Wikipedia talk:Trading card game/Rules proposal 7

Hi all! This is my proposal for the Wikipedia trading card game. I've tried to maintain the collaborative spirit in this game—all players are trying to improve Wikipedia—but they all have different abilities and different goals for doing so, which should add a bit of tension into the game. There are also non-player actions which come from the "IP edit" and "new registered users" aspects of the game, which add suprise and a random element to the game. I hope you enjoy it and please comment! Antony-22 (talk) 03:38, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Articles

Each article card represents one Wikipedia article, and display’s the article’s title on the top. Article cards are categorized in two ways. Each article has a category: popular culture, history, science, BLP. Some expertises may be more rare than others. (If using real BLP’s is an issue, we can make up fake names, of course.) Each article also has a notability rating from 1 to 4. Notability 2 articles cannot reach FA status; notability 1 articles cannot reach GA or FA status (below).

Thus, the article "Your brother’s garage band" would be a pop culture article of notability 1, while the article "Chemistry" would be a science article of notability 4. Some articles may have special conditions as well, such as being more prone to certain article issues. There are also hoax articles which are explained later.

Articles go through five stages: stub, C, B, good article, and featured article. The last four of these are indicated by a “status card” on top of the article card; a stub is signified by having no cards on top of it.

Each article greater than a stub can also optionally have any combination of the following “article issue” cards on top of it:

• POV: means that the article has point-of view issues
• Citation needed: means that the article is not thoroughly and properly cited
• Vandalism: means that the article contains vandalism

Article improvement means incrementing the article’s stage from stub->C->B->GA->FA. Articles can only be improved if they do not have any of the issue cards on them.

Players

Players are dealt two special cards at the beginning of the game. One is an identity card, which specifies the user’s win condition. All of these are related to improving Wikipedia, but reflect different methods for doing so. Some of these may be:

• Vandalism watch: scores for reverting vandalism and blocking vandals
• Wikifairy: scores for fixing POV and citation issues
• Content editor: scores for promoting articles to GA and FA status
• New article creator: scores for making new articles
• Community leader: get promoted to bureaucrat before the game is over.
• Inclusionist: score is based on number of articles
• Deletionist: needs to raise the average notability of articles

...and so on. These identity cards are kept secret knowledge. This should keep the game interesting since, although everyone is acting collaboratively to improve Wikipedia, the face that the specific goals are different will cause some tension in the game.

The second card is an expert card, which bestows expertise on the player for one of the four article categories (popular culture, history, science, BLP).

Gameplay

Actions

Players take turns making actions. There are some basic actions that any player may take, and each player has a set of skill cards in front of them that allow them to take additional actions. The basic actions are:

• Improve an article: increase the status of an article from stub->C->B->GA->FA. This can only be done if the article card has no article issues associated with it. (Note that stub articles can never have issues.) If a player improves an article outside their area of expertise, the article automatically gains a Citation needed card.

• Create new article: draw a random card from the article deck and place it as a new stub
• Remove vandalism: remove a vandalism card from any article
• Article cleanup: remove a POV or Citation needed card from any article which is in your area of expertise
• AfD: nominate an article for deletion. The players all vote on whether the article is to be deleted, but some new registered user cards (see below) have votes as well.
• Gain skill: select a card from your hand to become part of your skillset. The mechanics of this are still to be worked out.

Skill cards either modify the basic actions or make new actions available. Some examples of skill cards may be:

• Admin: can block new registered users except sockpuppets
• Bureaucrat:
• Checkuser: can block sockpuppets
• Recruit expert: allows user to improve articles outside their area of expertise
• Wikiholic: can take two actions instead of one per turn, but has a 1/3 chance of experiencing “burnout” and taking no actions that turn.
• Promote GA/FA: allows the player to promote articles to GA, and to initiate a vote to promote articles to FA.
• Various bots

...and so on. Some of these may have preconditions before being placed, i.e., one must be both an admin and a checkuser before becoming a bureaucrat, must have a certain number of edits before becoming an admin, etc.

IP edits and new users

After each player takes an action, a card is revealed from the IP edits deck. This can be one of four things about equally distributed:

• Vandalism edit: a vandalism card is placed on a random article.
• Constructive edit: these remove a specified article issue card from a random article.
• Article improvement: this improves a random article if possible, but has a 50/50 chance of introducing each of POV and Citation needed.
• New registered user: this causes a new registered user card to be drawn from the top of the registered user deck. This is placed to the current user’s right, and takes a specified action in turn as if it were a player.

