently face. *Then* developers will be interested in solving the problems the site is facing and will be eager to contribute.
~~Update:~~
Monica Cellio says in a comment:
> Similarly, the hidden game here doesn't affect Q&A, profiles, abilities, rep, badges (we don't have badges), or anything else. It's just an extra. Most of the time I neither like nor dislike eggs; they're just there
The hidden game has already affected my Meta Codidact rep negatively, since my posts related to the hidden game tend to get downvoted heavily. The staff user's post related to the hidden game and the posts of those who support the staff user's action of creating a hidden game tend to get upvoted heavily, increasing their rep. Is this side effect good or bad?

[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. Serious platforms don't need gamification to survive because they will survive out of interest in the community. I have visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No nonsense on Accellera's forum. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ User profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by professional engineers and for professional engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated. Professional engineers have very good interpersonal skills since they work in teams.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own. Top users seldom upvote correct answers for fear of losing their top position.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack
---
Update: I have found the weakness of this site, and I am disclosing it here, so it may be fixed and so other users can see it:
1. As Mithical says in their answer:
>"gamification" is a bit of a different concept from "fun".
While it is true they are slightly different concepts, it is also true that they are intertwined.
I will quote the post ["A note on April 1st"](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) which is seen as "fun" and not gamification by Mithical:
> Therefore, for your own safety: DO NOT try to enter any secret code on April 1st. DO NOT play the game ('cause there is none). DO NOT post your high scores in this thread (because you can't get any (as there is no game)). DO NOT let the Codidactyl touch any sugar (not that there is a danger (because there is no game of course))
Hope no one missed the "game" part in this quote. So it is not only fun but also a kind of gamification.
---
Mithical says in their answer:
> Fun, on the other hand, isn't the same thing as gamification. Fun is an optional thing that encourages community building. People can laugh together about a silly April Fools Easter Egg (which participation in is strictly voluntary; you're not required to use the Konami Code whenever you access the site).
But when strange posts such as "A note on April 1st" are found on Meta Codidact, new users, such as myself, feel **alienated** and find this site to be very weird and strange. Another user has also commented:
> I would prefer to not have such uh "fun". This day is annoying enough elsewhere.
- Some users from other parts of the world may not even be aware of Fool's day or Easter Eggs and it is *not* a globally recognized event as Mithical says below.
- Other users may know only one meaning of easter egg i.e. the egg shared on Easter Sunday (a religious event). **Trivialising** a religious event of significant importance to the followers of that religion, might **hurt** the sentiments of the people who follow that religion. While the "Easter Eggs" found in some video games do just that, we should not be following the bad example of such video games.
> We want to build a community.
> Fun events - such as contests, or Easter Eggs - help increase a feeling of belonging and community for a lot of people. It keeps people engaged and people bond over events, or meet new people while comparing high scores.
> There's a reason we call our various sites "communities"; because that's what we're trying to facilitate. And sometimes, that means lightening things up a little (especially around gloablly-recognized fun events like April Fools).
While I agree about the community bonding part, I think it is also important that before doing such events we should ask ourselves: "Are we interested in creating a **diverse and inclusive** global community?"
If yes, this implies we should **not** be giving **importance to any one culture over the multitude of cultures found in the world**. There are so many festivals celebrated by so many cultures, can we celebrate them all? If the answer is no, would it be fair to treat one culture as more important and significant than another? I believe treating minorities with respect is very important for a diverse and inclusive global community.
2. Monica Cellio says in their answer:
> The Codidact team is still very small, and if there's something I can do to help them enjoy what they're doing without diminishing the platform, I'll do it.
> Codidact is by the community, for the community -- please join us if you want to be a bigger part of that.
I don't understand Monica Cellio's point since I have already asked the question and by definition I am already a part of the community. If Monica Cellio is implying that I need to be a part of the development team to "be a bigger part of that", then I can't help but point out it seems there is already a significant conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. It is important that there is no separation nor **conflict of interest** between the development team and the user community. User community *can* contribute to development if they want to, likewise, the development team *can* participate on the Q&A if they want to.
Development teams should focus on building usable applications for the user community. Development teams should **not** focus on building something that they, and *only* they enjoy using, since people who use this Q&A platform might come from **all** backgrounds, including non-software development backgrounds.
Many developers hate using Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange since that community is toxic and lacks focus, quality and inclusivity. Creating a platform that has **better quality** (a high bar for getting a post accepted) and **inclusivity** than Stack Overflow, with **zero tolerance** for **unkind and sarcastic remarks** solves the problems that developers currently face. More developers will then be interested in solving the problems the site is facing and will be eager to contribute.
Monica Cellio says in a comment:
> Similarly, the hidden game here doesn't affect Q&A, profiles, abilities, rep, badges (we don't have badges), or anything else. It's just an extra. Most of the time I neither like nor dislike eggs; they're just there
**The hidden game has already affected my Meta Codidact rep somewhat anegatively, since my posts related to the hidden game tend to get downvoted heavily. The staff user's post related to the hidden game and the posts of those who support the staff user's action of creating a hidden game tend to get upvoted heavily, increasing their rep. Is this side effect good or bad?**

