Wikipedia talk:TWA/Portal/Archive/1

Your feedback

• Very Cool, but instead of having the badges, How about some Userboxes as well?

For Example:

EditorThis User Has Earned the Editor Badge on the Wikipedia Adventure

The Badges Take up Space on my User Page, So I'm Adding Stuff Like These! Titusfox

• Quick note/question: the game says Wikipedia's the fifth largest website, but when I look it up online (for example, on Alexa), it reads as the sixth largest. Was this just something that applied when the game was first created? Booyahhayoob (talk) 06:01, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
• Fun game! I finally added a user page because of it. :) Note, with the Visual editor on, I couldn't progress past the 'Make it Better' bug that asks you to edit your User Page again. I kept clicking Edit for the visual editor and it didn't like that. Some reference in the text to clicking Edit Source if you have VE enabled would be great. Is this part of the Guided Tour extension? I'm building a MediaWiki for my students and would love to use the same fun guided tour for them as well! MarkJurgens

  Hi MarkJurgens, that's a good suggestion, please see: [1]. I'm very curious, since Visual editor is only available in opt-in beta, how/why you happened to have it on (most of our new editors do not, at least at this point). The Wikipedia Adventure is a guided tour built with the mediawiki guided tour extension, but it's hosted locally on English Wikipedia in a mediawiki javascript file that I wrote: Mission 1, etc.. You ccould have your students play TWA on Wikipedia and then transfer those skills to a local wiki. Or the code is free to use and reuse, so you could install guided tours yourself and then copy the TWA code and all of the associated files to your local wiki. I've never done that before, but it should be technically possible. Thanks for your feedback and let me know if I can help. Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 02:10, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

• Cool game! Friendly and simple without being patronising! Keep up the good work! BinarySquareRoot (talk) 11:47, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
• I fall in a infinite loop at the step « Click CONTRIBUTIONS ». User:Simon Villeneuve (talk) 13:47, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

  Thanks, Simon Villeneuve, I'm having trouble replicating that bug. It works ok for me in Chrome, however you have to be logged in for it to work, as it says in mission 1. Are you logged in? Let's fix this one... Ocaasi ^{t | c} 14:06, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

  I'm thinking that you're just hitting the <- back button rather than clicking CONTRIBUTIONS as it says. Could I make that more clear? Ocaasi ^{t | c} 14:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

  Hi,
  I'm logged in, as you can see if you take a look at my CONTRIBUTIONS
  I tried twice with Firefox 24.0 and fall in that same infinite loop. I didn't tried with another Internet browser.
  I also tried to click on the "<- back button" many times to try to "recharge" the "CONTRIBUTIONS subroutine" and go out of the infinite loop, without success. Simon Villeneuve (talk) 15:51, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

  Hi Simon Villeneuve, thank for working with me on this. I tried it in Firefox 24.0 and it is working ok. If I'm on 2.13 "Beyond the Watchlist", it sends me to 2.14 "Track your contributions. If I click on the Special:Contributions link at the top right of the page it loads 2.15 "All your work". I'd love it if you could logout, login, and try it again. Perhaps clear your cookies? I wonder if you're loading a cached version of the game before my bugfixing this morning. You're awesome for helping me work this one out! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 16:25, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

• Mmmh.. I'm stuck at the beginning of Lvl 3. If I click to head to earth, nothing happens. --Odeesi (talk) 19:13, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

  Hey Odeesi, consider that  Fixed. I accidentally typed a work in the function call. Please try it again :) Ocaasi ^{t | c} 19:18, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

  Thankies ;) Just been curious about the adventure as I read about it on de:wd:Kurier. Any plans to translate it to the other local wikis? --Odeesi (talk) 19:20, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

  You're welcome, thanks for catching it Odeesi! Interest in translation, yes. Plans, not yet. We are waiting until our beta test in November gives us some data. Do you think DEWP would have interest? Ocaasi ^{t | c} 19:24, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

  Well, even though the german-speaking wikipedia is quite... uhm... conservative if it comes to new stuff (e.g. Visual Editor you need to opt-in to be able to use it), I think since it doesn't affect the daily use of older wikipedians, there shouldn't be any problem from the community side. Furthermore, I (and I only can talk for myself ofc) think it would be a good way to introduce new authors to any language-version of wikipedia. At least in the discussion over there the feedback is quite good. --Odeesi (talk) 19:28, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

