Gamification – A New Twist on the Carrot and Stick
I recently realised I had become a bit obsessed with increasing my StackOverflow reputation – hardly a surprise really given how close it is to the gaming concept of XP and leveling, which has caused large parts of my life to disappear into a black hole (Civ and WoW, I am looking at you).
I have been helping out on SO, mainly on the MongoDB side of things there since I joined 10gen and it has been a great learning experience as well as a great tool to use, the self moderation means that the questions (and I hope, my answers) are generally well formed and potentially useful to others.