#15: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-04-01T17:29:19Z (over 3 years ago)

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[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. Serious platforms don't need gamification to survive because they will survive out of interest in the community. I have visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No nonsense on Accellera's forum. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ User profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by professional engineers and for professional engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated. Professional engineers have very good interpersonal skills since they work in teams.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own. Top users seldom upvote correct answers for fear of losing their top position.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack
---
Update: I have found the weakness of this site, and I am disclosing it here:
I would like to refute a few claims in Mithical's and Monica Cellio's answer, and add my perspective after reading their answers.
1. Mithical says in their answer:
>"gamification" is a bit of a different concept from "fun".
While it is true they are slightly different concepts, it is also true that they are intertwined.
I will quote the post ["A note on April 1st"](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) which is seen as "fun" and not gamification by Mithical:
> Therefore, for your own safety: DO NOT try to enter any secret code on April 1st. DO NOT play the game ('cause there is none). DO NOT post your high scores in this thread (because you can't get any (as there is no game)). DO NOT let the Codidactyl touch any sugar (not that there is a danger (because there is no game of course))
Hope no one missed the "game" part in this quote. So it is not only fun but also a kind of gamification.
---
Mithical says in their answer:
> Fun, on the other hand, isn't the same thing as gamification. Fun is an optional thing that encourages community building. People can laugh together about a silly April Fools Easter Egg (which participation in is strictly voluntary; you're not required to use the Konami Code whenever you access the site).
But when strange posts such as "A note on April 1st" are found on Meta Codidact, new users, such as myself, feel alienated and find this site to be very weird and strange. Another user has also commented:
> I would prefer to not have such uh "fun". This day is annoying enough elsewhere.
- Some users from other parts of the world may not even be aware of Fool's day or Easter Eggs and it is *not* a globally recognized event as Mithical says below.
- Other users may know only one meaning of easter egg i.e. the egg shared on Easter Sunday (a religious event). **Trivialising** a religious event of significant importance to the followers of that religion, might **hurt** the sentiments of the people who follow that religion. While the "Easter Eggs" found in some video games do just that, we should not be following the bad example of such video games.
> We want to build a community.
> Fun events - such as contests, or Easter Eggs - help increase a feeling of belonging and community for a lot of people. It keeps people engaged and people bond over events, or meet new people while comparing high scores.
> There's a reason we call our various sites "communities"; because that's what we're trying to facilitate. And sometimes, that means lightening things up a little (especially around gloablly-recognized fun events like April Fools).
While I agree about the community bonding part, I think it is also important that before doing such events we should ask ourselves: "Are we interested in creating a **diverse and inclusive** global community?"
If yes, this implies we should **not** be giving **importance to any one culture over the multitude of cultures found in the world**. There are so many festivals celebrated by so many cultures, can we celebrate them all? If the answer is no, would it be fair to treat one culture as more important and significant than another? I believe treating minorities with respect is very important for a diverse and inclusive global community.
2. Monica Cellio says in their answer:
> The Codidact team is still very small, and if there's something I can do to help them enjoy what they're doing without diminishing the platform, I'll do it.
From this part of the answer, I think I get the jist is "I'll let the developers do what they want as long as it creates no harm" even if goes against the *broader* community's interests.
> Codidact is by the community, for the community -- please join us if you want to be a bigger part of that.
I don't understand what Monica Cellio is trying to say since I have already asked the question and by definition I am already a part of the community. If Monica Cellio is hinting that I need to be a part of the development team to "be a bigger part of that", then I can't help but point out it seems there is already a significant conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. It is important that there is no separation nor conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. User community *can* contribute to development if they want to, likewise the development team *can* participate on the Q&A if they want to.
Development teams should focus on building usable applications for the user community. Development teams should **not** focus on building something that they, and *only* they enjoy using.
If development teams focus on building something they enjoy using, there is nothing stopping them from giving themselves extra reputation points for building the platform. In fact, this is already done on Stack Exchange Inc. where **employees** get 101 free reputation points and privileges just for being on the community management team.
**This will not be fair if it is also implemented on Codidact, because the community might also contribute to Codidact.org in some small way like bug fixes without getting anything like "reputation" or "abilities" in return.**
I would suggest instead of trying to get developers to contribute with a fancy pitch or by promising extra special "abilities' or reputation points, try getting developers to use the platform first, so they will automatically be interested in contributing. Many developers hate using Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange since that community is toxic and lacks focus, quality and inclusivity. Create a platform that has **better quality** (a high bar for getting a post accepted) and inclusivity than Stack Overflow, with **zero tolerance** for **unkind and sarcastic remarks** and you solve the problems developers currently face. *Then* developers will be interested in solving the problems the site is facing and will be eager to contribute.
Update:
Monica Cellio says in a comment:
> Similarly, the hidden game here doesn't affect Q&A, profiles, abilities, rep, badges (we don't have badges), or anything else. It's just an extra. Most of the time I neither like nor dislike eggs; they're just there
The hidden game has already affected my Meta Codidact rep negatively, since my posts related to the hidden game tend to get downvoted heavily. The staff user's post related to the hidden game and the posts of those who support the staff user's action of creating a hidden game tend to get upvoted heavily. Is this side effect good or bad?