  +1 for FRWP. Simon Villeneuve (talk) 12:07, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

• I really like this initiative, but wish it wasn't so adamantly nerdy (the full on sci-fi take). We need more non-nerd Wikimedians (we need the nerdy ones too, but they're likely to mess around with the site anyhow). I'm a semi-nerdy girl and I groaned at how uber-nerdy it looks on first take—it may not be the concept as such as the execution—and I wouldn't feel confident showing it to female friends who I think could help with Wikipedia. Some different options that dial down the metaphors and cartoons perhaps? [DISCLAIMER: I'm only just through the first part, it could well be that I'm won over later on. And I'm well prepared to be challenged on this, it's just my opinion as a non-US female.] Vickytnz (talk) 15:12, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
• I appreciate the fun nature of the game (I'm up to Ch3 now). And I like the sci-fi nature of it because it helps you to realize that you're playing along, not actually interacting with a real person. I'd hate for that to be confusing! Also, all of the women in my life are more into sci-fi than I am, not sure what that says except that it isn't just for boys. ;) In one of the quizzes, I thought the explanation for why one wants to treat people well was a little soft (it makes it a nicer place, or along those lines). IMO, it's also about remaining constructive and doing your part to keep everyone interested in contributing equitably. (Came here from your tweet to McGonigal, who is awesome.) Atdt1991 (talk) 20:42, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
• no bugs so far and being not so informed when it comes to editing have actually learnt some things too. Deadlego (talk) 23:34, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
• I have a suggestion. In this game you give a user only one opinion at mission 2. It's possible that a user doesn't like earth. Now we have three option. Go away, I'm not ready and yes sure. But I believe user should get also some other topic like, sports, current affairs, books, biography etc... Next, you should give users a chance to see all the policy. WP isn't based on only NPOV and Verifiability.. It has vandalism, copyvio etc. too. So users should have a mission on them too. At last this idea is just brilliant. I salute you Sir Ocaasi (Jake Orlowitz) and all other users who made this possible. --Pratyya ^(Hello!) 05:43, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
• It's really nice, I have to say I loved the puns. It's not overly sci-fi, in fact, it's quite whimsical, but I agree that a few other options might be good. Choose your own adventure... especially for more (overly?) serious people who might think that the space theme and exoskeleton bashing are a bit childish :D Other things... Bigger buttons on the "choose your reply" pages: The sudden lack of a forward button left me confused until I realised that I had to select something! Also, sometimes when I edited a page, a step that was clearly supposed to come before "save" appeared after I had done that. Finally, I would leave the "(check your) stats" only partially completed at the end to point out that this isn't the end of the learning curve (not by a long shot :P ). Best of luck, Tomásdearg92 (talk) 04:40, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
• I'm really impressed with this learning tutorial! Great work! Brad Neuberg (talk) 09:25, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
• Awesome idea, great implementation. At the end of Mission 4, leading into Mission 5, the popup reads "Interesting question... What does it mean?", but I don't see a question being referenced. Going back to that point in the game after completing it resulted in the Earth article being in a strange state -- it had references and a reflist from a later mission, then GaiaGirl's biased viewpoint was added at the bottom. Great work, this has a lot of potential!Jwweather4 (talk) 15:02, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

  Hey Jwweather4, thanks for the feedback! You caught a minor but critical error. Step 21 was linking ahead to step 23 and skipping step 22 where the mission 4 question is sent. I fixed it! Thanks :) Ocaasi ^{t | c} 14:44, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

• Enjoyed going through it, and planning to include it as a starter in my WP course. I think a welcome addition would be to warn people how much time they would expect to spend to complete the missions. For the record, it took me approx one hour, with every mission taking between five and ten minutes, the last mission being the longest. Alexandre Hocquet (talk) 23:53, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
• @Ocaasi: Wikipedia:TWA/Earth/History/1 needs an extra line added to it; It misses out the edit bolding the word "earth". --Mdann52talk to me! 14:46, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Also, on a slightly unrelated note, using {{subst|BASEPAGENAME}} may be better and more personal than "GalacticTrekker". --Mdann52talk to me! 14:51, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Great catch on the Bold bug.  Fixed. Which page are you seeing GalacticTrekker on, I thought I removed those? Thanks, Mdann52, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 14:53, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
      • @Ocaasi: here. --Mdann52talk to me! 14:56, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
        • Mdann52, awesome! I've been thinking of how neat it would be to do that for months. Cheers! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 14:59, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
          • @Ocaasi: Feel free to let me know if you want any other tweaks to templates etc. --Mdann52talk to me! 15:02, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
            • @Mdann52:. I'd love tweaks to templates, the more the merrier. I'm not getting this one to work though... try transcluding {{Wikipedia:TWA/MyTalk/5}} onto your talk page, and let me know if you see either the username or the currentdate substituted. Your help is great. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 15:07, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

