Tips On How To Play Artwiculate
There’s a lot to know for the soon-to-be Artwiculate addict and even for the seasoned players. Here are a few basics.
(Note: these tips were valid two years ago, things have changed a bit since, and we'll work on updating this page, especially the yellow-marked items...)
“Follow” Artwiculate on Twitter. Why?
a. You will receive 5 daily updates: one with the number of uses seen so far with WOTD (word of the day), one with the names of the players in the lead, one with the names of the winners, one with the winning entry and one with the new WOTD and its definition
a. If you follow Artwiculate your profile will be searchable on the Artwiculate.com site & available for other players to easily locate it & vote for your tweets. If you care about points this is important.
b. If you place in the Top 20 or higher & the Artwiculate universes are aligned just right, you’ll receive a “Direct Message” (DM) at your Twitter account with a link to a certificate from Artwiculate. This, however, has been spotty in execution but judging from how responsive the folks at Artwiculate have been in the past, we’re sure they’re working to fix the unpredictable glitches. If you do place in the Top 20 and do not receive a DM, email Artwiculate at Hello@Artwiculate.com. Although they may not be able to respond or address the issue as soon as some of us would like, so far they seem to really care & overall try to get to everything sooner or later.
Look up the definition of each word yourself, ideally in a few different sources. Why? To ensure proper usage. The definition given on site by Artwiculate does not always cite whether the word is a noun, adjective, verb, transitive verb, etc. The definition on site is also almost always incomplete and if you are not familiar with its nuances you may miss out on double-entendres and other such wordplay you can craft, or miss out enjoying such crafted by fellow players. Once, for “porphyrophobia” the definition on site was 100% incorrect (we suspect it was Artwiculate’s way of pulling a prank as a gentle nudge to remind us to research proper usage). While Dictionary.com is a popular online reference tool, it often offers deficient, or worse, inaccurate definitions so it’s best to cross-reference all definitions. If a word is new to you, it helps immensely to research quotes of it on the web: chances are Winston Churchill’s use of it is a reliable example of its meaning and nuances.
How do my tweets get points? Every time a tweet is retweeted correctly (more on this below) and every time you or another player votes for your tweet on the Artwiculate.com site you get points. Part of the fun is that Artwiculate doesn’t disclose the scoring system and also seems to tweak it from time to time - part of the game for some players is to try to figure out how it works.
How do I retweet correctly? This can get confusing so bear with us, here. Some of us players are fanatics and perfectionists who want to figure out how everything works and do it right. By observation we’ve discovered that some retweets do not count. So far the only type of retweet which seems to reliably count is an “old-school RT”, without a colon (which can get tricky because some players’ apps automatically add a colon in an RT after the User’s Name). An old-school RT is when you simply cut & paste the tweet with the originator’s user name before it, preceded by the letters 'RT' and a space. It is time consuming and carpal syndrome-inducing to old-school RT, but such are trifling matters compared to the true-blue Artwiculati’s passion for supporting fellow players with correct retweets! We all thought the new “retweet” button on Twitter was going to solve our problems until we discovered that for whatever weird technology reason, not all “new retweet button” RTs get indexed by Twitter & can therefore not be “seen” by Artwiculate and be scored. But do not despair! Enter @NavinSasikumar, our knight in shining armour! Navin has slaved for weeks and has developed an app for the Artwiculati’s retweeting needs! It’s called “RTwiculate” and while it still is in development and Navin is still working out a few bugs, we have tested it and it makes retweeting a breeze! As soon as RTwiculate is up and running (we estimate by April 2010) we will post an announcement here at Salon Artwois. The application is free (we owe Navin BIG - his is a toil of love) and all you need to do to use it is let Navin know you want to be added as a user. Another player is developing a mobile app (!) for Artwiculate, so who knows what else the future holds? A final note on retweets: For now, if a tweet is too long to “old-school RT”, it’s still advisable to “new button RT” it because it may indeed get scored but just as importantly, it exposes the tweet to other players, many of who will flag it to vote for it online. However: Make sure you RT it from the original issuer of the tweet: a retweet of a retweet (meaning RTing a player’s tweet that another player has RT’d) does not count and will not be scored by Artwiculate. Also, while it’s fun to add our own comments to an RT, such can often cause the tweet to then be posted a second time on site, credited to the person who RT’d it/commented on it instead of the originator of the tweet.