[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. Serious platforms don't need gamification to survive because they will survive out of interest in the community. I have visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No nonsense on Accellera's forum. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ User profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by professional engineers and for professional engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated. Professional engineers have very good interpersonal skills since they work in teams.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own. Top users seldom upvote correct answers for fear of losing their top position.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack
---
Update: I have found the weakness of this site, and I am disclosing it here:
I would like to refute a few claims in Mithical's and Monica Cellio's answer, and add my perspective after reading their answers.
1. Mithical says in their answer:
>"gamification" is a bit of a different concept from "fun".
While it is true they are slightly different concepts, it is also true that they are intertwined.
I will quote the post ["A note on April 1st"](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) which is seen as "fun" and not gamification by Mithical:
> Therefore, for your own safety: DO NOT try to enter any secret code on April 1st. DO NOT play the game ('cause there is none). DO NOT post your high scores in this thread (because you can't get any (as there is no game)). DO NOT let the Codidactyl touch any sugar (not that there is a danger (because there is no game of course))
Hope no one missed the "game" part in this quote. So it is not only fun but also a kind of gamification.
---
Mithical says in their answer:
> Fun, on the other hand, isn't the same thing as gamification. Fun is an optional thing that encourages community building. People can laugh together about a silly April Fools Easter Egg (which participation in is strictly voluntary; you're not required to use the Konami Code whenever you access the site).
But when strange posts such as "A note on April 1st" are found on Meta Codidact, new users, such as myself, feel alienated and find this site to be very weird and strange. Another user has also commented:
> I would prefer to not have such uh "fun". This day is annoying enough elsewhere.
- Some users from other parts of the world may not even be aware of Fool's day or Easter Eggs and it is *not* a globally recognized event as Mithical says below.
- Other users may know only one meaning of easter egg i.e. the egg shared on Easter Sunday (a religious event). **Trivialising** a religious event of significant importance to the followers of that religion, might **hurt** the sentiments of the people who follow that religion. While the "Easter Eggs" found in some video games do just that, we should not be following the bad example of such video games.
> We want to build a community.
> Fun events - such as contests, or Easter Eggs - help increase a feeling of belonging and community for a lot of people. It keeps people engaged and people bond over events, or meet new people while comparing high scores.
> There's a reason we call our various sites "communities"; because that's what we're trying to facilitate. And sometimes, that means lightening things up a little (especially around gloablly-recognized fun events like April Fools).
While I agree about the community bonding part, I think it is also important that before doing such events we should ask ourselves: "Are we interested in creating a **diverse and inclusive** global community?"
If yes, this implies we should **not** be giving **importance to any one culture over the multitude of cultures found in the world**. There are so many festivals celebrated by so many cultures, can we celebrate them all? If the answer is no, would it be fair to treat one culture as more important and significant than another? I believe treating minorities with respect is very important for a diverse and inclusive global community.
2. Monica Cellio says in their answer:
> The Codidact team is still very small, and if there's something I can do to help them enjoy what they're doing without diminishing the platform, I'll do it.
From this part of the answer, I think I get the jist is "I'll let the developers do what they want as long as it creates no harm" even if goes against the *broader* community's interests.
> Codidact is by the community, for the community -- please join us if you want to be a bigger part of that.
I don't understand what Monica Cellio is trying to say since I have already asked the question and by definition I am already a part of the community. If Monica Cellio is hinting that I need to be a part of the development team to "be a bigger part of that", then I can't help but point out it seems there is already a significant conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. It is important that there is no separation nor conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. User community *can* contribute to development if they want to, likewise the development team *can* participate on the Q&A if they want to.
Development teams should focus on building usable applications for the user community. Development teams should **not** focus on building something that they, and *only* they enjoy using.
If development teams focus on building something they enjoy using, there is nothing stopping them from giving themselves extra reputation points for building the platform. In fact, this is already done on Stack Exchange Inc. where **employees** get 101 free reputation points and privileges just for being on the community management team.
**This will not be fair if it is also implemented on Codidact, because the community might also contribute to Codidact.org in some small way like bug fixes without getting anything like "reputation" or "abilities" in return.**
I would suggest instead of trying to get developers to contribute with a fancy pitch or by promising extra special "abilities' or reputation points, try getting developers to use the platform first, so they will automatically be interested in contributing. Many developers hate using Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange since that community is toxic and lacks focus, quality and inclusivity. Create a platform that has **better quality** (a high bar for getting a post accepted) and inclusivity than Stack Overflow, with **zero tolerance** for **unkind and sarcastic remarks** and you solve the problems developers currently face. *Then* developers will be interested in solving the problems the site is facing and will be eager to contribute.
Update:
Monica Cellio says in a comment:
> Similarly, the hidden game here doesn't affect Q&A, profiles, abilities, rep, badges (we don't have badges), or anything else. It's just an extra. Most of the time I neither like nor dislike eggs; they're just there
The hidden game has already affected my Meta Codidact rep negatively, since my posts related to the hidden game tend to get downvoted heavily. The staff user's post related to the hidden game and the posts of those who support the staff user's action of creating a hidden game tend to get upvoted heavily, increasing their rep. Is this side effect good or bad?

