The weather this weekend has been grand

It’s been a fun weekend. I do love sunny days, with a cool breeze.

Today I present you with some things to think about. Thanks to Melinda at &c. &c. for these most excellent links:

• TED talk from Meg Jay on why 20 is not the new 30
• How to Share Your Cause or Belief Without Being a Total Jerk
• A Facebook Update in Real Life (video)

Also, I have been dancing at the Brisbane Lindy Exchange this weekend. Like last year, it has been a huge success! If you live in Brisbane, you should definitely consider coming along to some of the classes or social events run by Empire Swing.

Dancing at the Old Museum Building

‘Mine is a long and sad tale!’ said the Mouse, turning to Alice and sighing.

‘It IS a long tail, certainly,’ said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse’s tail; ‘but why do you call it sad?’

From chapter 7:

‘Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?’ said the March Hare.

‘Exactly so,’ said Alice.

‘Then you should say what you mean,’ the March Hare went on.

‘I do,’ Alice hastily replied; ‘at least—at least I mean what I say—that’s the same thing, you know.’

‘Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter. ‘You might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see”!’

‘You might just as well say,’ added the March Hare, ‘that “I like what I get” is the same thing as “I get what I like”!’

‘You might just as well say,’ added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, ‘that “I breathe when I sleep” is the same thing as “I sleep when I breathe”!’

‘It IS the same thing with you,’ said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute…

And another, this time from chapter 9:

‘Oh, I know!’ exclaimed Alice, who had not attended to this last remark, ‘it’s a vegetable. It doesn’t look like one, but it is.’

‘I quite agree with you,’ said the Duchess; ‘and the moral of that is—“Be what you would seem to be”—or if you’d like to put it more simply—“Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”’

‘I think I should understand that better,’ Alice said very politely, ‘if I had it written down: but I can’t quite follow it as you say it.’

‘That’s nothing to what I could say if I chose,’ the Duchess replied, in a pleased tone.

‘Pray don’t trouble yourself to say it any longer than that,’ said Alice.

‘Oh, don’t talk about trouble!’ said the Duchess. ‘I make you a present of everything I’ve said as yet.’

And lastly, also from chapter 9:

‘And how many hours a day did you do lessons?’ said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.

‘Ten hours the first day,’ said the Mock Turtle: ‘nine the next, and so on.’

‘What a curious plan!’ exclaimed Alice.

‘That’s the reason they’re called lessons,’ the Gryphon remarked: ‘because they lessen from day to day.’

That was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little before she made her next remark. ‘Then the eleventh day must have been a holiday?’

‘Of course it was,’ said the Mock Turtle.

‘And how did you manage on the twelfth?’ Alice went on eagerly.

‘That’s enough about lessons,’ the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided tone: ‘tell her something about the games now.’

The eeePad slider is an Android tablet with a sliding hardware keyboard

I was surprised at how difficult it was to find clear instructions about gaining root access to my device. As it turns out, the process is the same as for the eeePad Transformer, which uses the same firmware. I first had to revert it to an older firmware (in the newer firmware, ASUS has patched the vulnerability). After that the process was quite straightforward.

Following these instructions to replace the keyboard layout with a Dvorak one didn’t seem to work, until I read this page, which explained that on this device Android only respects the keyboard layout file when the “ASUS keyboard” option is selected as the input method. This is somewhat annoying; it means I have to choose between ASUS keyboard which has a QWERTY soft keyboard and now lets me type Dvorak on the hardware keyboard, and AnySoft Keyboard which has software Dvorak, but results in QWERTY on the hardware keyboard. I’m sure there’s a way around this, but I haven’t yet spent the time figuring it out. For now I’m happy to have hardware Dvorak working at all.

Also useful: remounting the file system as read/write.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Could you help me out with some change so I can catch a train home to Victoria Point?’

‘How about I buy you a ticket?’ I asked. I began walking with him back towards the ticket vending machine. I explained, ‘I’m hesitant to give anyone cash, because I don’t know what they’ll do with it.’ I was being polite. What I really meant was ‘There’s no way I’m going to give cash to a stranger in the city.’

It was some way back to the ticket machine, and he was walking considerably more slowly than my usual pace. I tried to engage him in conversation.

‘So what have you been doing here in the city?’

‘Catching up with a friend’, he replied. That might have been true. I wondered if he’d thought of asking his friend for change before setting out for the train station.

We walked together for a few more seconds before he broke the silence.

‘Or you could top up my go card. It’s cheaper that way… My go card’s on negative at the moment.’ He opened his wallet and started rifling through it as we walked. ‘It should be a concession one, but for some reason it’s not… Because I have a concession card… I can’t find my go card… Oh, here it is.’

We were getting closer to the ticket machine. I asked, ‘What was your name?’

‘I’m Nick,’ he replied.

