Good one! …I was hoping the Rescue Princess button would actually do something though, kind of like your nerd rage link. 
–Robert
Wasn’t expecting any new post from you for at least a week… Shouldn’t you be helping out managing that new process? Congratulations btw!
What a coincidence! Many of your posts have me wishing for a comment ranking system ala StackOverflow et al.: you get enormous amounts of comments, and by the time I read a post it’s just not feasible for me to read all (or even most) comments. As you’ve said many times before, the comments are at least as valuable as the original post: I agree, but only a few comments add value (whether informative, funny, or thought-provoking). The rest are me-too’s, repetitions, or rants about sniper rifles.
Can you help us out and let your readers rank comments? It’ll add the above mentioned game quality to it, and let you practice what you preach.
The world largest MMORPG: your life 
You’ll end up with a desktop with loads of connected 3D boxes on it with kids saying:
I know this, it’s unix!
Skizz
@Martin: I suspect the current outsourcing of newborn care is allowing for blog updates. Once the cost/benefit of outsourcing becomes prohibitive, care will be brought inhouse and posting frequency will decrease.
Skizz
Can you help us out and let your readers rank comments? It’ll add the above mentioned game quality to it, and let you practice what you preach.
Sorry, my comment here is indeed a comment that does not contribute to the original post in any way, but might I just remind that comment rating will usually turn into I agree - thumbs up, I disagree - thumbs down -type rating, which will backfire and defeat the original purpose…
Every time I pretend I am Leisure Suit Larry here in the office, I wind up with an HR reprimand…
First, Jeff, thanks for referring to my article. More of that sort here:
http://www.praxagora.com/community_documentation/
The name gives a hint about my own evolution. I named that site a long time ago when I was just thinking about documentation. Doesn’t sound like fun! Now I realize the game is more about interacting with people and educating them. Documentation is one part.
Learning as game playing (good, basic Donald Norman sorts of insights) is a good goal, but I don’t believe all topics can reach that level of interactivity. There are graphical programming tools that might get us there.
For education online, I’m focusing now on the feeling that, when you contribute, you feel that people are listening, that your work is getting used, and that it continues to be relevant over time (by being updated). That adds up to feeling rewarded–and maybe like fun.
The same could be said of an office / workplace environment. To maximize the contribution of your employees, you need to make the environment fun and engaging – otherwise you’ll get zombie-like drones that contribute the bare minimum.
Only if you don’t want to get any work done. (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/don_norman_on_design_and_emotion.html - about half way through)
I’m glad you mentioned IRC! It seems to be a dying fad, like the days of BBS. But I still use it, and have many friends I can go to for technical help or information. It is still a good way to communicate, and it’s still fun to me!
Kudos on the blog!
Re: Stephen Hill
Door Hinge rhymes with Orange.
Google image labeler is an extreme example of this!
ìWhen you interact with other people online … like it or not, you’re participating in the world’s largest MMORPG.î
I donít agree. The essence of any game is that you are pretending to do something other than what you are actually doing. For example, killing a dragon, rather than hitting a keyboard. If you are doing any of the activities mentioned, you are not pretending to do them, but really are doing them ñ thatís the difference between RP and RL.
Personally, I worry about the need to add game like elements to the real world, as it confuses the objective; am I answering a question because I think itís the correct answer and want to help, or am I trying to get as many points as possible.
This reminds me of the gentlemen who came up with the idea of CAPTCHAs which are actually pictures of scanned ancient texts and having people translate them.
I was just recently recommended your blog, and posts like this keep me coming back.
Games are not only fun, but they are usually easy to learn. Easiness is funnier than debugging some bad code or trying to get things to work even though they are a mess.
The online encyclopedia at http://everything2.com had all the game-like features, and started years before Wikipedia, yet which one caught on?
The problem is if you make a site too much like a game, people start gaming the system rather than enjoying the core value of the site. Which then sucks the fun away from the legitimate users.
Even Wikipedia is starting to fall victim to this. Fortunately it’s possible to contribute to WP without participating in the game.
This is phenom happened 15 years ago in education. Edutainment was born of a way to keep kids interested in school. While I will agree that interface is everything and making level one of a game a tutorial is a smart move I disagree that there are gains porting that into productivity. By using ploys to get students (in this case users) to interact the material itself is unintentionally compromised. Time has shown that pandering to the LCD of humanity does not increase returns. Instead your normalize the mean down creating a slow sink to the bottom.
Please keep this in mind if you’re making enterprise grade software. You should expect that there is an enterprise grade human on the other end using the tool.
On the other hand, if you’re making iFart 2.5, scanwiches.com, or a new social feed aggregater have at it as fun is the name of the game. If not, don’t sell yourself and your users short.
I’m reminded of the Algebra Geometry textbook my math profs were writing, A Mathematician in the House of Medici, which was itself a spoof of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I read that text, cover to cover. For enjoyment. I don’t think I even attended half the classes (for completely separate reasons) and I still got an A+ :). That said, there was a normal distribution of grades at the end – I take it some of my classmates didn’t find such literature fun like I did.