#14: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-04-01T17:28:04Z (over 3 years ago)

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[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. Serious platforms don't need gamification to survive because they will survive out of interest in the community. I have visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No nonsense on Accellera's forum. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ User profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by professional engineers and for professional engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated. Professional engineers have very good interpersonal skills since they work in teams.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own. Top users seldom upvote correct answers for fear of losing their top position.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack
---
Update: I have found the weakness of this site, and I am disclosing it here:
I would like to refute a few claims in Mithical's and Monica Cellio's answer, and add my perspective after reading their answers.
1. Mithical says in their answer:
>"gamification" is a bit of a different concept from "fun".
While it is true they are slightly different concepts, it is also true that they are intertwined.
I will quote the post ["A note on April 1st"](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) which is seen as "fun" and not gamification by Mithical:
> Therefore, for your own safety: DO NOT try to enter any secret code on April 1st. DO NOT play the game ('cause there is none). DO NOT post your high scores in this thread (because you can't get any (as there is no game)). DO NOT let the Codidactyl touch any sugar (not that there is a danger (because there is no game of course))
Hope no one missed the "game" part in this quote. So it is not only fun but also a kind of gamification.
---
Mithical says in their answer:
> Fun, on the other hand, isn't the same thing as gamification. Fun is an optional thing that encourages community building. People can laugh together about a silly April Fools Easter Egg (which participation in is strictly voluntary; you're not required to use the Konami Code whenever you access the site).
But when strange posts such as "A note on April 1st" are found on Meta Codidact, new users, such as myself, feel alienated and find this site to be very weird and strange. Another user has also commented:
> I would prefer to not have such uh "fun". This day is annoying enough elsewhere.
- Some users from other parts of the world may not even be aware of Fool's day or Easter Eggs and it is *not* a globally recognized event as Mithical says below.
- Other users may know only one meaning of easter egg i.e. the egg shared on Easter Sunday (a religious event). **Trivialising** a religious event of significant importance to the followers of that religion, might **hurt** the sentiments of the people who follow that religion. While the "Easter Eggs" found in some video games do just that, we should not be following the bad example of such video games.
> We want to build a community.
> Fun events - such as contests, or Easter Eggs - help increase a feeling of belonging and community for a lot of people. It keeps people engaged and people bond over events, or meet new people while comparing high scores.
> There's a reason we call our various sites "communities"; because that's what we're trying to facilitate. And sometimes, that means lightening things up a little (especially around gloablly-recognized fun events like April Fools).
While I agree about the community bonding part, I think it is also important that before doing such events we should ask ourselves: "Are we interested in creating a **diverse and inclusive** global community?"
If yes, this implies we should **not** be giving **importance to any one culture over the multitude of cultures found in the world**. There are so many festivals celebrated by so many cultures, can we celebrate them all? If the answer is no, would it be fair to treat one culture as more important and significant than another? I believe treating minorities with respect is very important for a diverse and inclusive global community.
2. Monica Cellio says in their answer:
> The Codidact team is still very small, and if there's something I can do to help them enjoy what they're doing without diminishing the platform, I'll do it.
From this part of the answer, I think I get the jist is "I'll let the developers do what they want as long as it creates no harm" even if goes against the *broader* community's interests.
> Codidact is by the community, for the community -- please join us if you want to be a bigger part of that.
I don't understand what Monica Cellio is trying to say since I have already asked the question and by definition I am already a part of the community. If Monica Cellio is hinting that I need to be a part of the development team to "join the community", then I can't help but point out it seems there is already a significant conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. It is important that there is no separation or conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. User community *can* contribute to development if they want to, likewise the development team *can* participate on the Q&A if they want to.
~~Development teams should focus on building usable applications for the user community. Development teams should not focus on building something that they, and *only* they enjoy using.~~
If development teams focus on building something they enjoy using there is nothing stopping them from giving themselves extra reputation points for building the platform. In fact, this is already done on Stack Exchange Inc. where **employees** get 101 free reputation points and privileges just for being on the community management team.
**This will not be fair if it is also implemented on Codidact, because the community might also contribute to Codidact.org in some small way like bug fixes without getting anything like "reputation" or "abilities" in return.**
I would suggest instead of trying to get developers to contribute with a fancy pitch or by promising extra special "abilities' or reputation points, try getting developers to use the platform first, so they will automatically be interested in contributing. Many developers hate using Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange since that community is toxic and lacks focus, quality and inclusivity. Create a platform that has **better quality** (a high bar for getting a post accepted) and inclusivity than Stack Overflow, with **zero tolerance** for **unkind and sarcastic remarks** and you solve the problems developers currently face. *Then* developers will be interested in solving the problems the site is facing and will be eager to contribute.
Update:
Monica Cellio says in a comment:
> Similarly, the hidden game here doesn't affect Q&A, profiles, abilities, rep, badges (we don't have badges), or anything else. It's just an extra. Most of the time I neither like nor dislike eggs; they're just there
The hidden game has already affected my Meta Codidact rep negatively, since my posts related to the hidden game tend to get downvoted heavily. The staff user's post related to the hidden game and the posts of those who support the staff user's action of creating a hidden game tend to get upvoted heavily. Is this side effect good or bad?