‘I’m Josh,’ I said.

We reached the ticket machine. I took the go card from him and followed the prompts on the machine’s screen to top it up.

‘The trip home’s eight dollars,’ he said, ‘so you could put ten dollars on it.’ The machine only allowed adding value in increments of five dollars.

‘How about I put twenty dollars on there so you have a bit extra?’ I asked, as I selected that option and fed some cash into the machine.

‘Wow, thank-you!’ he said as I handed the card back to him. ‘You’re a goddess!’

He realised what he’d said and stumbled to correct himself. ‘No, you’re not a… Not goddess, you’re not a woman.’ I laughed, and clapped him on the shoulder.

‘Have a great day!’ I said, and I shook his hand. As I turned to resume my trip to work, I was still smiling at his choice of words.

It was a cheerful start to my day.

A character from habitrpg

This got me thinking about gamification as a whole, and what problems it could be usefully applied to. My thoughts turned to issue tracking systems. I think that a gamified issue tracker could be very helpful, especially for an open source software project.

But I Already Report Bugs

Gamification can be used to give users extra motivation to do certain tasks. For example, I might try to make my Stack Overflow question clear because I earn reputation points when people vote for my question.

But users want the product to work, so they already have motivation to report bugs—provided of course that think it probable that the developers will do something about their bug report. And users with ideas for improving a product already have motivation to pass their suggestions to the developers, though in some cases the obstacles for doing so make it not seem worth the effort. So what good would gamification be for an issue tracker?

Dealing With Old Tickets

The longer you leave a Todo in habitrpg, the more experience points and gold it becomes worth to complete that Todo. One of the biggest problems I’ve seen in the use of issue tracking systems (in every project I’ve ever been involved in) is the issue of old tickets. Invariably, some tickets seem like a lot of work for not much reward. In a business setting, these don’t get done because of perceived lack of return on investment. In an open source setting, developers are more likely to choose to work on easier or more exciting tasks. The end result is that every so often someone has to trawl through old tickets, half of which are no longer relevant, and decide what to do with them.

What if closing bug tickets became more worthwhile (in terms of game motivations) the longer the ticket remained open? That way developers would have the motivation to look at older tickets, and at the very least decide whether they should be closed as “won’t fix”. Naturally, you’d need to temper the motivation to just close every ticket, so an accountability system might be in order (perhaps one other developer reviewing the close, or perhaps multiple developers up- or down-voting the close).

Inviting New Developers

In many open source projects, there is a perceived barrier of entry to the community of developers. As with any new community, newcomers are uncertain what’s expected and appropriate. What if every ticket on the issue tracker was a “quest” that users could embark on? The quest page could include clear instructions for how to contribute code to the project. On your first adventure there could even be a side quest of subscribing to the mailing list or introducing yourself on the irc channel or whatever’s appropriate for your community. That way it’s not only clear to newcomers how to get involved, but they know that there’s a reward for involvement.

Communicating with Users

I have reported bugs for some products, and never seen a response from a developer. The only responses I’ve seen have been from other users saying “me too”. If no developer is assigned to the bug, we might rely on the mechanic introduced above where older tickets are worth more. But what if a developer accepts a bug ticket, and then becomes distracted with life and things? Everyone, including other developers, might assume that work is being done on the task, but as a user how do I tell?

In a gamified issue tracker, this could be dealt with by rewarding the ticket owner for posting regular updates, or perhaps even penalising them for not posting regular updates. Before accepting a quest, it could be made clear to the developer that this is a commitment, and in-game motivations could be introduced to make it more worthwhile for a developer to withdraw from a quest so that another developer can accept it than to keep a ticket assigned without working on it. And if things are getting done but the going is slow, at least the users would know about it.

Rating New Ideas

If users are suggesting new ideas on the issue tracker, why not get them to evaluate each other’s ideas? Give people motivation to say how they think other people’s ideas will add to or detract from the software. Let people vote for each other’s ideas and evaluations. That way the users are a part of the process, and they make your job of prioritisation just a little bit easier. The rewards for implementing these new ideas could then be set (probably manually, but perhaps automatically depending on your project) based on user reactions to the idea.

Sounds Good, Where Can I Download It?

This is only an idea. I haven’t implemented it and I probably won’t get a chance to even look at it for at least a few months. By then I may well have other interesting toy projects to fiddle with. If you’re interested in helping to make this a reality though, let me know! I’m more likely to work on projects which have others willing to play a part.

There are a few existing pieces of software that combine bug tracking with gamification. The two I can find information about are:

• RedCritter: non-free, and from the review it looks a bit clunky and not as community-oriented as I’d have made it
• JIRA Hero: adds badges and achievements to the non-free JIRA project tracker

Further Reading

In my search for existing products of this kind, I came across these two articles which both suggest use of gamification in issue trackers, this article which lists a few other gamified software tools, and this article about how gamification should be used and when it should not be.

