How to Organize a One-page Wikipédia Editathon ?

Our library hosted an editathon workshop to create and develop the Wikipédia page Jeu de rôle sur table au Québec (tabletop role-playing games in Quebec). Here is my report of the event.

Preparation

1. Use this dashboard to record the contributions and avoid IP address ban. Example.
2. If the page doesn't exist yet :
1. Write a short paragraph to introduce the page, without source (keep it for the demo in the workshop).
2. Create all the pertinent sections and sub-sections.
3. In the source code of the page.
1. At the beginning, add the banner
   

   {{under construction |placedby=username|2018-10-24}}

2. At the end of the page, add categories and portals.
3. In Discussion, explain the page is part of a editathon workshop. Example.
3. Prepare sources (and sourcerers!).
1. URL in a shared folder.
2. PDF in a shared folder.
3. Encylopedias & dictionaries.
4. Books.
5. (one or more librarians to help find and assess sources).

Editathon workshop

1. Receive your guests. Ask them to
1. Connect with their Wikipédia account
2. Subscribe the Dashboard with an URL placed in a txt file in a shared folder
2. Demonstration
1. Short introduction (max. 5-10 min.) on : how to write, how to cite and how to link pages.
2. How to cite: Take a source you prepared for the short introduction paragraph. Show how to make an automatic citation + modify to improve it. Cancel. Then show how to make a manual citation. Publish with documenting what was done, insisting it is important.
3. You are the editor
1. Ask who wants to edit what.
2. Ask them to click on Modify for the selected section, not for the whole page (because everybody is on it).
3. Ask them to compose their text in the notepad software, then copy-paste it when finished to reduce the time the page is on hold.
4. Go!

Final notes

• Everybody can come and go and leave.
• Some people will edit at the same time but remotely, they are mostly admins who supervise and verify what's going on.
• Thanks to the scanned archives of the BAnQ !
• Thanks to Catherine Bernier, Raymonde Champagne, Benjamin Constantineau et Mathieu Thomas for your help !
• After 2h of workshop, the page was born. It weighted 1800 words and 24 sources. The parents are expecting a Featured article ★ status within one year.

2018-2019 Role-playing Projects

• Designing TREx, a thesaurus on TRPG: 80% done
• Writing essays on :
• Hospitality, hosting and TRPG: 20% done 
• Citations practices in published TRPG: 20%
• Piracy and downloading practices of TRPG: 10%
• «Donjons & Données probantes» (Evidence-based Dungeons)

• November 2, Study day: organized by Sébastien Savard
• October 24, Editathon Wikipédia on TRPG in Québec: 90%
• Oct 13-28, Exhibition on TRPG in the Library of Humanities & Social Sciences of U Montréal: 70%
• Reingineering of the Zotero database (new keywords from TRex, selection of content): 90%
• Roleplayification of information literacy learning activities
• Conference November 12: 70%
• A blog post on Tribune CI in January 2019: 10%

Interview in the Chroniques d'Altarides [french]

No. 42, pp. 56-58.

Benoît Chérel, editor of the Chroniques d'Altarides, invited me for an interview in his open access TRPG magazine. I talk about my role-playing gamer past, and also about my current academic projects on TRPG : teachings, databases, this blog, graphs, publications, etc.

You can download the issue no. 42, or read it online, or order a paper copy.

Call for Papers: Essays on Transmedia Storytelling, Tabletop Role-Playing, and Fandom

Call for Papers: Essays on Transmedia Storytelling, Tabletop Role-Playing, and Fandom

[a chapter]
Deadline for submissions: July 15, 2018
Editors : Jennifer Grouling & Stephanie Hedge
contact email: transmediatrpg@gmail.com

 
This edited collection will be a part of McFarland & Company, Inc.’s Studies in Gaming series. It will be peer reviewed.

North American Simulation and Gaming Association (NASAGA): 2018 registrations are open

Registration is open for the 2018 annual conference of the North American Simulation and Gaming Association, to be held on 16-19 October in Rochester, NY.

« The North American Simulation and Gaming Association (NASAGA) is THE home for instructional designers, game developers, performance improvement specialists, consultants, trainers, teachers, and educators who use active learning methods to increase engagement, enhance retention, and improve performance. The conference is an interactive experience! Breakout sessions let attendees brainstorm, collaborate, and play games with a focus on learning and improving results. Attend the conference to share your expertise, gain inspiration, experiment with a new idea, and meet one of the founders of the organization. [source: NASAGA website]»

(via PaxSims)

Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations [book release]

Deterding, Sebastian, and José Zagal, eds. Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations. London: Routledge, 2018.

