View source for Community Wishlist/W514

{{#CommunityRequests: wish
| status = prioritized
| type = feature
| title = Better more meaningful games in the Wikipedia app
| focusarea = 
| description = The app currently has one game: What Came Before – a quiz which of two events (article linked) happened before the other. It's rather random and usually not meaningful or interesting knowledge to learn and not fun.

When showing the app somebody rather unfamiliar with Wikipedia, I show them two things of interest where the app may be interesting to them: the map of nearby articles and the game where one can play a game together or against each other.

Please add better games where one can learn more meaningful/important/useful/relevant knowledge and a two-player-mode (1 device 2 players) so one can show other people the app and play some games against each other.

Ideas for better games include (please add more ideas to the talk page where they can be discussed):

# '''speedracing''' from one to another article (mode1: time taken; mode2: number of links tapped; mode3: via categories)
#* this is the most popular Wikimedia-related game and quite well-known in the outside world but one needs to use separate external websites or apps for that instead of being able to do this in the app (examples: [https://wikispeedruns.com/] [https://wikispeedrun.org/] [https://www.wikirace.app/] [https://nealfun.org/wikipedia-speedrun/] [https://wiki-race.com/] … it's obviously popular) – there is a Wikipedia article about this, [[:en:Wikiracing]]
#* usefulness: one learns how to navigate Wikipedia; in mode 3 one learns about and how to use categories; one may read about interesting subjects and about their relations; more people who used to use separate websites and apps or would like this game install the app
# '''quiz-questions''' mostly generated by AI and vetted by contributors (only displaying once vetted)
#* usefulness: the questions about be about articles one has marked as 'learning material' or which are based on one's selected interests (one can select articles of interest for the recommended reading list) so with such questions one could actually learn playfully about topics one finds import or interesting, thereby supporting actual learning and not on random mundane trivia but on things that are important (AI can generate questions at scale and efficiently without wasting volunteer time but they need to be reviewed because it can create dumb questions or have false answers)
# '''DIYs with the wikilinked article removed''' where one needs to fill the article title in
#* usefulness: see above, this is just a less meaningful mediocre approximation of the above
# '''quizes about Wikimedia''' like about Wikipedia language version peculiarities such as 'in which country after Spain are most contributors of Spanish Wikipedia located?' ([[:en:Spanish Wikipedia#Size_and_users|Mexico]]) or 'what is the shortcut name of the policy about neutrality?' ([[:en:NPOV|NPOV]])
#* usefulness: people learn more about the project and feel more like part of the community and its culture, develop better understanding of Wikimedia things, and learn editing skills etc
# '''quizes that make use of Wikimedia data''' like 'which of these two articles exists in more language versions' or 'which of these two English Wikipedia articles gets more pageviews'
#* usefulness: people learn about the available Wikimedia tools, and society etc

These would all be more educational and make the time spent on the game less time wasted and teach useful info and skills. Basically, instead of 'screen time' and 'time on app' or 'number of users', more meaningful metrics and considerables should be 'time wasted' vs 'time spent meaningfully' and measures of how meaningful or useful the time spent was. If you learn something important to your work and/or society, then that's a good use of time, especially if it's fun.
| audience = New app users and new contributors
| tags = ios,android,newcomers
| phabtasks = 
| proposer = Prototyperspective
| created = 2026-02-27T16:34:23Z
| baselang = en
}}