Reason #1. Inbox vs. Fire Hose

Blogs and YouTube channels offer web feeds which I can subscribe to. I can group my feeds based on topic, and I read some topics more frequently than others. For some feeds I like to read every single article. For some feeds I might skip over 50 articles because I have a backlog and I’m just not that interested. One important thing about my feed reader is that I can see which articles I haven’t read, and I therefore have control about how and when I read the articles.

Social media websites largely do not offer web feeds. Instead, they offer their own list of posts from “friends”, or from people I’ve subscribed to. The trouble is, neither Facebook nor Google Plus have any way for me to keep track of which posts I haven’t seen. Sure, I can organise my contacts into groups (it takes fewer clicks on Google Plus), but I can’t use that to organise posts because there’s no easy way to show all posts from one group of contacts. But even if there was, I can’t find posts I haven’t yet read. It’s disorganised and unorganisable and my reaction is to not waste my time trying to stay up to date on either Facebook or Google Plus.

Reason #2: Threshold of Quality

On average, people think before they post blog articles or YouTube videos. If they do not, I am less likely to subscribe to their web feeds. On average, people do not think before they post status updates to Facebook or Google Plus.

Reason #3: Confounded Meaning

What is a “friend”? What do I want to regularly read about on the Internet? Are the two intrinsically linked together? Surely I want to read about every detail of the lives of all of my “friends” as they happen! So Facebook would have you believe.

What About Twitter?

All of my musings so far have been on why I don’t consume much from Facebook or Google Plus. Twitter is different. I don’t consume from Twitter because it distracts me and I can’t keep up. I have friends who find it less distracting and who keep up easily. Not everyone is built the same.

So What?

That depends… If you want me to hear what you’re up to or interested in, get a blog and write quality posts. Oh, and let me know about your blog. On the other hand, if you don’t care about attracting readers like me, then please, carry on.

• Gunnerkrigg Court – fantasy webcomic with amazing artwork and brilliant storyline
• Lady Sabre and the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether – steampunk webcomic
• The Lizzie Bennet Diaries – modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice
• Space Janitors – janitors on a space station in a Star Wars-esque universe
• Schlock Mercenary – sci-fi webcomic about people who like shooting things
• TableTop – celebrities playing board games with Wil Wheaton
• Space Trawler – sci-fi webcomic about modern-day humans being forced into the middle of alien politics

Enjoy!

To whet your appetite, here are a few details about the game:

• pieces only ever move one square at a time, but each player can make up to four moves before ending their turn
• all the pieces except rabbits (pawns if you’re using a chess set to play) follow the same rules as one another, but with an order of superiority when they interact
• to win the game, you need to get a single rabbit to the far edge of the board

You can learn the rules, and play online against other players or bots at http://arimaa.com/.

I was first introduced to this system of describing people around ten years ago. I read a book about it and concluded that it was interesting, but the background theory was abstract, ungrounded and unprovable. One thing I did admire about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was that, in having so many categories, it was much more likely to offer adequate descriptions of people than other simpler systems. I also found that I could relate more readily to one of the sixteen types of Myers-Briggs than to any of the nine types of the Enneagram.

When I first came across Myers-Briggs typology I concluded, with the encouragement of friends, that I fell squarely into the INTP category. The description fitted me very well, and it still does. Today when I take the 72-question test on humanmetrics.com, more often than not I end up being labelled as INTJ, with quite a strong score in J. And the description for INTJ also fits me quite well.

I don’t put much store on personality quizzes; they are never designed or worded carefully enough for my liking. But for theoretical reasons, the idea that I’m sometimes INTP, sometimes INTJ is intriguing. Despite appearing to differ by only one letter, INTP and INTJ are supposed to imply very different things. The dominant cognitive function of an INTP is supposed to be introverted thinking (Ti), with an auxiliary function of  extroverted intuition (Ne). In contrast, an INTJ’s dominant and auxiliary functions are supposed to be introverted intuition (Ni) and extroverted thinking (Te). The theory says that INTPs and INTJs direct their thinking and intuition along opposing “attitudes” to one another. At risk of over-simplification, let me put it like this: it’s not supposed to be possible to have a mid-point between INTP and INTJ.

I like learning things, and I see huge benefits in understanding oneself better, but I never bother trying to guess which of the 16 categories my friends fall into. I endeavour to relate to each person as an individual.

Now my challenge to you, dear reader, is to determine based on this article and whatever else you know about me whether (a) I am an INTP; (b) I am an INTJ; (c) I fall into one of the other 14 categories; (d) the theory is flawed; or (e) there’s not enough information to make a judgement in this matter. I also understand if you decline my challenge because you endeavour to relate to each person as an individual.