Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Users Search
Help Dashboard Sign In Sign Up
Q&A Blog
Q&A
Posts Tags Edits
Ask Question

Welcome to Codidact Meta!

Codidact Meta is the meta-discussion site for the Codidact community network and the Codidact software. Whether you have bug reports or feature requests, support questions or rule discussions that touch the whole network – this is the site for you.

Post History

70%
+5 −1
Q&A What are the pros and cons of gamifying Codidact.org?

I want to supplement Mithical's answer, with which I agree. Broadly speaking, Codidact has three major pieces, all essential: its communities, without which none of the rest of this would matte...

posted 3y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  edited 3y ago by Monica Cellio‭

Answer
#2: Post edited by user avatar Monica Cellio‭ · 2021-04-01T13:34:36Z (over 3 years ago)
response to comments
  • I want to supplement [Mithical's answer](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281239#answer-281239), with which I agree.
  • Broadly speaking, Codidact has three major pieces, all essential:
  • - its communities, without which none of the rest of this would matter
  • - the platform itself (the code that runs our communities)
  • - the development team, the people who contribute to this non-profit project
  • (There's also the Codidact Foundation, the non-profit legal entity that protects us from the whims of stockholders seeking profits, but that's more tangential in *this* discussion.)
  • I want to focus on this last part: the development team. Codidact isn't a company that can hire people to do assigned work; we exist because people are willing to volunteer their time and talents, sometimes in large quantities over extended periods of time. This is a gift that I'm grateful for every day.
  • People can be stressed, can have other demands in their lives, or need to take a lighter load for a period of time. The wellbeing of our team members is essential; if any of our volunteers felt too much pressure from the demands of the project, we would all lose. If any of our team members need a break, or want to do something small and perhaps lower priority before diving into the next big thing or the most urgent demand, I support that.
  • Was an April Fool's game on our roadmap? Not particularly. Am I ok with a developer who wanted a "fun" break spending a few hours on it anyway? Absolutely.[^1] I never want to take our volunteers for granted, and I never want them to feel that the priorities we've set are so much of a burden that they're not enjoying working on the project any more.[^2] 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. I wasn't looking for a game, but I stand by it. Besides, now that it's there, I'm looking forward to playing it in a few hours.
  • This is a good time for a pitch: if you're interested in helping us to improve the platform, which is built with Ruby on Rails, HTML/CSS, and Javascript, please let us know or peruse our [GitHub issues](https://github.com/codidact/qpixel/issues) and let us know if you want to work on one of them. We all want to build a good platform that supports a variety of communities; we welcome new contributors at any time, whether it's to fix one or two bugs or to build out major pieces. Codidact is *by the community, for the community* -- please join us if you want to be a bigger part of that.
  • [^1]: This game had a predecessor; when our downtime for the abilities rollout was dragging along, somebody spent an hour or so writing a little game that we could put up as both a "yes we're down, sorry" notice and something lighthearted for the community. The new game builds on that work, so while I haven't asked, I don't imagine it took much additional time to build.
  • [^2]: I'm not saying anybody had reached this point. Even if someone had and I knew about it, it wouldn't be mine to share. Please read this in the general terms in which it was written.
  • I want to supplement [Mithical's answer](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281239#answer-281239), with which I agree.
  • Broadly speaking, Codidact has three major pieces, all essential:
  • - its communities, without which none of the rest of this would matter
  • - the platform itself (the code that runs our communities)
  • - the development team, the people who contribute to this non-profit project
  • (There's also the Codidact Foundation, the non-profit legal entity that protects us from the whims of stockholders seeking profits, but that's more tangential in *this* discussion.)
  • I want to focus on this last part: the development team. Codidact isn't a company that can hire people to do assigned work; we exist because people are willing to volunteer their time and talents, sometimes in large quantities over extended periods of time. This is a gift that I'm grateful for every day.
  • People can be stressed, can have other demands in their lives, or need to take a lighter load for a period of time. The wellbeing of our team members is essential; if any of our volunteers felt too much pressure from the demands of the project, we would all lose. If any of our team members need a break, or want to do something small and perhaps lower priority before diving into the next big thing or the most urgent demand, I support that.
  • Was an April Fool's game[^1] on our roadmap? Not particularly. Am I ok with a developer who wanted a "fun" break spending a few hours on it anyway? Absolutely.[^2] I never want to take our volunteers for granted, and I never want them to feel that the priorities we've set are so much of a burden that they're not enjoying working on the project any more.[^3] 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. I wasn't looking for a game, but I stand by it. Besides, now that it's there, I'm looking forward to playing it in a few hours.
  • This is a good time for a pitch: if you're interested in helping us to improve the platform, which is built with Ruby on Rails, HTML/CSS, and Javascript, please let us know or peruse our [GitHub issues](https://github.com/codidact/qpixel/issues) and let us know if you want to work on one of them. We all want to build a good platform that supports a variety of communities; we welcome new contributors at any time, whether it's to fix one or two bugs or to build out major pieces. Codidact is *by the community, for the community* -- please join us if you want to be a bigger part of that.
  • [^1]: *Game*, not *gamification*. Gamification is a practice where site features encourage certain competitive behaviors, like collecting badges or increasing reputation/karma/likes. Gamification has game-like elements (hence the name), but a game is not inherently gamification. For example, this opt-in one-day game doesn't produce any visible effects on the main site at all. Mithical's answer addresses gamification in more detail.
  • [^2]: This game had a predecessor; when our downtime for the abilities rollout was dragging along, somebody spent an hour or so writing a little game that we could put up as both a "yes we're down, sorry" notice and something lighthearted for the community. The new game builds on that work, so while I haven't asked, I don't imagine it took much additional time to build.
  • [^3]: I'm not saying anybody had reached this point. Even if someone had and I knew about it, it wouldn't be mine to share. Please read this in the general terms in which it was written.
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Monica Cellio‭ · 2021-03-31T23:48:42Z (over 3 years ago) 
I want to supplement [Mithical's answer](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/281239#answer-281239), with which I agree.