[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. Serious platforms don't need gamification to survive because they will survive out of interest in the community. I have visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No nonsense on Accellera's forum. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ User profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by professional engineers and for professional engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated. Professional engineers have very good interpersonal skills since they work in teams.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own. Top users seldom upvote correct answers for fear of losing their top position.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack
---
Update: I have found the weakness of this site, and I am disclosing it here:
I would like to refute a few claims in Mithical's and Monica Cellio's answer, and add my perspective after reading their answers.
1. Mithical says in their answer:
>"gamification" is a bit of a different concept from "fun".
While it is true they are slightly different concepts, it is also true that they are intertwined.
I will quote the post ["A note on April 1st"](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) which is seen as "fun" and not gamification by Mithical:
> Therefore, for your own safety: DO NOT try to enter any secret code on April 1st. DO NOT play the game ('cause there is none). DO NOT post your high scores in this thread (because you can't get any (as there is no game)). DO NOT let the Codidactyl touch any sugar (not that there is a danger (because there is no game of course))
Hope no one missed the "game" part in this quote. So it is not only fun but also a kind of gamification.
---
Mithical says in their answer:
> Fun, on the other hand, isn't the same thing as gamification. Fun is an optional thing that encourages community building. People can laugh together about a silly April Fools Easter Egg (which participation in is strictly voluntary; you're not required to use the Konami Code whenever you access the site).
But when strange posts such as "A note on April 1st" are found on Meta Codidact, new users, such as myself, feel alienated and find this site to be very weird and strange. Another user has also commented:
> I would prefer to not have such uh "fun". This day is annoying enough elsewhere.
- Some users from other parts of the world may not even be aware of Fool's day or Easter Eggs and it is *not* a globally recognized event as Mithical says below.
- Other users may know only one meaning of easter egg i.e. the egg shared on Easter Sunday (a religious event). **Trivialising** a religious event of significant importance to the followers of that religion, might **hurt** the sentiments of the people who follow that religion. While the "Easter Eggs" found in some video games do just that, we should not be following the bad example of such video games.
> We want to build a community.
> Fun events - such as contests, or Easter Eggs - help increase a feeling of belonging and community for a lot of people. It keeps people engaged and people bond over events, or meet new people while comparing high scores.
> There's a reason we call our various sites "communities"; because that's what we're trying to facilitate. And sometimes, that means lightening things up a little (especially around gloablly-recognized fun events like April Fools).
While I agree about the community bonding part, I think it is also important that before doing such events we should ask ourselves: "Are we interested in creating a **diverse and inclusive** global community?"
If yes, this implies we should **not** be giving **importance to any one culture over the multitude of cultures found in the world**. There are so many festivals celebrated by so many cultures, can we celebrate them all? If the answer is no, would it be fair to treat one culture as more important and significant than another? I believe treating minorities with respect is very important for a diverse and inclusive global community.
2. Monica Cellio says in their answer:
> The Codidact team is still very small, and if there's something I can do to help them enjoy what they're doing without diminishing the platform, I'll do it.
From this part of the answer, I think I get the jist is "I'll let the developers do what they want as long as it creates no harm" even if goes against the *broader* community's interests.
> Codidact is by the community, for the community -- please join us if you want to be a bigger part of that.
I don't understand what Monica Cellio is trying to say since I have already asked the question and by definition I am already a part of the community. If Monica Cellio is hinting that I need to be a part of the development team to "be a bigger part of that", then I can't help but point out it seems there is already a significant conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. It is important that there is no separation nor conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. User community *can* contribute to development if they want to, likewise the development team *can* participate on the Q&A if they want to.
Development teams should focus on building usable applications for the user community. Development teams should **not** focus on building something that they, and *only* they enjoy using.
If development teams focus on building something they enjoy using, there is nothing stopping them from giving themselves extra reputation points for building the platform. In fact, this is already done on Stack Exchange Inc. where **employees** get 101 free reputation points and privileges just for being on the community management team.
**This will not be fair if it is also implemented on Codidact, because the community might also contribute to Codidact.org in some small way like bug fixes without getting anything like "reputation" or "abilities" in return.**
I would suggest instead of trying to get developers to contribute with a fancy pitch or by promising extra special "abilities' or reputation points, try getting developers to use the platform first, so they will automatically be interested in contributing. Many developers hate using Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange since that community is toxic and lacks focus, quality and inclusivity. Create a platform that has **better quality** (a high bar for getting a post accepted) and inclusivity than Stack Overflow, with **zero tolerance** for **unkind and sarcastic remarks** and you solve the problems developers currently face. *Then* developers will be interested in solving the problems the site is facing and will be eager to contribute.
Update:
Monica Cellio says in a comment:
> Similarly, the hidden game here doesn't affect Q&A, profiles, abilities, rep, badges (we don't have badges), or anything else. It's just an extra. Most of the time I neither like nor dislike eggs; they're just there
The hidden game has already affected my Meta Codidact rep negatively, since my posts related to the hidden game tend to get downvoted heavily. The staff user's post related to the hidden game and the posts of those who support the staff user's action of creating a hidden game tend to get upvoted heavily. Is this side effect good or bad?

