Rants

Honesty and Transparency

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Magic trick 1465549955 Honesty and Transparency

Today I have been reminded about the importance of Honesty and Transparency when dealing with people. If I ask a question from someone who is in a service industry, what I hope for is an honest and transparent answer. What you often get is a baffling set of half-truths and utter bullshit.

I have spoken about transparency before and it even forms part of the Code of Ethics that I proposed.

I was trying to help a friend with a hosting issue. The company I dealt with showed me just how bad a lack of transparency can be. They were very nice and polite, but they we unable to provide any help. Instead of just being honest about it, they sent me on a wild goose chase. They gave be a website to look at, then a phone number, then another website with another phone number. The final phone number put me back through to the exact same department (possibly even the same person) I had been dealing with a couple of hours previously. Even then they tried to give me more hoops to jump through. In the end, I had to give up, it just wasn’t worth being given so many half truths – essentially being lied to. Read More ...

Shipping, Fantasy vs Reality and the Dark Tetrad

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Evil 1442669978 Shipping Fantasy vs Reality and the Dark Tetrad

I recently discovered a really strange phenomenon called Shipping. This is the creation of fantasy relationships between celebrities that may have been in films together or on TV together. For instance there are a group who call themselves Damie Shippers. They have created a fantasy world where Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson. from Fifty Shades of Grey, are really trying to be a couple. This is despite Dornan being happily married to Amelia Warner. They are not the only ones, they just happen to be the ones I have explored! Read More ...

4 Ways Extrinsic rewards bit me in the ass

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Silver 4 Ways Extrinsic rewards bit me in the ass

Not long ago I wrote about my daughters school and their usage of certificates to incentivise reading. The idea is that if a child reads a certain amount each half term, they can get a bronze, silver or gold certificate.

As you may remember, I have spent a lot of time trying to encourage my daughter to read. I thought I had cracked it after long gamified engagement. Little did I know, that in the background the school was undoing all my (and my wife’s) hard work.

Olivia has consistently got Gold awards for her reading, we have ensured that every school night for the entire school year she has read. Two weeks ago, she missed two days. This did not seem like that big a deal, two days in an entire year should not mean much in the long run. Read More ...

Generation Y all the Fuss?

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Millenium 1433492931 Generation Y all the Fuss

There is a lot of noise about Generation Y or Millennial’s, those born after 1982. They are seen as some kind of strange new evolution of the species, the saviours of our universe. One of the key things that is spoken about when they are mentioned is that they grew up with computers in their houses and gameboys in their hands. There are other differences, but this is the one I hear the most. The way they are spoken about you would expect them to be able to fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes. Read More ...

How do you deal with being wrong?

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Error 1432641088 How do you deal with being wrong

Not really a gamification related post today, though it could pertain to the gamification community!

It happens to us all at some point. Someone says something, you see something, read something, hear something – whatever – but it shakes the foundations of something you knew in your hear was correct. Until you discovered this new information, you would have staked the life of your entire family line on what you knew to be correct. Now, you find out that you had been wrong all along – how do you deal with it? Read More ...