Broadly speaking, Codidact has three major pieces, all essential:
- its communities, without which none of the rest of this would matter
- the platform itself (the code that runs our communities)
- the development team, the people who contribute to this non-profit project

(There's also the Codidact Foundation, the non-profit legal entity that protects us from the whims of stockholders seeking profits, but that's more tangential in *this* discussion.)

I want to focus on this last part: the development team.  Codidact isn't a company that can hire people to do assigned work; we exist because people are willing to volunteer their time and talents, sometimes in large quantities over extended periods of time.  This is a gift that I'm grateful for every day.

People can be stressed, can have other demands in their lives, or need to take a lighter load for a period of time.  The wellbeing of our team members is essential; if any of our volunteers felt too much pressure from the demands of the project, we would all lose.  If any of our team members need a break, or want to do something small and perhaps lower priority before diving into the next big thing or the most urgent demand, I support that.

Was an April Fool's game on our roadmap?  Not particularly.  Am I ok with a developer who wanted a "fun" break spending a few hours on it anyway?  Absolutely.[^1]  I never want to take our volunteers for granted, and I never want them to feel that the priorities we've set are so much of a burden that they're not enjoying working on the project any more.[^2]  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.  I wasn't looking for a game, but I stand by it.  Besides, now that it's there, I'm looking forward to playing it in a few hours.

This is a good time for a pitch: if you're interested in helping us to improve the platform, which is built with Ruby on Rails, HTML/CSS, and Javascript, please let us know or peruse our [GitHub issues](https://github.com/codidact/qpixel/issues) and let us know if you want to work on one of them.  We all want to build a good platform that supports a variety of communities; we welcome new contributors at any time, whether it's to fix one or two bugs or to build out major pieces.  Codidact is *by the community, for the community* -- please join us if you want to be a bigger part of that.

[^1]: This game had a predecessor; when our downtime for the abilities rollout was dragging along, somebody spent an hour or so writing a little game that we could put up as both a "yes we're down, sorry" notice and something lighthearted for the community.  The new game builds on that work, so while I haven't asked, I don't imagine it took much additional time to build.

[^2]: I'm not saying anybody had reached this point.  Even if someone had and I knew about it, it wouldn't be mine to share.  Please read this in the general terms in which it was written.