What did you think of the 2023 WikiGames? [closed]

Question

This morning at 7 am EST/11 am UTC we concluded our first ever WikiGames!!  We had so much fun planning this inaugural event for the community and loved seeing all the excitement in Discord and in the YouTube hangouts throughout the weekend.  For those who participated, would you take a minute to share your feedback while the experience is fresh in your mind?  Here are some issues to start your thinking.  Of course please do add anything else that comes to mind.

• Should we make WikiGames a regular event?  If so, how often?
• Did you enjoy the hangouts?  Were there enough of these?
• Were the team sizes too big, too small or just right?
• What did you think about the length of the event? (three 23 hour segments)
• Did you like the variety of activities?
• Was the 4 days between the Opening Ceremony on  August 21 and the start of the WikGames on August 25 enough time to get situated with your team?
• What did you think about not knowing the scores until the end?
• Were the rules and procedures clear and fair?

Thank you for sharing your thoughts so that we can take this event even higher if we hold it again.  And, most of all, our shared tree is a bit more vibrant and leafy today thanks to all of the WikiGames participants' efforts!

Answer 1

Wow, what a great weekend for us to come together to expand and improve the world tree outside of our regular research!

I thought this was a great success and would rather it be yearly than every 4 years like the real olympics. Of course with the new Olympic project maybe it could be held Winter and Summer each year.

The hangouts were great, it was nice to hear other people talking for a bit while tunneling through the past in records. I learned something from most of the tips shared on the hangouts.

Teams were great being random. Maybe we can get the teams a little bigger by having more people participate. I liked the 3 23-hour segments. It fits nicely into one weekend, and everyone has a handicap because we could not stay up all night every night.  I also liked the variety of events it seemed perfect to me and opened many of us up to event styles we had not done before. Rules were clear and if not there were many ways to ask questions for clarification with an almost immediate response from the great team of leaders and cheerleaders. I liked not knowing the score until the end. Thanks for a great weekend wikitree

Answer 2

This was so much fun!  Meeting new WikiTreers (random teams), using discord.  

I loved that each day we did something different.  Not knowing the score was difficult but there were a couple of work arounds to get an estimate -- like counting my individual contributions in the sourcing slalom, seeing how many profiles I added by keeping track on my watchlist, etc.  

I would love this to be a once a year event.

Answer 3

I had a blast! I hope it becomes an annual event! Thanks for all of your hard work putting this together!

Answer 4

This was a fun event.*

• This could be a great annual event. 
• The hangouts were fun and the spacing between them was just right.
• The team sizes seemed like they were the right size.
• The length of the event was very manageable.
• The variety of events was good, but there could be more. It might be fun to have some individual events. It also might be interesting to try some judged events. During the 7X7 challenges, we try to pack those space pages with content and then share them. Yesterday I spent more time than I should have working on ours and thinking about them and trying to find interesting stories to share when I should have just settled in and focused entirely on the numbers. Maybe we could increase the days spent on Olympians and then vote on whose space page is most interesting? I'm not sure what the answer is, but it would be nice to have an event that isn't solely about the numbers.
• The problem with the days between the 21st and the 24th was that there was no one place where everyone was willing to meet. Only a handful of us were on Discord, and the traffic on the G2G post was very light. I suggested a team mailing list, but some people didn't care for the idea. We only ever heard from about half of our participants. It's hard to form a team bond when the whole team never really gets together. Not sure what the solution to this would be. 
• It was super fun having the scores revealed as a surprise, but I have to say not having trackers REALLY threw me off. I rely on the trackers to keep me motivated and on target. If I'm 5 profiles away from, say, 100, I'll speed up my pace. If I see that I have a good chance of catching up with Emma, I'll stay up an extra hour. Maybe we could just have the individual leaderboard up and not show the team scores? Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I felt like I was working blindfolded.
• The rules for the first two days were obvious - it's just like the 'thons. I felt like we were receiving inconsistent messaging about the scoring of the Olympians day. We weren't sure if we should have worked on all of our profiles or put all our eggs in one basket. 
  
  As for fairness, I will be honest and say that after the stats were released this morning, I went to see why one person had SO many more contributions than the rest of us, and was quite upset to realize that it is apparently not against the rules to import GEDCOMs! We spend SO much time cleaning these things up. I'm stunned that this is allowed, especially during a challenge. We now have over 800 new profiles with biographies with no complete sentences, just mashed-up data, and ZERO linked sources. These are all eventually going to have to be cleaned up and have real linked sources found for them. This kind of product does not improve our beautiful tree.
  