subst: the template (which the "game" appears to do) works; See [[USer:Mdann52/sandbox}}. --Mdann52talk to me! 15:12, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Brilliant, Mdann52. Thanks for knowing my code better than me ;) (seriously) Ocaasi ^{t | c} 15:15, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

• Really enjoyed the Wikipedia Adventure tutorial! Allowed me to understand the editing process a lot more clearly. If I had to make a suggestion it would involve making slightly more advanced interactive tutorials that involve teaching any necessary HTML coding, how to enter mathematical equations, how to source proper references, etc. that users could optionally undertake if they were unsure how to do so. Otherwise I think it was perfect, great work guys! :) Hence, Killers Tell A Hymn (talk) 12:34, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
• I just recently became aware of this program. I'm a Campus Ambassador so I'm in the business of finding tools to communicate Wikipedia practices to students who are new to editing. I'm curious to know why you seem to be pitching to younger kids. Stylistically I'm not sure college students would appreciate it but your program does seem to introduce some good basic buttonology. I appreciate the warning at the start that edits will be made via the program, as I wasn't otherwise expecting to find new badges on my userpage. Chris Troutman (talk) 08:20, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
• Definately well done! I would absolutely recommend this to anyone upon first joining Wikipedia, as it illustrates all of the basics, and does so in the form of a game! I only noticed one bug (which I'm assuming is the result of MediaWiki/Wikipedia updating something past the point when this was finished): on the step where it teaches you how to add wikilinks to the headers, doing it the way the editor wants, it turns "==Shape and structure== into [[Circumfrence]]==Shape and structure==, when I believe it should actually be [[Circumfrence|==Shape and structure==. Ideally, the script would just need to tell users to copy the original text from the headers into the "Text to Display" field in the linking box, however since it doesn't currently, MediaWiki default is to ignore it and just place the link as plain text in front of the headers (which also messes up the headers). I'd actually fix it myself, but I do not know much javascript (at all), and I'm pretty sure I'd end up doing more harm than good! XD Again, well done, and if I get anyone new to start using Wikipedia, I'm absolutely sending them here to learn the basics! k2trf (talk) 10:02, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

  Hey, K2trf! Thanks for the feedback. This was a bug on my part caused by unclear instructions. I want you to link the word inside the paragraph, not in the section header/title itself. So it should look like [[circumference]] in the body of the section Shape and Structure rather than [[Circumference|==Shape and Structure==]]. I've updated the steps in that tour here: [2]. Is that more clear? Thanks for playing and for the feedback :) Ocaasi ^{t | c} 13:18, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

  Ohhhh! That's loads clearer - with it instructing to highlight the section header, and then wikilink it, it just dropped the link in front (as I described); if it had said to click below the section headers, and then do it, that would absolve that bug in it's entirety! k2trf (talk) 13:28, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

  EDIT: Actually, that's a step in the right direction, but it should still probably say "Place your cursor below one at a time in the article" instead of it currently saying "Highlight one at a time in the article" in the bottom paragraph - that's what tripped me up specifically! :) k2trf (talk) 13:30, 9 December 2013

• Dis game iz sweet! User:Unknown269
•  Fixed Minor typo in Mission 3. Missing space, "thenclick" should be "then click" Djembayz (talk) 01:43, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Over the past week I've been making my way through TWA, a few missions at a time, and as of yesterday afternoon I've completed the cosmic journey. I took notes as I went, posing questions and comments, which I've cleaned up and I present here. I had also taken screen shots when I'd first planned to email these, so please ask for more details if you can't find what I'm describing. And since my feedback is a bit more extensive, I'm going to advance my bullets one level for clarity. Let's go!

