Shared Experience = Shared Knowledge

Heres our first (and a fantastic) contribution to our Pool project over at ABC Pool.

Author Gnangarra is a photographer in Perth Western Australia and has been a long term contributor to the Wikimedia Projects. Theres also some impressive works on Pool which can be found here.

thoughts, ramblings of one who’s contributed to shared knowledge in response to the question “We want to know why you participate…”

IN short to see the potential of user generated content one only needs to look at Wikipedia, looking as I write there are 3,628,351 or there abouts articles that are wholely user created content, these are just the article written in english. There are another 1.2m articles written in deutsch(german) and 1.1m written in french plus an untotalled amount written in another 278 languages. If thats not enough the wikipedia’s draw on the resources of Wikimedia Commons which has over 10,000,000 pieces of free media to illistrate those articles.

So why do I participate, at its simplist because I can, I want to, I see its value. At a more philospohical level its get complex, when I first started it was because I went looking for information only to find I knew more than what was there. To think me a truck driver knew more than an encyclopaedia, I just had to improve its knowledge. Plus it was great place to share my photographs and to gain a challenge to seek out more and varied subject matter.

As time pasted I became more observant of the uses of Wikipedia, one day I observed one of my kids using it, not only that it was an article I had contributed to.What I see now is that what we create today is lasting record of what we know now, we record now.

Recently the Queensland State library contributed 50,000 digital images just two months later their collection was put under threat. If that had been a worst case scenario at least we’d have an archived digital record stored away from the single piece of paper thats survives subject to the whim mother nature. Its the first time in history that information/knowledge can be shared and in a format that doesnt require a perminant physical presence. Even these ramblings will be recorded and shared and archived survive beyond what the written word on paper would.

Does the culture of community participation translate to a gaming world? In some ways yes but its more in the testing and playing side of the equation. Many a successful MMORPG game has developed where people utilise the knowledge of other participants to succeed, through co-operative play and or forumn guides.

The barrier I see to participation in the developement side of the equation is at its simplist the amount of prior knowledge and skill required to participate. Gaming isnt an organic substance that can be developed to whim the contributor its needs to develop so as to ensure all parts work the same , play together and theres a continuaty across the game. This requires organisation, its requires oversight, it requires clear paths and planned outcomes. For all that it needs people in absolute control to make decisions, all the successful models are all commercial, if its commercial then people want reward for effort.