Registered users can be beneficial or malicious. Some examples of these include:

• Expert: has expertise in one of the four categories and will improve articles in its own category
• New article creator: creates new stubs
• Vandalism watcher: removes vandalism
• Vandal: creates vandalism
• POV pusher: adds POV and Citation needed to articles.
• Wikitroll: Creates “hoax” articles. While a hoax article exists, no other articles may be improved.
• Sockpuppets: take no action by themselves, but always vote to not delete hoax articles, and against promoting articles to FA.

...and so on. All these may be removed from the game by an admin using a block action except for the sockpuppet, which requires a checkuser action.

End condition

The game ends when a cer tain number of articles has been created (e.g. 12). Each player wins according to the criteria on their identity card, but all share in the satisfaction of knowing that they have helped improve the ultimate collaborative reference work!

Sample gameplay

This is the beginning of a sample game between players John, Ben, and Liz.

To start the game, each player gets an expertise card and an identity card. John gets content editor and a science expertise; Ben gets inclusionist and a history expertise; Liz gets vandalism watch and also a history expertise.

John goes first. John creates an article and draws the "Presidency of Millard Fillmore" card which is a notability 3 history article. He places this in the center of the table. Then he draws an IP edit card, which is an article improvement. "Presidency of Millard Fillmore" has a C-class status card placed on it (since it is the only article). A die is rolled that results in a POV card placed on it, but the second roll does not result in a Citation needed card on it.

Ben goes next. Ben also decides to create a new article, which turns out to be "Jimbo" which is a notability 4 BLP. Ben draws from the IP edit deck and reveals a new user card, which is a vandal user. He places the vandal card to his left.

The vandal card takes the next action, which is to place a Vandalism card on top of "Presidency of Millard Fillmore" (the only card able to be vandalized, since "Jimbo" is a stub).

The cards after Ben's first turn (click to expand).

Liz goes next. Liz removes the vandalism card from "Presidency of Millard Fillmore". Her IP edit is a science constructive edit, but there are no science articles yet so this has no effect.

It is John’s turn again. John plays a wikiholic card from his hand into his skillset as his action (mechanism to be determined). This action will be available to him in future turns. His IP edit card is another new user, this time BLP expert. He places this to his right.

Now it is the BLP expert card’s turn. The rules on the card say that its first choice is to improve the most notable BLP article if it is possible, so it improves the "Jimbo" article to a C-class article.

Ben takes his second turn. Ben is a history expert so he can cleanup "Presidency of Millard Fillmore" and remove the POV card. Ben draws an IP edit card and reveals a anti-vandalism constructive edit, but since there is no vandalism this has no effect.

Next the vandal user, which remains from Ben’s first turn, takes its action. A die is rolled making it place a vandalism card on the "Jimbo" article.

Next it is Liz’s turn again. She decides to improve "Presidency of Millard Fillmore" to an B-class article. Since she is a history expert she does not place a POV or citation needed card on top of it. Her IP edit is a vandalism edit which places a vandalism card on "Presidency of Millard Fillmore" (since "Jimbo" is already vandalized).

John then takes his third turn. He plays the wikiholic action (which he placed in his skillset the previous round) and succeeds in rolling the die to get two actions. He creates a new article and draws "RfC in popular culture," a notability 1 pop culture card. As his second action, he removes vandalism from the "Presidency of Millard Fillmore" article. His IP edit card is a history POV pusher, which he places to his left.

The cards after John's third turn (click to expand).

Next, the BLP expert card removes vandalism from the "Jimbo" card. Then, the POV pusher places a POV card on the Jimbo article.

Ben goes next. Ben creates a new article, which is "DNA nanotechnology", a notability 3 science article. He then draws an IP card, which is a pop culture article improvement, which upgrades "RfC in popular culture" to a C-class article.

The vandal card goes next, and a die roll results in it vandalizing "RfC in popular culture."

Liz takes her third turn. She removes the vandalism from "RfC in popular culture." Her IP edit is vandalism, which a die roll results in vandalizing the "Presidency of Millard Fillmore" card.

It is now John’s fourth turn. He activates wikiholic again and receives two actions after a die roll. As his first action he plays admin into his skillset, and for his second action he blocks the POV pusher, removing it from the game. His IP card is a Citation needed constructive edit, but since there are no citation needed cards this has no effect.

The cards after John's fourth turn (click to expand).

Play would continue with the BLP expert card, then Ben, and so on.