What is an “MT”? An MT is the acronym for a “Meta-Tweet”. It was invented and coined by @HarrArp. It is a fun way to interact with players when you see a tweet that inspired you and you want to tweak it, often in tongue-in-cheek repartee. How do you do it? Firstly, you RT the tweet you want to MT as is. Then, you copy and paste the RT as is, and change the “R” to an “M”, so now you have “MT”. You then tweak the text within the tweet as you please. Here is an example of a real-life MT exchange - the word of the day was “avarice”:
@Tralala56 Of course we all know that avarice is a CAPITAL sin!
@SJHatzi RT @Tralala56 Of course we all know that avarice is a CAPITAL sin!
@SJHatzi MT @Tralala56 Of course we all know that avarice is a CAPITOL sin!
@Tralala56 @SJHatzi LOL!
Can you RT an MT? Sure, but you may want to ensure that you first RT the tweet which inspired the MT to render context and credit the inspiration.
If I have questions, ideas, or suggestions for the game, what do I do? Most of the seasoned players will be delighted to answer any question you have. If it’s something only Artwiculate can answer, or if it’s an idea, suggestion, etc., go to the Artwiculate community at Get Satisfaction & post it there. Here’s the link: http://getsatisfaction.com/artwiculate You can also email Artwiculate at Hello@Artwiculate.com. We’re pretty sure this is a labor of love for all the folks at Artwiculate so we don’t hold our breath waiting for a response and love them anyway and often send lots of thanks their way.
Why are my tweets not showing up on the site? Always double-check your spelling of the WOTD. Is it correct? Did you maybe conjugate it? If the WOTD is correct, then Twitter and/or Artwiculate are having problems indexing tweets. More often than not, this is remedied by waiting a few hours (usually no more than 4) then checking to see if they posted on the site. If they did not, delete the original tweet and post it again. The deleting part is important because a) Twitter may not permit you to post identical tweets within a short timeframe and b) if the tweet does eventually get to Artwiculate, you’ll end up with two identical tweets, possibly “splitting” your RTs and votes (see section on “split votes”).
Check out the pages: How to index lost tweets on the SalonArtwois!
Check out the pages: How to index lost tweets on the SalonArtwois!
What do I have to do to win? When you figure out the scientific formula, please email it to us. Part of the fun of the game is its unpredictability. Having said that, there are a few DOs that when observed, seem to contribute to consistent performance.
a. DO spell the WOTD correctly – don’t laugh: most of us have messed it up at least once.
b. DO look up the WOTD and use it correctly. Check your spelling and grammar in your tweet & ensure accuracy before posting. Having said that, most players realize that for non-native English speakers’ errors are part of learning a language and are very supportive of everyone participating regardless of one’s proficiency. On any given day the majority of the Top 5 winners may be non-native speakers (albeit most are rather masterful of the language). In February 2009, 3 out of the Top 5 Top All-Time players are non-native speakers.
c. DO craft a good tweet.
d. DO limit the characters of your tweets at 140 characters minus the number of characters in your user name plus four. Come again? OK. You want to give your tweet as many chances to be retweeted as possible by those who like it. Say your Twitter user name is @GeniusPhilologist. That’s 19 characters. In order for other players to retweet you, they’ll have to add RT @GeniusPhilologist (and then a space) before your tweet. RT + space + YourUserName + space = in this case a total of 23 characters (RT + space = 3, + @GeniusPhilologist = 19, + space =1). Twitter permits a total of 140 characters in a tweet, inclusive of spaces. Ergo, 140-23=117 characters is the maximum amount of characters that @GeniusPhilologist should try to tweet to for the tweet be as retweetable as possible. Do longer tweets win? Yes they do, but as a general rule the more people see your tweet the more exposure it has to other players & retweets ensure this. Why can’t players use the “retweet button” on Twitter since such can bypass the need to add the “RT @UserName”? They can but not all players use Twitter to play. Many use apps which will automatically shorten the retweet of your tweet possibly causing it to not score points. Please see “how to retweet” section for further elaboration on retweets.
e. DO vote for your tweet on Artwiculate.com if you want.
The above are the basic DOs. Artwiculate is a Twitter-based word of the day competition and by definition, Twitter is a social medium. As such, sociability can be a big part of the game for many players. If you enjoy the social part of it, here are a few DO’s and one crucial DON’T that will help support your playing:
a. DO follow other players you like. Go on Artwiculate.com & browse through previous WOTD entries or players’ profiles. Follow all the ones who strike your fancy, or if you want, follow all players.
b. DO retweet the tweets you see each day that you like. We all love it when someone likes something we tweeted and because an RT is addressed to us we are more likely to actually see it and thereby notice that it is a new player, heretofore unknown to us who retweeted it. Many of us will then follow you, and or say hello and welcome you.
