We explore a new trend of creating help spaces that are inviting and social. We reviewed design developments in Wikipedia's Teahouse, IdeaLab, and The Wikipedia Adventure game These designs emphasize a playful spirit and supportive community atmosphere. We lay out the principles of "Fun is serious business" design, detail how that was implemented in the Teahouse community, and talk about opportunities for enhancing other spaces with a similar approach.

1. Can Help Be Fun?
Wikipedia experiments with
social help

2. Welcome to the Teahouse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse

3. Fun Is Serious Business
● Playful design
● Real people
● Power of invitation
● Welcoming tone
● Social mobility
● Acknowledgement

4. Old help, meet New Help

5. Tone follows Design

6. People are Everything

8. The power of Invitation

9. shot from host creation flow, showing how
behavior expectations are set?
Tone requires Intention

11. Guests transform into hosts

12. Acknowledgement = Encouragement

14. New editors who visit the Teahouse vs control group:
(similar early edit patterns, 1 year metrics)
● 3x edits to Wikipedia articles
● Edit 2x as many articles
● 2x talk page discussions
● Return to Wikipedia for nearly twice as long
● 29% are women vs. Wikipedia average of 9% (pilot)
It works!

16. What else is fun?

18. An Invitation to Play...
● When did fun get tagged as trivial?
● How are you helping your users to play?
Siko Bouterse - sbouterse@wikimedia.org - @sikob - Wikimedia Foundation
Jake Orlowitz - jorlowitz@gmail.com - @JakeOrlowitz - Wikipedia Grantee
Funisseriousbznss Productions