  I feel like we were just in a bicycle race and the person who was awarded the gold medal was allowed to ride a motorcycle. I'll probably sit the next Games out. This is absolutely not about winning or losing. I wasn't trying to win. This is about fairness and quality. I only sourced 93 profiles on Friday, but I stand by their quality.
  
  My only other wish is that more of the Olympians chosen would have been women and people of color. It would have been extremely easy to have been more inclusive.
  
  The games were a LOT of fun. My husband and I sat next to each other the whole weekend and kept each other motivated and entertained, and we got up every morning and watched the hangout in our PJs while we had our first cups of coffee. 
  
  When I realized that the equivalent of performing-enhancements drugs had been allowed, it took all the wind out of my sails and tarnished the whole experience. So, yes, this was an enjoyable event, but there's an asterisk.

Comments

Kate, thanks for writing a comprehensive answer that covers in your "asterisk" most of what I wanted to say.

*Yes, I enjoy the Thons.

*Yes, I knew "winning" was impossible because some people use GEDCOMs which (1) aren't fair unless you have a GAT (GED-a-thon) and (2) result in poor quality profiles.
*Yes, having teams the same size was fair.

*Yes, variety of events was good (for the Wikigames) but the single event thons are great, too.

*Yes, Wikigames was a TIMO (team in name only) due to lack of (1) PLANNING TOGETHER, (2) communication/meetings, (3) leadership, (4) time zones.  These can be overcome, but do most really want to be on a team?  It's like project team assignments in school.

*Yes, (hidden) scoring was a small demotivator for me, not because of winning, but because of tracking progress and status.

*Yes, focus on quantity instead of quality is problematic but the underlying purpose of thons, etc. is to extend the tree, a noble objective (omelette means breaking eggs, etc.).  NOTE: thread needed on ideas for additional Wikigames events that focus on quality instead of quantity (or tell me where to send an email).

*Yes, Discord has potential but few used it.  Sigh.

*Yes on any of your points I may have missed.

I do disagree a little on your DEI comment: the 75-year-rule actually eliminates most women and "people of color other than white" because it was mostly white men back then who competed. Heaven forbid we should impose quotas on dead white men, too.

So thank you, Kate, for speaking my truth so I don't have to (but with a tiny asterisk).

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Thanks, Ray! We're mostly on the same page!

Women have been competing in the Olympics since 1900, and African-Americans since 1904. And there were quite a few notable Asian-American medalists in the 1940's and 50's. There are lots more than one might think. They just need profiles.

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Kate, your analogy of the motorcycles in a bicycle race resonates with me.  I usually feel like I'm riding a 3-speed with a flat tire and don't even look at the top scorers.

I wonder if there is a way to have parallel connect-a-thons, with gedcom users competing against themselves in one race and the teams only for folks adding profiles one at a time.

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Hi Kate, I wasn't trying to be sexist or racist but rather merely truthful.  Seventy-five years ago was 1948.  Per Statistica, "while the Paris Games in 1900 had 22 female competitors in non-athletic events such as tennis and golf (although the golf participants were not aware that it was an Olympic event, and the gold medalist's family was not informed of this until recently). Over time, the number of female athletes slowly increased, although it did not hit the ten percent mark until 1952." (Summer Olympics: number of athletes by gender 1896-2020 | Statista). We can agree that EVERY Olympian should be eligible to be included. BTW, I was moved when my chosen Olympian's ancestors were affected during the Nazi Holocaust and JewishGen Unified Database Search became a primary tool.

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Good idea, Patricia.  Alternatively just have separate GEDCOM events.

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GEDCOMs: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1445450/you-think-gedcoms-should-used-allowed-during-connect-thons

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You write "The problem with the days between the 21st and the 24th was that there was no one place where everyone was willing to meet. Only a handful of us were on Discord, and the traffic on the G2G post was very light. I suggested a team mailing list, but some people didn't care for the idea. We only ever heard from about half of our participants. It's hard to form a team bond when the whole team never really gets together. Not sure what the solution to this would be. ".

I share these concerns:

* The team is random. This is horror for me. This is like the horror of the school teams. This is the main reason why I did not took part in the event. If the number of members is fixed, why is it not allowed to come with a complete team of the predefined size. This helps a lot with communication, you know each others style, the do and don't's are already settled in the team.

