User:LeoRomero/scx

The Wikipedia Social Capital Game: a "Mechanism Design" approach to transforming Wikipedia

Wikipedia, the World's Well of Knowledge, is under attack. Not from without, but from within. The object of this game is to protect Wikipedia from ourselves, for the immediate and ultimate gain of the game's Most Valuable Player: The Reader.

Please Edit as you please, and help us invent this game. Thank you.

Definition of terms

 * Social capital is a form of economic and cultural capital in which human relationships are central, transactions are marked by reciprocity, trust, and cooperation, and market agents produce goods and services not mainly for themselves, but for a common good.
 * Mechanism design is a field in economics and game theory that takes an engineering approach to designing economic mechanisms or incentives, toward desired objectives, in strategic settings, where players act rationally. Because it starts at the end of the game, then goes backwards, it is also called reverse game theory.
 * The Projects: wiki-based projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation (a nonprofit founded in San Francisco in 2003). The Foundation operates many free-software and free-content projects.
 * Game objectives: Institutionalize the Social Capital Market of the Wikipedia Community, with the least amount of regulation, without breaking current rules, in a way that others can replicate, for the immediate and ultimate gain of our Readers.

Assumptions
Premises, upon which whole arguments are built, are easier to discredit when they are stated as simply as possible, preferably in the form of equations. We state our Assumptions precisely. You might agree or disagree. But at least we should agree on what we agree or disagree.


 * Wikipedia = Best Game Ever!
 * Wikipedia = Fun. In this playground, we play games (not gaming-games, but game-games), while making Wikipedia better for our Readers.
 * Responsibility = Trust. When we can be held responsible for our behavior, we are more likely to play nice, and play well, with each other.
 * Trust > Privacy. If we must surrender some privacy to make Wikipedia trustworthy, then that's what we ought to do.
 * Wikipedia = War = Bad. We propose an end to "Edit Wars" and all other forms of compensatory machoism which entrench our warlike behavior.


 * Wikipedia = Social Capital Exchange (SCX) = Good. We had previously proposed that Wikipedians think instead of our Community as a "market" in Social Capital.


 * Wikipedia = Free SCX = Better. We said that this kind of market - where the "bottomline" is the Common Good - ought to be as free as it can possibly be. Unregulated, unfettered, unconstrained.
 * Free SCX = Free World. Our hypothesis is this: with a free social capital market at the center of the Wikipedia Community, Wikipedians can fix our pressing problems, release our power to change the world, open bigger markets for Wikipedians, and more opportunities to Live the Dream.
 * What's that dream again? A world where we all share our knowledge, where all knowledge is free.

Weaknesses & Threats
Source: Criticism of Wikipedia, Academic studies about Wikipedia
 * Content
 * Factual reliability
 * Lack of methodical fact-checking
 * Systemic bias in coverage
 * Neutral point of view and conflicts of interest
 * Gender bias
 * Racial bias
 * Politics and ideology
 * Huge and ancient content backlogs
 * Quality of writign
 * Teaching-criticism-praise.png]]Community
 * Politics and ideology
 * Gender bias
 * Racial bias
 * Neutral point of view and conflicts of interest
 * Exposure to political operatives and advocates
 * Privacy
 * Lack of verifiable identities
 * Hostile environment
 * Level of debate, edit "wars" and harassment
 * Power plays
 * Consensus and the "hive mind"
 * Excessive rule-making
 * Social stratification
 * Misuse

Strengths & Opportunities
We have lots of strengths to celebrate, but right now, we're fixing problems and creating opportunities. For Opportunities, please read on.

SCX by the numbers
we don't need no stinkin' "metrics"
 * Real-time updates on data used to quantify the strengths, weaknesses, problems and opportunities above
 * Measures of Content
 * quality of knowledge
 * quality of writing
 * diversity of subject
 * progress on low-attention topics
 * progress on backlogs
 * 5_steps_to_a_happier_life.jpg and Leo Romero, based on The Happiness Hypothesis by Jon Haidt.]]Measures of Community
 * SCX index - tracks changes in Social Capital over time
 * Player's Net Worth over time - f.e in terms of persistent word views (PWV) for Content - measured in Social Capital Bucks (SCs/SoCs)
 * subjective well-being - see image At least 5 hard steps to a happier life
 * diversity
 * rule reduction and simplification
 * transition to real names, identities, histories

Goal of the game
Institutionalize the Social Capital Market of the Wikipedia Community, with the least amount of regulation, without breaking current rules, in a way that others can replicate, for the immediate and ultimate gain of our Readers.

Players

 * 1) Bot - our Robot Overlords, who protect the SCX from Pricks; usually, a Cred/Lab
 * 2) Buyer - person (inc coprporations) who pays for edits
 * 3) Car - a Charity; a Wikipedian who does Pro work for free; can play Cred
 * 4) Cred - a Car with above-average social capital
 * 5) Lab - lab coats; the Wikimedia Foundation, as a group of Cars & Creds with (limited) superpowers
 * 6) Prick - someone who pokes holes through Wikipedia's Well of Knowledge
 * 7) Pro - a Paid editor; a Wikipedian who receives cash to edit Wikipedia; can play Car or Cred
 * 8) Reader - person who is
 * 9) an innocent reader of Wikipedia articles
 * 10) ignorant of inside-games which produced said articles
 * 11) usually a Free Rider
 * 12) the Player who makes the least amount of moves in the Game, other than reading
 * 13) the Most Valuable Player in the Game

The Social Capital Exchange
all legal transactions take place at the SCX, and only at the SCX

Wikipedia as a social enterprise [insert brain here]

Rules of the Exchange
''We are not total Anarchists (if only). We do have some rules - a very, very few.''
 * To play, you must be you. And thus you must:
 * be transparent, inc conducting all transactions "on-wiki"
 * use one and only one UserName across The Projects
 * make it easy for other Players to see all your contributions, via all Names/IPs, across all projects
 * provide other ways to verify your identity (personal website, social media avatars, DNA, a.s.o)
 * make it easy for other players to see your social relationships and interactions online
 * If you are a Pro, you must abide by Community and WMF rules, esp Paid editing (policy). You may also play Car or Cred.

Sample game 1: History of peaceful revolutions
Players: Transactions at the SCX:
 * Sister Maria (Buyer)
 * David (Pro/Cred)
 * Loretta (Cred)
 * Bots (Bot)
 * apl.de.ap, Bruno Mars, Juan Tamad, Maria Clara (Readers)

Questions, comments, suggestions, insults
Or just fix this as you please, please. - Thanks again; Loretta/LeoRomero (talk) 09:10, 11 December 2015 (UTC) - RfC Fact Check - {Ping}ing principal authors of Social capital - did we did we define "Social Capital"  precisely? - Thanks; Loretta/LeoRomero (talk) 22:04, 11 December 2015 (UTC) - RfC Fact Check - {Ping}ing principal authors of Mechanism design - did we define "Mechanism Design" precisely? - Thanks; Loretta/LeoRomero (talk) 22:14, 11 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Pong. My last edit on that was 8 ya but my interest is rekindled, will look at in more depth shortly. Lycurgus (talk) 05:16, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

-