#13: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-04-01T17:24:36Z (over 3 years ago)

Copy Link

Raw

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[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. Serious platforms don't need gamification to survive because they will survive out of interest in the community. I have visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No nonsense on Accellera's forum. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ User profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by professional engineers and for professional engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated. Professional engineers have very good interpersonal skills since they work in teams.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own. Top users seldom upvote correct answers for fear of losing their top position.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
~~I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack~~

[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. Serious platforms don't need gamification to survive because they will survive out of interest in the community. I have visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No nonsense on Accellera's forum. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ User profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by professional engineers and for professional engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated. Professional engineers have very good interpersonal skills since they work in teams.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own. Top users seldom upvote correct answers for fear of losing their top position.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack
---
Update: I have found the weakness of this site, and I am disclosing it here:
I would like to refute a few claims in Mithical's and Monica Cellio's answer, and add my perspective after reading their answers.
1. Mithical says in their answer:
>"gamification" is a bit of a different concept from "fun".
While it is true they are slightly different concepts, it is also true that they are intertwined.
I will quote the post ["A note on April 1st"](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) which is seen as "fun" and not gamification by Mithical:
> Therefore, for your own safety: DO NOT try to enter any secret code on April 1st. DO NOT play the game ('cause there is none). DO NOT post your high scores in this thread (because you can't get any (as there is no game)). DO NOT let the Codidactyl touch any sugar (not that there is a danger (because there is no game of course))
Hope no one missed the "game" part in this quote. So it is not only fun but also a kind of gamification.
---
Mithical says in their answer:
> Fun, on the other hand, isn't the same thing as gamification. Fun is an optional thing that encourages community building. People can laugh together about a silly April Fools Easter Egg (which participation in is strictly voluntary; you're not required to use the Konami Code whenever you access the site).
But when strange posts such as "A note on April 1st" are found on Meta Codidact, new users, such as myself, feel alienated and find this site to be very weird and strange. Another user has also commented:
> I would prefer to not have such uh "fun". This day is annoying enough elsewhere.
- Some users from other parts of the world may not even be aware of Fool's day or Easter Eggs and it is *not* a globally recognized event as Mithical says below.
- Other users may know only one meaning of easter egg i.e. the egg shared on Easter Sunday (a religious event). **Trivialising** a religious event of significant importance to the followers of that religion, might **hurt** the sentiments of the people who follow that religion. While the "Easter Eggs" found in some video games do just that, we should not be following the bad example of such video games.
> We want to build a community.
> Fun events - such as contests, or Easter Eggs - help increase a feeling of belonging and community for a lot of people. It keeps people engaged and people bond over events, or meet new people while comparing high scores.
> There's a reason we call our various sites "communities"; because that's what we're trying to facilitate. And sometimes, that means lightening things up a little (especially around gloablly-recognized fun events like April Fools).
While I agree about the community bonding part, I think it is also important that before doing such events we should ask ourselves: "Are we interested in creating a **diverse and inclusive** global community?"
If yes, this implies we should **not** be giving **importance to any one culture over the multitude of cultures found in the world**. There are so many festivals celebrated by so many cultures, can we celebrate them all? If the answer is no, would it be fair to treat one culture as more important and significant than another? I believe treating minorities with respect is very important for a diverse and inclusive global community.
2. Monica Cellio says in their answer:
> The Codidact team is still very small, and if there's something I can do to help them enjoy what they're doing without diminishing the platform, I'll do it.
From this part of the answer, I think I get the jist is "I'll let the developers do what they want as long as it creates no harm" even if goes against the *broader* community's interests.
> Codidact is by the community, for the community -- please join us if you want to be a bigger part of that.
I don't understand what Monica Cellio is trying to say since I have already asked the question and by definition I am already a part of the community. If Monica Cellio is hinting that I need to be a part of the development team to "join the community", then I can't help but point out it seems there is already a significant conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. It is important that there is no separation or conflict of interest between the development team and the user community. User community *can* contribute to development if they want to, likewise the development team *can* participate on the Q&A if they want to.
Development teams should focus on building usable applications for the user community. Development teams should not focus on building something that they, and *only* they enjoy using.
If development teams focus on building something they enjoy using there is nothing stopping them from giving themselves extra reputation points for building the platform. In fact, this is already done on Stack Exchange Inc. where **employees** get 101 free reputation points and privileges just for being on the community management team.
**This will not be fair if it is also implemented on Codidact, because the community might also contribute to Codidact.org in some small way like bug fixes without getting anything like "reputation" or "abilities" in return.**
I would suggest instead of trying to get developers to contribute with a fancy pitch or by promising extra special "abilities' or reputation points, try getting developers to use the platform first, so they will automatically be interested in contributing. Many developers hate using Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange since that community is toxic and lacks focus, quality and inclusivity. Create a platform that has **better quality** (a high bar for getting a post accepted) and inclusivity than Stack Overflow, with **zero tolerance** for **unkind and sarcastic remarks** and you solve the problems developers currently face. *Then* developers will be interested in solving the problems the site is facing and will be eager to contribute.
Update:
Monica Cellio says in a comment:
> Similarly, the hidden game here doesn't affect Q&A, profiles, abilities, rep, badges (we don't have badges), or anything else. It's just an extra. Most of the time I neither like nor dislike eggs; they're just there
The hidden game has already affected my Meta Codidact rep negatively, since my posts related to the hidden game tend to get downvoted heavily. The staff user's post related to the hidden game and the posts of those who support the staff user's action of creating a hidden game tend to get upvoted heavily. Is this side effect good or bad?

