The value of answering your own questions at Stack Exchange

There’s much to learn when you are interested in skepticism. There’s the human psychology, the history of various scams and hoaxes, the science (and pseudoscience) of alternative medicine, and much more. As a result there’s plenty of material to read – books, magazines, newsletters, blogs and so on.

In my reading, I inevitably come across lots of interesting little tidbits here and there. Finding stuff like this was the basis in part for both What’s the Harm and my Skeptic History daily fact.

But sometimes you find a neat fact that you’d love to call to everyone’s attention, but you don’t have the appropriate place to put it. Social media is often too ephemeral, and blogging is not everyone’s cup of tea.

Let’s assume you don’t have a popular website of your own (most people don’t) and don’t want to start one. Some topics just aren’t appropriate for their own Wikipedia (or even RationalWiki) article. Either there just isn’t enough meat there, or other editors might question the “notability”.

Wouldn’t be nice if there was another place to publicly bookmark little items like this, set up so the general public could easily find them? There is such a place and let me explain why it’s ideal for this.

Gamification and skepticism

One of the hot new terms in the world of web-based services is gamification. This is when a web site is designed to add game-like features to the user experience. The idea is to take something that might be fairly tedious if it were just a simple utility, and make it fun. The form this takes varies widely from site to site, but often includes user-to-user competition scoreboards, achievement badges, unlocking of extra abilities through achievements, and so on.

Probably the most famous example is a site called Foursquare. This is a site that encourages its users to log where they are during the day. Sounds tedious, right? Why should I keep a rigorous diary of everywhere I go? But by allowing you to connect with your friends, get discounts at local businesses, and earn rewards such as badges, Foursquare turns the experience into a game.

Much of what skeptics do can be tedious or repetitive at times. We have to reiterate over and over the same evidence to new believers in several different of topic areas. We repeatedly have to debunk new versions of old scams. Many skeptics quite understandably grow weary of this and drop out of skepticism eventually. This is an ongoing problem.

And so I’ve been interested for some time in the idea of applying gamification to skepticism. There’s been an interesting development in this area. Read on…