* The place of communication between team members. I personally have a big conflict with G2G: I do alway loose track of my posts. I am not aware of a "easy" accessable buttons like: "show me my last posts" and "show me my last comments" - Discord is not much better, but it at least puts you were you left the conversation, and gives you the choice of skipping and go to the newest post. In addition you can set it, that it makes a noise, if a new post happened.  I was in the Germany Genies team in the last Thons. There are Germany Genies Members in Europe, US and Australia. There are Germany Genies Members using G2G only and others preferring Discord. And somehow it was managed at the last Thon, that the G2G post where copied over to the Germany Genies Discord channel. This helped many of us to keep connected to those not using Discord. So it brigde between the two systems. I know it was done by programming some bot, I do not know how much effort this is. But there is a technical solution if people do not agree on one platform. If teams are random, I believe technology should be used to at least brigde over the technology gaps.

*Members who resist any communication. Yes, they exist. It is a puzzle to me why they join team events. In a random team, you might get zero or many such members. In a non random team you always have less. In respect of inclusion: wouldn't it be fair to everybody to have at the application of such an event, people make the choice between : I want to be on THIS specific team, or put me on a RANDOM team. 

Answer 5

This was a great Thon. Thanks to all that worked on planning and putting in the long hours to keep it functioning.

Liked the variety of events, rather than days of the same thing. Missed the tracker though, as that helps keep me going, when I'm long past ready to quit.

I've run out of easy large family additions for increasing my CC7 score, so went to the "Needs Profiles" category and found a lonesome soul with no linked family and worked on his tree branch till he got connected.- hooray.

Loved the randomly picked teams. Collaborating with new cousins on the Olympian climb - brilliant.   Hope it will happen again or another variation.

Answer 6

It was fun, but I don't think I would want to do it every year...maybe every other. There's just so much going on at WikiTree. It can be overwhelming.

Only a few of our team participated in Discord.

Answer 7

I have enjoyed the first Wiki Tree event and would love to see it yearly (maybe twice a year - summer and winter).  

Loved the hangout - find they are informative and always catch up on the ones I didn't get to watch live just in case I missed something.

It was nice to be teamed up with random people and felt the amount in the group was sufficient.  Each person brought a unique skill to support the team.

It has been weird not looking at the stats but loved the whole idea of waiting until the end to find out who won.

I would participate again.

Steph

Comments

What about summer games one year and winter the next? We don't want the organizers to get burned out!

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I like it!

Answer 8

I agree with everything that Kate said. 

Things I liked:

• Random team, especially since we were spread out across the world (so many areas of expertise!)
• The hangouts/livestreams
• The events themselves* (Like Kate, I'm putting an asterisk on this)

Things I didn't like:

• No way to track your own progress. Suggestion: have an anonymous leaderboard so you can see your own progress, but you can't see anyone else's name. (Consider how close some of the games turned out to be!)
• Too much confusion with the Olympians scoring. My team was told specifically that it was the highest scoring individual Olympians that would win, not a combined total of the four. And it seemed to go back and forth in the chats in the livestreams as to how it was actually going to be scored. (Was it going to be total CC7 or just the profiles we added, etc.)
• As Kate mentioned, too little diversity in the Olympians themselves. 

To me, the biggest spoiler was discovering the use of GEDCOM uploads for the games. So many of us were adding profiles one at a time, using wonderful tools like the Sourcer extension. Yet GEDCOM uploads were allowed. Not only is that disheartening and discouraging (even for those, like me, who didn't go into the games with an expectation of winning), but it's now a big mess that needs to be cleaned up. And since many of those profiles are connected to Olympians, they could easily show up when someone Googles those Olympians. That doesn't make a very good first impression on someone not familiar with WikiTree. 

Answer 9

First thing - many thanks to the developers and organizers of this event! I do hope it becomes an annual event (not more often than that, though.) I really enjoyed WikiGames!

OK, just spit-ballin' some ideas (not complaining at all!) ...

I loved the teams being random picked from all over the world; to give more of an opportunity to get to know all of my team-mates and form a group approach strategy in those days leading up to the event, maybe a meet-and-greet live video for each team, hosted by the cheerleader? Also, more support and education about using Discord during those lead-up days might encourage more users. (Our Discord team channel and our team space page were used by only a few of us for team communications).

It might be beneficial to find other ways for team members to contribute individually to the total points - maybe award participation points for attending the live casts and meet-and-greet mentioned above? And maybe you could incorporate an Olympic trivia event (or tree knowledge event?) or maybe an obstacle course or treasure hunt through the new (and amazing) Olympic Project pages? For example, my strong point is NOT the CC7 event; I would have enjoyed opting out of that one to compete in something else. Maybe all team members sign up for 3 of 4 events?