#12: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-04-01T05:00:23Z (over 3 years ago)

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[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. Serious platforms don't need gamification to survive because they will survive out of interest in the community. I have visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No nonsense on Accellera's forum. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ User profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by professional engineers and for professional engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated. Professional engineers have very good interpersonal skills since they work in teams.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
~~Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.~~
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack

[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. Serious platforms don't need gamification to survive because they will survive out of interest in the community. I have visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No nonsense on Accellera's forum. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ User profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by professional engineers and for professional engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated. Professional engineers have very good interpersonal skills since they work in teams.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own. Top users seldom upvote correct answers for fear of losing their top position.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack

#11: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-03-31T17:59:30Z (over 3 years ago)

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~~Pros and cons of gamifying Codidact.org~~

What are the pros and cons of gamifying Codidact.org?

#10: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-03-31T17:59:07Z (over 3 years ago)

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[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. I have also visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ Profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
~~This forum is built by engineers and for engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated.~~
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack

[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. Serious platforms don't need gamification to survive because they will survive out of interest in the community. I have visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No nonsense on Accellera's forum. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ User profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by professional engineers and for professional engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated. Professional engineers have very good interpersonal skills since they work in teams.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack

#9: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-03-31T17:55:59Z (over 3 years ago)

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[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. People are incentisived to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. I have also visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ Profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by engineers and for engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack

[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. Stack Overflow users are incentivized to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and extra attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. I have also visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ Profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by engineers and for engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack

#8: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-03-31T17:53:45Z (over 3 years ago)

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[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed.
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. People are incentisived to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. I have also visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ Profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by engineers and for engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack

[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed (StackOverflow.com is a bad example in this post, since it got nothing right).
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. People are incentisived to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. I have also visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ Profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by engineers and for engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack

#7: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-03-31T17:52:40Z (over 3 years ago)

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Pros and cons of gamifying a Q&A site

Pros and cons of gamifying Codidact.org

#6: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-03-31T17:52:13Z (over 3 years ago)

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[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed.
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. People are incentisived to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. I have also visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ Profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by engineers and for engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
~~The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is abusive behaviour.~~
~~In my opinion, excessive gamification and 'fun' or 'easter eggs' should be minimised as much as possible.~~
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities" the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users like suspending them or labelling them. This was witnessed in the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange, which is clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the site are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a circus for monkeys where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
~~I have also made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack~~

[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed.
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. People are incentisived to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. I have also visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ Profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by engineers and for engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is rude and abusive behaviour.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "very high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities", the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users, like suspending them or labelling them or deleting their posts. This was witnessed on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, both of which are clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the sites are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a "monkey circus" where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack

#5: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-03-31T17:45:04Z (over 3 years ago)

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~~Pros and cons of gamifiying a Q&A site~~

