You just made me lose the game, dammit. In 30 minutes, the game will start up again. In the meantime, have at it, folks.

Daniel (my first name, btw), glad you posted this. I've been thinking about how to incorporate game design techniques into my social-networking-enabled project, as the post states, to encourage further participation.

One thing I bump up against is "gaming" the game, that is, ways to spam or otherwise tamper with the system a la moderation points and other notorious areas of influence fraud.

Step one is doing something. Step two is realizing that what you're doing is a game. Step three is realizing that everything is a game. Step four is inventing a new metaphor for it.