Gamerification in the Community

[Jono Bacon]

On 8 December 2014 at 23:18, Benjamin Kerensa <bkerensa at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Right and just to clarify I did not offer to deploy or even develop the
> integrations point that would be needed. This is something Ubuntu Community
> or Canonical would need to work and integrate.
>
> That being said I do not think the UA model of having accomplishments on the
> desktop or even it were on the phone is the right model. I think having the
> platform be the web is the best way because its accessible from any device
> and not tied to a single platform.

I think you don't quite understand how UA works (don't worry, most
people don't :-)).

The way UA works is that a client (which can run on a desktop, mobile,
web, or anywhere) detects whether an accomplishment has been
accomplished and then generates a .trophy file which is synced to a
"validation server" that verifies that the accomplishment is real (as
in, someone didn't just fake the .trophy file), then it encrypts and
signs the trophy and sends it back to the client where it is
displayed.

Now, one could argue that this could be made easier with a simple
central web service. The downside of this is that you then have a
centralized service that has to know everything about everyone, which
I felt uncomfortable with from a privacy and "building a big
monolithic service" perspective. UA works by merely using a validation
service to prevent faking, but otherwise, the platform is completely
decentralized in how it works and is designed in such a way that
accomplishments can be detected outside of Ubuntu too - anything with
an API works.

As such, while you saw the demos on my desktop, we also had a web view
too - see http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7275/7412260224_77696f352f_z.jpg
as an example.

> Some Ubuntu contributors do not even use Ubuntu as an example but they
> should be recognized too even if they don't use the software they contribute
> to.

Erm, how is someone an Ubuntu contributor if they don't even use Ubuntu?

> If Open Badges is something that folks do want to check out though I am
> certain I can get the folks who hack on it and work with other orgs and
> projects to implement it to do a call with folks from Ubuntu Comm or
> Canonical.
>
> Also detecting is a hard thing to get right and one reason why Karma does
> not solve the problem of recognition is because it cannot detect
> contributions outside of Open Badges but that said Open Badges can connect
> to launchpad using its issuer API.

This is why (according to my understanding) OpenBadges is cool, but
isn't really the hard bit. OpenBadges just makes it easy for everyone
to have a consistent badge spec, which I think is a laudable goal. I
was under the impression that OpenBadges does not provide a way to (a)
detect if a community accomplishment has been made, (b) create a
badge, and (c) verify that badge was not faked. If it *does* do this,
then this would be a a good platform to explore.

Thanks,

    Jono