A new multidisciplinary academic book on TRPG. The editors gathered most of the renown authors in the field to write chapters on TRPG with different disciplinary angles.
Without conflict of interest, I suggest you ask your college or university librarian to buy it. I did.

Bowman, Sarah Lynne, and Andreas Lieberoth. “Psychology and Role-Playing Games.” In Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations, edited by Sebastian Deterding and José P. Zagal. London: Routledge, 2018.

A very clear, evidence-based and comprehensive chapter about everything you wanted to know about TRPG and psychology. It is partially readable via Google Books.

Mind mapping with role-playing topics

I created a mind map on role-playing with the partially free online service Coggle.it. There is a lot of online services like this. The free licence of Coggle.it allows to create a map, export it in PDF and in PNG and share it online.

Mind map on role-playing (with Coggle.it)

Mind maps are quite popular pedagogical tools in the universities. They help memorize, organize and spacialize notes and ideas. I am dreaming of a tool combining this spacializing function with advanced bibliographic functions like the ones in Zotero.

Jeu de rôle et expérience de soi [recordings, in French]

Video recordings of the Alithila study day « Jeu de rôle et expérience de soi » [Role-playing and experience of the self], organised by Danièle André, Laurent Déom and Alban Quadrat. Université de Lille 3, March 29, 2018.

• Brunson, Geoffroy et Jérémy Lambert. « "Soi-même comme un autre." Construction narrative et enjeux identitaires dans le jeu de rôle ».
• Chelabi, Christophe. « En quoi le personnage du jeu de rôle est-il un facteur d’apprentissage pour les joueurs ? »
• Deudon, Pierre-Louis. « Jeu de rôle : rencontre entre sciences humaines et neurologie ».
• « Dialogue avec Nicolas Dessaux aka Snorri ».
• « Jeu de rôle et expérience de soi: Table ronde ».
• Stijve, Sanne et Arnaud Tardy. « Le jeu de rôle comme système de simulation favorisant le développement interpersonnel ».

Schedule for the Role-Playing and Simulation in Education Conference 2018

Which will take place at Northeastern University directly before the Living Games Conference.
When: Thursday, May 17, 2018, 9am – 4pm
Where: Northeastern University, Boston, MA
Price: Free for Living Games attendees, price TBD for non-Living Games attendees
Note that registration is capped at 50 people

9:00-9:45am: Introduction

• Celia Pearce, Northeastern University
• Sarah Lynne Bowman, Austin Community College
• Evan Torner, University of Cincinnati

Keynotes

• Elizabeth Fein, Duquesne University
• Kellian Adams Pletcher, Northeastern University

10:00-11:15am: Theories and Principles (Sam Anderson)

• Maury Brown, “Edu-Larps, Experiential Learning, and Affective Domain Outcomes”
• Samara Hayley Steele, “Understanding Larp Literacy: Noise Filtering, Direct Diegesis, Extradiegetic Statement Exchange, and Intradiegetic Objects”
• Katherine Castiello Jones, “Encouraging Perception through Playfulness and ‘World’-Travelling: Feminism, Larp, and Learning”
• Andrew Harris, “What Makes a Game an Effective Tool for Developing Social Skills?”

Techniques and Innovations (Will Osmond)

• Rian Oliveira Rezende, “Wonder Cards Storytelling: Imagination, Storytelling, and Role-playing in the Creation of Objects, Spaces, and Experiences”
• Amanda Siepiola, “Who Would Win? Edu-Larp vs. Dorothy Heathcote’s Mantle of the Expert”
• Susan Weiner, “Case Studies as Tabletop RPGs”
• Lux Faros, “Immersive Narratives, Personas, and Multi-intelligence Scaffolding”

12:45-2:00pm : Adult Education (Jason Morningstar)

• Celia Peace and Lizzie Stark, “Teaching Video Game Design (and Feminism!) Through Larping”
• Clio Yun-su Davis, “War in the Magic Circle”
• Magdalene Loh, “Edu-Larping for Career Design”

Youth Outreach (Rebecca Slitt)

• Mikael Hellström and Ken Keziej, “Year Zero Economics: Using edu-larps to exploring economic systems in the Ninth Grade”
• Anna V. Konovalenko, “The Noon Project: Methodological Aspects of Socialization”
• Andrew Lacanienta, “Creating a New World at Summer Camp”
• Krysten Callina, “The Educational Micro-LARP: Redefining Live Action Role-play for Social, Academic and Therapeutic Applications”

2:15-3:45pm : Public Speaking Workshop (Kate Hill)
Edu-Larp Construction Workshop (David Simkins)

3:45-4:00pm : Closing Ceremonies: Celia Pearce, Sarah Lynne Bowman, and Evan Torner

D&D in prison... which kind of escapism ?

For inmates, tabletop role-playing games can be an important leasure activities.

