If I hit a wall while working on a problem, I toss into the gladiator pit known as Stack Overflow, and after it has been mawed to pieces by a bunch of brilliant people, I stop by and get my answer and can continue whatever I was doing. Usually this all happens in the time it takes for me to get some coffee and maybe take a short walk.
It is a beacon of hope and joy to someone who has wasted too much time in the past trying to find the answers to hard problems.
So they are at each-others' throats trying to out answer other users so they can increment up a point counter. Gamefication is a great motivator, and I am happy that I don't have to use the typical motivators of begging, pleading, or -ugh- paying for quality technical support.
Emotional reactions to the competitiveness is the success of a very well designed game that has the outcome of great answers to problems that are typically hard to find.
If I hit a wall while working on a problem, I toss into the gladiator pit known as Stack Overflow, and after it has been mawed to pieces by a bunch of brilliant people, I stop by and get my answer and can continue whatever I was doing. Usually this all happens in the time it takes for me to get some coffee and maybe take a short walk.
It is a beacon of hope and joy to someone who has wasted too much time in the past trying to find the answers to hard problems.
So they are at each-others' throats trying to out answer other users so they can increment up a point counter. Gamefication is a great motivator, and I am happy that I don't have to use the typical motivators of begging, pleading, or -ugh- paying for quality technical support.
Emotional reactions to the competitiveness is the success of a very well designed game that has the outcome of great answers to problems that are typically hard to find.