• I think the default blue field is too tall in most cases, for most screens, especially because it pushes the mission list so far "below the fold". I understand that in some steps of the game, it simply must be taller, and that's fine—I just think it should adjust to the height actually necessary for the elements included at each stage.

Yes, this has been mentioned once before and it's on the to-fix list.

• The little alien host character is pretty abstract; I found myself staring at him (?) and trying to figure what he was about. Sunglasses and antlers I got. The little circle is his mouth? Why is his arm shaped like that? I found him a little distracting, though this is probably a minor issue.

We like Sophy, the gender-neutral, race neutral friendly galatic galaxy guide avatar. I agree he's a little weird. Hopefully more interesting than distracting, but I recognize that it's a bit of an eclectic design

• When I first encountered this dialogue box, I was confused

"When you play this game, you’ll send some messages to your personal Wikipedia page, any time you see * in the blue button."

Later, I forgot about what the asterisk meant, as I played over a few days; at the beginning of Mission 4 and upon earning the Advisor badge, I puzzled over this and made notes to myself about it (now condensed to this one).

We've found most people playing through in a single sitting, so perhaps that will lessen the confusion. The asterix is not particularly important. It was actually a compromise to avoid people feeling like the game was doing things behind their back without notification. The asterix also serves as a little heads-up that page load might take longer on those steps than others.

• Noticed this dialogue: "(This adventure always uses edit source)." Appears to be a holdover from Visual Editor being default.

Agree this is a holdover, however we've had some people playing through with Visual Editor enabled in their preferences, so we kept the (note) to avoid people trying to use VEdit, which indeed doesn't work.

• A dialogue box continues the following: "The history is like a watchlist..." But wait, do we know what a watchlist is yet? I think most likely not.

Yes, the watchlist is presented in mission 2, and the history in a subsequent mission.

• In the dialogue box "This looks familiar!" the later phrase "what happened in the edit summary" a bit hard to understand. Suggest possibly changing this to "and often an explanation of what was changed, in the edit summary".

Nice tweak, will address.

• In the dialogue box that says "you could click the prev link in that line" I'd suggest putting "prev" in quotation marks or, maybe better, italics. In a later dialogue box, a similar mention of "DIFF" is put in all caps. And this again is confusing a bit later when the command "SAVE" is in all caps. What I'm saying: game-wide copy-edit for consistency could help clear up possible confusion. If there's a spreadsheet which would make this convenient, I can volunteer myself for the task.

Nice tweak, agree Prev should be emphasized. In general, we CAPITALIZED words that the user needed to take action on. I think you're right that 'Diff' and 'Pref' should not be capitzlied, sinc there's no action to take.

• In the dialogue which discusses "comparing between two distant versions" the impression is given that this will be addressed later. Thing is, it's not, and the way this stage of the game is set up it's actually missing the real radio button which appears on the History page. I'd recommend saying this is more advanced, something to check into later—or maybe just axe it. I very rarely use this feature myself.

You're on point here, and duly noted that the lack of radio buttons is confusing. I like your 'more advanced' idea, or just cutting it. Will ponder.

• In the dialogue which begins "It's easy once you get the hang of it..." I would prefer a different emphasis. It's not that following these rules are, but if one does stick around long enough, one will certainly find people who do have trouble following it? So, here's one where I'd place a small cautionary note—just because it's meant to be simple doesn't mean it's always easy.

Interesting take. I wanted people to feel like these rules were indeed learnable. I'm not sure I want to emphasize that many who wander into our community will not have a grasp of them, moreso that those who do put in the effort will be rewarded with a level of competence.

• I noticed that, in Mission 5, when one is presented with the option to choose among responses on the Verifiability question, the dialogue box that says "Challenge yourself" with arrow to send you backward lingers. It doesn't have any use on this page that I can tell. Is this a bug? (Note: I have a screen shot of this.)

This is a semi-bug. It's the only way to have the dialog present through both steps of the galactic challenge, even though going back is often not needed. Minor, but should be eventually fixed in a future version.

• I noticed that when copying in the more advanced language about the Sun, there are italics in sample text, but shown as italics, so doesn't show up—One spin is called a day and one orbit around the Sun is called a year—so when one copies it over, then the formatting is lost. A small detail, but seems like an oversight. Also, this language appears as 2 grafs when GaiaGirl86 posts it to your Talk page, but here it is 1 paragraph. Also unnecessarily distracting.