Pros and cons of gamifying a Q&A site

#4: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-03-31T17:44:47Z (over 3 years ago)

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~~[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform?~~
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. People are incentisived to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. I have also visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ Profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by engineers and for engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is abusive behaviour.
In my opinion, excessive gamification and 'fun' or 'easter eggs' should be minimised as much as possible.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities" the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users like suspending them or labelling them. This was witnessed in the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange, which is clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the site are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a circus for monkeys where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have also made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack

[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs that promises to build one for April 1st of next year. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform? Is this a community interested in properly celebrating fools' day or interested in helping others learn? Anything in between won't work, since it has already failed.
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. People are incentisived to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. I have also visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ Profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by engineers and for engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is abusive behaviour.
In my opinion, excessive gamification and 'fun' or 'easter eggs' should be minimised as much as possible.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities" the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users like suspending them or labelling them. This was witnessed in the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange, which is clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the site are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a circus for monkeys where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have also made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack

#3: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-03-31T17:42:26Z (over 3 years ago)

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[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform?
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. People are incentisived to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. I have also visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ Profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by engineers and for engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
~~The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is abusive behaviour.~~
In my opinion, excessive gamification and 'fun' or 'easter eggs' should be minimised as much as possible.
~~Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.~~

[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform?
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. People are incentisived to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. I have also visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ Profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by engineers and for engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious users. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow or blurry. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is abusive behaviour.
In my opinion, excessive gamification and 'fun' or 'easter eggs' should be minimised as much as possible.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.
Another very negative behaviour due to gamification and "fun" is this: Generally it is the "high reputation" users and moderators who feel they have a right to have cheesy content, sarcastic content on the Q&A platform and get away with it. Since "high reputation" users have more "privileges" or "abilities" the "low reputation" users cannot question them. When the low reputation users question them for their behaviour, the high reputation users and moderators take "disciplinary action" on the low reputation users like suspending them or labelling them. This was witnessed in the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange, which is clearly not serious enough to be an engineering Q&A site.
When the site are not serious enough, the experts lose interest and leave the platform. The platform then evolves to become a circus for monkeys where there is no real difference between the "high rep" and "low rep" users, since the real experts have already left. Only those interested in fun and in increasing reputation points remain. No serious answers containing code that is secure and actually runs will be found on such a low quality platform. No circuit that is efficient and actually works will be found on such a platform. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7958574
I have also made a study of the inherent weakness in the design of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This can be found here: https://github.com/ShashankVM/meta_stack

#2: Post edited by (deleted user) · 2021-03-31T17:23:18Z (over 3 years ago)

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[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform?
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. People are incentisived to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. I have also visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ Profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by engineers and for engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is abusive behaviour.
In my opinion, excessive gamification and 'fun' or 'easter eggs' should be minimised as much as possible.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.

[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform?
Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. People are incentisived to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and attention.
Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. I have also visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. No advertisements are sold on Accellera's forum. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ Profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/
This forum is built by engineers and for engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated.
If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise
The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is abusive behaviour.
In my opinion, excessive gamification and 'fun' or 'easter eggs' should be minimised as much as possible.
Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.

#1: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2021-03-31T17:21:47Z (over 3 years ago)

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Pros and cons of gamifiying a Q&A site

[https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281235) - A post about easter eggs. Is this site interested in gamification or a serious Q&A Platform?

Gamification (using upvotes, downvotes and reputation) does not allow us to have a serious Q&A Platform. Case study: StackOverflow.com is too focused on gamification, and this has negatively affected the Q&A goal of the site. People are incentisived to gain upvotes, so they try to come up with impressive questions of no practical value, or they enjoy writing cheesy, sarcastic comments on posts to get upvotes on comments. I've also observed the behaviour of including unnecessary and factually incorrect content intended as a joke in otherwise correct answers, to get more upvotes and attention.

Gamification is just a marketing tactic to get people to participate on a commercial platform so that advertisements can be sold. I have also visited and participated in serious forums like accellera.org's SystemC forum that has a razor-sharp focus with minimal to no gamification. See for example: https://forums.accellera.org/forum/14-systemc-tlm-transaction-level-modeling/ Profiles look like this: https://forums.accellera.org/profile/11808-roman-popov/

This forum is built by engineers and for engineers, so it is very serious and no sarcastic comments or abusive behaviour is found or tolerated.

If fun is encouraged or kept as a gray area, those who object to fun will be ridiculed and trolled heavily. Those siding with fun engage in trolling the serious. I have a real-time example of this behaviour on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. See: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/473120/whats-this-noise

The borderline between 'fun' and abusive behaviour will be very narrow. People enjoy having fun at another person's expense. But from another perspective, it is abusive behaviour.

In my opinion, excessive gamification and 'fun' or 'easter eggs' should be minimised as much as possible.

Another behaviour observed due to gamification is downvoting a correct answer that competes with your own.

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