I loved having the stats and event leaders hidden 'til the end - it can be very discouraging to see another person or team take a huge lead right off the bat. The mystery was very motivating to do"just a few more" ;-)

I loved the comments during live chats reminding us that every little thing we do helps the Global tree; maybe look for more ways to promote that goal? We may be on individual teams but also on one all encompassing team as well - my favourite stat is the very last one - " combined total of profiles that were either sourced or added to WikiTree is: 32,406!!!

Also with a nod to improving the global tree overall, I don't think gedcom generated new profiles should be allowed during the competition unless the profile creator takes the time immediately to clean up the bio. Since that probably can't be enforced during the event, best not to allow ged-com generated profiles to count in the first place. Unless it was a two person event - one to generate and one to clean up - giving points if only both steps are completed? No idea how hard that would be to set up or to track though.

3 events of 23 hour length back to back leads to sleep deprivation and potential errors - perhaps a 2 or 3 hour layover between events?  Also with time zone differences some team members couldn't participate in the first or last event because they landed on a work day - it becomes very important to take time zones into account when "randomly" choosing the teams. I have absolutely no idea how to improve on those issues; I'm just glad I didn't have to work on Monday so I could catch up on much-needed sleep. Be sure to let people know up front what they are signing up for - this really took an Olympian effort to compete!

Again; a big thank you to everyone behind the scenes of the inaugural Olympic WikiGames - you Rawked it!

Answer 10

I particularly enjoyed the randomly assigned teams. Not that we should change the existing Connect/Source 'thon setups, but it was fun hanging with people other than my usual USBH crew (love ya!)

Answer 11

I really enjoyed it! Although I did not participated as much as I wanted due the timezone, I wanna share some of my suggestions/feedbacks

• Become a regular event? - YES
• How often - I would suggest that we had a different approach: a whole month event, where we had a different competition each week and with an order that would allow mistakes to be minimized! (such as CC7 Wall Climb first, then Connect/Create-a-thon, then sourcing slalom - This way, we have a good cycle. of information being reviewed and adjusted so our tree is healthier). This way, we are also able to connect more with our team and be more engaged :)
• Hangouts - I was not able to watch them yet, but I will as soon as I have some time.
• Team size - I liked that I was able to work with people I did not know or had not communicated with before, and it was also interesting to get help from some pre-existing team members of other projects. However, I would suggest we take a different approach when organizing/inscribing for the teams. We had a form where we could select options, such as which of the events we were most excited about, timezone, experience in genealogy/WikiTree, and expectations from team/event so when we match the teams, we can try to diversify (so all teams can have a participation in several of the mini-events) and at the same time group (so people who are maybe interested on being active on a voice channel, or to get more tips regarding something and/or wanna teach newbies about something)

• What did you think about not knowing the scores until the end? -> This is the part where I may be the AH, but I was able to see the scores... I accidentally found the Sourcing Slalom scoreboard D: I liked the idea, but I think it may also be frustrating for some. I would suggest that the scoreboard is only sent by the end of the day (since I suggested being a whole month event with little week events) -  but that we were able to somehow have the "interesting facts", or "major brick walls break" or like this shizzle to be updated on a live (or the most closest thing to a live)

About the procedures, although I am a fan of GEDCOM (it saves me some really good time), I know that it is very frustrating specially when it is broken and do not get all the data or it is only trash data. Therefore, I believe that we should either not allow it at all OR that is organized with the condition that the profile must be sourced BEFORE another profile is created.

I also have more suggestions for events, in case anyone wants to have a call I can share <3 I would love to join such an events team but I do not have time :D

Comments

I love this month-long idea.

Answer 12

I've read through some of the responses, but just a few, my brain is still catching up with me.   I'd rearrange the days, having the CC7 first.  I enjoy researching, but by Sunday, I was slowing down and would rather do that event while I was fresher.  Plus, some members of the team I was on thought that they should start on Sat with the C7C, instead of waiting for Sunday..   Otherwise you guys did a great job putting things together.  Thank you for all the hard work you do.

Answer 13

For those of us that didn’t win anything in the WikiGames, could we get a tracker posted so we can see how we did?

Comments

There was a tracker posted in the highlights thread:

WikiGames2023 (wikitree.com)

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Thank you!  I found it!

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Unfortunately, that results link is not working for me. : /

Answer 14

I really enjoyed the event and appreciate all the hard work that went into the preparation, etc. I'm one of those that would participate in a Summer and also a Winter games, but I guess that is a bit much for most people.

