Widget to game online news readers into reading more broadly on a topic

[lizkat]

Sounds good, except won't expand knowledge of folks who don't read online news to begin with.

Should you turn your “read next” links into a game? There’s a widget for that.

"The technology is complex but, if you think about what we're doing, it's incredibly simple. People come to a news website to gain knowledge about something."

www.niemanlab.org

Still pretty cool that it analyzes "related articles" and awards more points to your next read if it's not reinforcement but a broadening of knowledge.

The game is never finished, either. The Knowledge Tracker encourages readers to keep up with the latest articles, especially if recent pieces contain information and concepts the reader hasn’t encountered in previous articles.

“It tells you, ‘You used to have 60%, but you’ve been missing out on some key articles,” Ronen explained. “Your relative knowledge has dropped. Here are the two to three best articles for you to catch up.”

The widget helps to resurface important work — Ronen used the example of a deeply-reported feature that got bumped off the front page after three hours due to breaking news — as can’t-miss pieces on a topic. In theory, the widget also generates clicks and increases reading time as users seek to earn points, up their score, and be deemed well-read on a topic.

I dunno, is there a pile of potato chips at the end? I'll let ya know if the thing works for me... the FT-backed publication Sifted is trying it out.