Good call here. I'll look into fixing that, probably just taking out the italics.

• Late in the game there's a dialogue box in which the button says "Linus' Law?" Only thing, Linus' Law is not previously mentioned, and there is no explanation of who Linus is in this box or any other. Yes, the actual saying is quoted, but they are not connected. Besides that, it's not at all a clear instruction for moving forward. I'd recommend changing the the button title, and including a brief mention (and wikilink) for Linus' Law when it's explained in the next dialogue box.

Nice catch here, will do. I thought the title/emphasized text were enough but I'll make the connection more clear.

• A wording suggestion for Mission 7: "We only capitalize the first word of a section heading, unless it's a proper noun." This is actually perfectly fine by itself, although I wonder if it might help to note "this is called 'sentence case' because sentences operate the same way" to preview a phrase editors might come across later.

• I noticed the game uses British English for "urbanisation" although the enWP article is actually Urbanization. Meanwhile, I'd started to add the brackets manually (before I rememebered the game wanted me to use the editing tools, and Safari really really wanted me to "correct" the spelling.

Nice catch, I should probably default to american spelling, particularly if browser's are going to catch it.

• There is a note that "plate tectonics" should only be wikilinked on first mention, but a similar advisory could be made re: "convection" which also appears more than once in the article text.

Nice catch, will add the same note.

• I may be wrong here, but does the game use or explain the word "wikilink"? If yes, disregard this entire note. If no, I think this is common enough terminology that it would be very useful to mention here.

I think so, in mission 1. Will check.

• Late in the game, I noticed that GaiaGirl86's first Talk page message—"Hey thanks for fixing up those typos"—appears above the TOC on the TWA discussion page. Minor issue, maybe fine to leave (as some editors will (annoyingly) do this) but I figured I'd mention it.

Will check, that shouldn't be above the TOC.

• My final question is a general one, and something I did not test at all. In my case, I tried to follow the rules. What happens if someone tries to do otherwise; i.e. intentionally break the game? Like, what if they don't put in all of the headings in Mission 7? Will the game notice this and ask players to complete the task?

Interesting question. It depends how hard they try. In general the game fails gracefully and just doesn't result in a polished final article.

With all that said, I think this does what it sets out to accomplish, and in that it's very good. I think a very casual, step-by-step, guided tour to Wikipedia like this has some real potential.

As an experienced user, I wrote down some notes initially concerned that something had been overlooked (like adding large chunks of text without a citation) only to delete that once I discovered the game was about to deal with just that.

And one more detail: I like how it introduces Wikimedia Commons late in the process, as a way to mention that there are other WMF projects. This kind of natural discovery and "by the way" logical expansion on previously introduced principles seems like it could be very powerful—especially if TWA is expanded to include higher difficulty levels.

Any questions for me about my feedback? Ask away! I'm still mostly on vacation for awhile yet, but reliably in front of a computer again by Sunday. Cheers, WWB (talk) 18:16, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks WWB for this really thorough feedback. I've responded inline. I'm happy to hear more ideas and continue chatting as we develop it. Cheers! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 22:24, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I have no "editing toolbar" with icons . Misibacsi (talk) 17:33, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Some sort of text captions for the sounds would be nice, for accessibility. --AKiwiDeerPin (talk) 05:55, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

• (Grammar-nag mode ON) In "Who writes this Wikipedia?" could you please change "Most importantly, you do" to "Most important..."? See this reference. Thanks. Peter Chastain (talk) 07:14, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

P.S. I love what you have done. Awesome, a huge help to new editors! Peter Chastain (talk) 07:16, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

• The instruction balloons frequently overlie instructions on the page beneath and they refuse to be moved aside.
• Twice in a row I got caught in a loop during Adventure Two. These two balloon-steps keep cycling back and forth between each other:

1. Communication power! Hey, what if you're having lots of conversations at once? How can you keep track of them all? A good problem to have...

2. A solution The Watchlist. Your very own feed of changes to the articles and pages you choose to follow. To follow a page just click the star at the top center of it. When it turns blue, you're following! (You can also set your Preferences to automatically follow any page you edit). Click WATCHLIST.

Thank you, Wordreader (talk) 01:40, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

[I went through Adventure three without a problem Wordreader (talk) 01:51, 13 March 2014 (UTC)]