I really enjoyed the random teams and not having a tracker available so that the scores would be a surprise. My team participated more than the other teams in Discord apparently. We even had team mates giving tutorials like for Sourcer. During the CC7 climb we made secondary threads to discuss each Olympian individually and cheer each other on.

I would like to suggest that instead of the event always being an Olympian thing, perhaps in the future we could center the event around other sports like soccer, Tour de France, triathalon, or rowing for example. Maybe we would get more diversity that way.

I only made it to one hang out, but I did enjoy it. It was also fun to change the activity each day.

Answer 15

I was able to get some done but not much and the ones I did do I forgot to record them. No biggie.

We have some family things going on and my heart just wasn’t in it.

I was able to find some sources for quite a few profiles that are yellow bannered. I have left the page open and when I’m able to I’ll keep working in them.

Answer 16

I didn't participate like most of the Germany Genies, because I neither liked the idea of being separated from our team, nor the one of not seeing the stats, because those two to me are the key elements of an awesome Connect-a-Thon.

On top I'm not such a big Source-a-Thon fan, so I guess I simply wasn't the target audience ...

Answer 17

Overall I liked the event, being on new teams to me was good because being a newer member and finding all the clicks already established is sometimes frustrating.  I feel the teams could be a little bigger I don't think it was enough people to do an around the clock, which is really what is needed. So less groups more people, I"m not sure how you picked the the members but it really needs to be worked out so there are several working at all hours, if that makes sense. I think with all the other thons it is too much  to do it yearly, but maybe every other year or every 18 months by doing Summer this time, then the next one wouldn't be until the winter of "25"  which fits in to the summer/winter olympic theme. I didn't mind not knowing the winners until Monday however the hangout was too long before you announced the scores for me. It should have been the start in a big way, then you should have done the recaps and the statistics. Maybe one last bigger prize at the end using all the participants of the event not everyone can get to those chats.  The Olympics are a more celebrated event. Now these are just suggestions as you asked for, I want to be clear that you guys did a fantastic job putting it together, thank you!!

Answer 18

Maybe we could come up with some sort of compromise on some stats?  Maybe just announcing the placement of the teams without sharing scores at each hang-out?

Answer 19

I enjoyed the weekend but was a little frustrated by the end.

• I agree with other people here who said to make the CC7 first. I was tired, sleepy, and out of steam by Sunday.
• I also liked that we could not see stats. I usually participate with the Toddling Tortoises in other thons because it is discouraging to keep comparing myself to those who add things super fast.
• I do NOT want this to become a yearly thing. I'd rather work on additional types of notables than exclusively athletes. Maybe corresponding with the Winter or Summer Olympics would be fine.
•  I was also concerned about the lack of diversity. I think if instead of only focusing on medalists we could open the chosen Olympians up to all those who competed so we could get a greater variety of countries from which to choose. 
• I love the random teams because I got to know WikiTreers that I normally don't get a chance to have contact with. It would be nice if the whole team could vote on or agree to use only G2G or Discord for the chat before the games begin so we can get enough conversation going.

Comments

"instead of only focusing on medalists we could open the chosen Olympians up to all those who competed so we could get a greater variety of countries from which to choose"

Like that idea. first that came to mind is the Jamacian Bobsled team that one my heart

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Beverly, I agree with your suggestion that teams choose either G2G or Discord for their communication. Some of our members made significant contributions throughout the games, yet seemed to have little or no communication with their teammates. My team developed a very dynamic Discord dialogue, but I'm concerned that some of our teammates were either unaware of this or perhaps weren't comfortable using Discord. I dread the idea of people feeling left out as that defeats a primary mission of the event.

Answer 20

Overall I thought this was a great event. I liked the variety of events and really got into finding family and building profiles for the Olympians. Kudos to all that contributed into putting the event together! I would join in if it became a yearly thing, but I don't necessarily think it's great for more often. Being able to focus on one type of issue over the entire weekend is also great.

Some of our team used Discord for communication, I have used it in the past but I probably used it more during the CC7 climb because that was the most collaborative event.

I found it a bit difficult to not be able to check on the stats to see where I was. If there was a way to hide the overall stats, but we could peek at our own to be able to see if we are about to reach that next milestone (whatever it may be) would be helpful.

I liked the random teams, it gave us some team members familiar with different countries and it seemed fair to spread it out over time zones.

I only sat in on the opening ceremonies, one live chat (meant to do more, but got involved in connecting), and the closing ceremonies. I will say when the closing chat was getting close to being and then going over an hour long I was getting impatient as I was listening on my phone (when I didn't loose the signal) as I drove in to work.