c. DO thank other players for their retweets of your tweets. This is not a must-do; most of us will retweet anything we like whether you ever thank us or not, but if you’re a new player, thanking others is an easy way to meet people & engage.
d. DO make friends! As with anything in life, when we do something well, our friends will be the first ones to vote for us. Most of us are (nuts, but) delighted to have new players join in. When you see us online, feel free to say hello and engage in our chats. We may seem to be close friends: we are, but most of us met here, got addicted to this “den of lexicon crack” as @ultracutebot calls it, and remember what it was like being brand new and not quite knowing how to fit in.
e. DO remember what it was like when you were new: Look for new players & welcome them & help them out. Chances are you’ll make their day and they will remember you and follow your tweets. Whether they do or not, you passed on the support given to you when you started.
f. DO vote for all the tweets you like. Disclaimer: This part is airy-fairy. If you’re a macho dude who thinks karma is for sissies skip this section. Here’s the thing: part of the inspiring part of Artwiculate is to go on the website and read through all the tweets: not all of us have the time to do such daily but try to fit it in as your schedule permits. And, vote for all the tweets you love. Those of us who’ve won a few times will tell you that there’s a magic part in supporting others to win that which we also want. If you don’t have the time to read all the tweets on the site, you can click on that day’s, that month’s or all-time Top 50 pages and vote on individual players’ profiles. Or, if you’ve noted what you retweeted you can use the search field on the site to locate profiles & vote for the tweets you like.
g. DO NOT drive and tweet. Even though Artwiculate won’t confirm this, we’re pretty sure that a dead man’s tweets don’t get indexed. Evidently, he - and possibly his tweets - get defenestrated.
What is “blind voting”? Blind voting is going on Arwiculate.com, reading through the tweets and voting without knowing who wrote which tweet. By RTing on Twitter, or by voting only on site from the Top 50 boards, we often miss the gems submitted by newer players, or players who just drop in from time to time and who have not yet amassed enough points to be on any board. Even if you don’t have the time to go through all the pages on the site daily, if you try to read through a few when your time permits, you too will be hooked on voting blindly.
What are “Split Votes”? Sometimes we will make a mistake and RT a tweet incorrectly, either by forgetting to add the “RT” before the tweet, the “@” before the player’s name, etc. This will cause the tweet to be posted & credited on Artwiculate under the person who RTd it, not the person who originated it. Other players who are voting and/or RTing will have no way of knowing this and by voting for or RTing the tweet originated by another, the votes and/or RTs for that tweet are therefore “split” since it will be posted on Artwiculate twice. Or, some players may not realize that when they comment on an RT it causes the tweet to post on their profile in Artwiculate, also causing split votes.
Who is John Galt? Read “Atlas Shrugged”.
What is a hashtag? At the end of a tweet, you will sometimes see text without spacing between the words, preceded by the symbol “#”, such as #Artwiculate #Haiku #YayForRecycledTweets etc. By adding the symbol “#” before words and removing the spaces if using multiple words, you create a searchable index for the tweet on Twitter. So if other Tweeters enter “Haiku” in Twitter’s search field, the search results will yield all recent tweets with the hashtag #Haiku. When RTing a tweet with hashtags, we’re pretty sure you can safely edit out the hashtags without affecting the tweet being scored correctly. Artwiculati often used hashtags to insert humor into a tweet, dedicate it to a particular player or credit a source being quoted.
What does the #FF hashtag mean? #FF hashtags are all over Twitter on Fridays and mean “Follow Friday”. It’s a Twitter tradition: on Fridays, tweeters make recommendations of their favorite tweeters for others to follow.
What is a “recycled” tweet? Sometimes players will tweak for fun their own or other players’ entries used on previous WOTD competitions, or even use an identical tweet that coincidently has the word of the day in it again.
For example, On November 9th, 2009 the word of the day was “ailurophile”: @SJHatzi: She slithered close to him, her chatoyant eyes sparkling in the dimness. "Are you an ailurophile?" she whispered.
Then, on February 12, 2010 the word of the day was “chatoyant”: @SJHatzi: She slithered close to him, her chatoyant eyes sparkling in the dimness. "Are you an ailurophile?" she whispered. #YayForRecycledTweets
What is the right way to play? Your way is the right way to play! How do you enjoy playing Artwiculate most? That is the right way! If you want to craft a tweet a month, great! You want to craft 50 tweets a day and RT and vote for every other player’s tweet? Great! You want to craft a few tweets here and there, never RT and only vote on site? Great! You want to never tweet but want to only go on the site and vote for the tweets you like? Great! We all have our own favorite way to play this and any game, and, life for that matter. Do it your way.