• « Above all, without fail, any gang ties, religious obligations or racial affiliations are superseded by the game. (...) Dungeons and Dragons is my rehabilitation that I can deal with to escape into my own reality to solve my own problems. » (1)

• An inmate's justification of pencil-stabbing an inmate who was repeatedly interupting his game: « In the facility, we have three hours a day of pod time where we have access to the tables and we're not locked down. So we have very little time to game and this time has to be shared with phone calls, showers, etc. » (1)

• Inmates can be ingenious to build DIY dice (2).

For the US penal system, TRPGs can be an activity that :

• can lead to gang behavior, the « players looking at the Dungeon Masters, rather than to the prison's own carefully constructed hierarchy of authority.» (3)

• « games like D & D can impede rehabilitation (...) could foster an inmate's obsession with escaping from the real life, correctional environment » (3)

• can promote « competitive hostility, violence, and addictive escape behavior, which can compromise not only the inmate's rehabilitation and effects of positive programming » (3)

• can be banned because « punishment is a fundamental aspect of imprisonment, and prisons may choose to punish inmates by preventing them from participating in some of their favorite recreations. » (3)

If escapism is a strategy of avoidance, in this case « distraction from the suffering one has caused » (1), boreness of the prison,...  Frode Stenseng (4) found out it can lead to negative outcomes. He named this strategy self suppression escapism. [NB : Others comment it can also lead to positive outcomes, especialy in prison where boredom can lead to psychopathologies (5)]
If escapism is a framework for seeking new skills and improving personality, in this case
developing cooperative behavior, communicating, practicing simple math skills, using active imagination, playing the role of a character who experiment personal growth,... it can lead to positive outcomes. Stenseng named this strategy self-expansion escapism.



(1) Dragons in the Department of Corrections
(2) How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband
(3) source: US Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit; with Google Scholar, search Case Law with "Singer v Raemisch". Context: in 2010, the court affirmed a judgement about the ban of D&D game and material in prison.
(4) U Oslo, Psychology.
(5) How to survive solitary confinement.  
Other sources used : When Dragons Plays Dungeons + Zotero database > History of RPG > RPG bashing and defense > prison.

FBI unclassified: Gygax looks like a badass

Via PaxSims and ReasonH&R

Criminal justice reporter CJ Ciaramella filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the FBI's files on TSR, Inc.

• Typical wargaming enthousiasts are reported to be extremely intelligent individuals, live frugally to support their hobby, overweight and not neat in appearance.

• Gary Gygax is reported to be eccentric and frightening, carrying a weapon, answering letters coming from a prison, hold a company in Liberia to avoid taxes, be a member of the Libertarian Party and would be extremely uncooperative with the FBI [about a fellow gamer?].

So you want to build a knowledge base?

You can also call it : document management system, technical documentation center, collective shared library, information repository, data collection, etc.

Principles :

1. Make it simple to design, use and maintain
   
2. Make sure you answer a specific goal (one or more)
3. Target it for a specific audience only
4. Make it even more simple

Why :

• You want the cost of using it (in "real" work time) is lower
  than the cost of not using it if it didn't exist
• If not, expect it to be ignored and abandoned

My priorities of easiness :

1. add and modify stuff
2. save the whole thing
3. find and retrieve stuff
4. manage authorized access 
5. clean the whole thing
6. monitor use (stats)

I think :

• directory > search engine
• shared folders and files  > local html webpages > wikis > content management systems, forums,...
• spreadsheet (Excel,...) > database (Access,...)
• make sure regular saved copies of the whole system are safely stored
• don't forget to date and attribute (ex: created... updated... by...)

If you choose a directory of folder and files :

• Open formats & open software > proprietary formats
• Adapt type of format to the users : sometimes some photo pictures > texts
• Create folders named archives in every folders if you want to store ancient copies of current documents and if you want to store (but hide) less relevant informations
• Naming of folder and files: no space, no accent, no ponctuation mark
• Naming of folder : the important (most used) folders are written in CAPS LETTERS
• If shortcut: only shortcut folders, and then don't move the folders anymore
• Create a key document in ASCII at the root of the directory to explain how to use it
• Create a folder for the users, each user can put their own shortcuts in their own folders
• The logic of directory structure can follow known topics, known processes, or known institutions (or a clever combination of them)

 If you choose a hyperlinked textual system (webpages) :

• 10 big linked webpages > 100 small linked webpages
• Write in bullet points (or numbered list) like this post. Learn to love lists.
• Follow the 3P structure: write the main idea in 1 Phrase, then develop in 1 Paragrah, then in 1 Page or more. Like in (good) newspaper or encyclopedia articles
• Be careful ! It can become very quickly complex (software, tools, ...) to design, use and maintain