User:AaronAspelund/Report

Aaron Aspelund 1729561 Wiki Reflection Essay

The opportunity to write, critique and edit a Wikipedia article was one of the most rewarding experiences as a communications major. As we have mentioned in class, most people are takers, not givers. I have always used Wikipedia as a quick source of information, however, I have never taken the source seriously in comparison to other articles. This exercise has changed my opinions about the credibility and importance of Wikipedia. Overall, the article I chose to edit was about Badminton in the United States. This article had very little information, in all honesty, the article had maybe less than 100 words and no detailed descriptions (S-Class). However, through the processes of Wiki Edu, I appropriately critiqued the original article, then made valuable contributions through the processes of research and peer review. Overall, I learned many new skills and brained storms ways that the Wikipedia Community could improve, while using concepts and ideas learned from class as a way to guide my approach towards writing my article.

To begin, I started by performing training modules as provided by Wiki Edu. Once I had learned some skills about how to appropriately use Wikipedia, I then started to do article evaluations. I have always been interested in sports and I immediately knew that I wanted to work on an article that dealt with sports. After a lot of consideration I choose Badminton in the United States. It wasn’t exactly the article I was hoping to improve, but it was an article of interest. Especially because as a kid I would play a lot of badminton during the summer time ( it reminded me of my childhood).

Once I had chosen the article, I read over the information that was originally provided. This article was rated as a Wiki S-type. An S-rated Wikipedia article means that it is just starting. This means that it typically lacks information, and often lacks credible sources. It was obvious from the beginning when I found the article that it had limited information. For example, the section on the National Team had one sentence: “The men's and women's national team have had limited success at the Summer Olympics” (USA Today). As illustrated in the previous sentence the article has little to no information that is useful to the reader.

I first began by compiling a list of sources and creating an annotated bibliography. The bibliography gave me a summarized version of what was held in each one of the sources which made it very easy when setting up/writing my actual Wikipedia article. Once having a completed set of sources with summaries, I then moved onto the article stage. Over a period of 2-3 weeks I wrote an edited and very thorough version of the new Wikipedia article. Once completed, we had our classmates do a peer review which helped us as writers find flaws/mistakes in our paper. It also helped with gaining important insight about pieces of information that our article might be missing. For example, Ali Wall and I met up to do a peer review of each others articles. Ali mentioned that I should try to include internal links of names. She also mentioned that it would be good to compare the sport of badminton to a popular sport like football in order to show why badminton is less popular than football. Finally, Ali said that it would really help if the article had a lead section that explained how the sport worked. I never thought about having a lead section. This piece of insight in my opinion was the most important because I felt like it tied the whole article together (making it more detailed and professional). Finally, after reviewing the information that was given to us from our peers and making the appropriate edits, I published my final work for all to see. For myself personally, this was a very proud moment for me. Unlike social media in which you post online all the time, posting a researched article felt special, especially with the idea that someone, somewhere may read it!

Overall, I learned a lot from this Wikipedia article experience and I have several suggestions to make to the Wikipedia community. Additionally, I also made connections to concepts in class that correlated to the Wikipedia experience. First off, I would like to state that the Wiki Edu did a phenomenal job of teaching myself on how to insert photos, quotes, internal links as well as how to navigate the main page and talk pages(in correlations to leaving messages on talk pages as well). However, there are several suggestions that are crucial to making the community even better. To start, I wish Wikipedia would have done a better job at informing individuals about stubs. I personally enjoyed strengthening stub articles, however, I had never heard of stub Wikipedia articles until this year in my Communications 482 class. Personally, I think the Wikipedia community needs to do a better job of advertising in order to create interest from more people (this could be done through interpersonal recruitment such as having active users invite people or using commercials such as during the Superbowl to generate new user interest). Additionally, as mentioned in class, the majority of people who are working on these articles are people with intrinsic values/motivation. As someone who is interested in becoming more involved in Wikipedia, I wish that Wikipedia would do more to recognize individuals who contribute a lot of information. Currently, I am only aware of the barnstar awards. However, I think it would be more beneficial to offer special event awards and prizes like Yelp. For example, in lecture we discussed the case studies of Yelp. Yelp rewards some of their most active members with Yelp elite status. These elite status individuals are invited by Yelp to special dinners, events and entertainment. In my own personal opinion, I think if Wikipedia has a system like Yelp, they could increase the number of editors that are helping expand the Wikipedia community. Finally, community size is another important aspect. In correlation to what I was discussing above in terms of advertisements, and awarding elite statuses in order to generate more user engagement, the community size/sample of Wikipedia seems to be slightly affected. For example, as discussed in lecture, we learned how community size affects the way in which people are motivated to do work. As mentioned by Professor Benjamin Hill, people are always more willing to contribute in an online group that is small rather than an online group that is large. Although thousands of people contribute to Wikipedia, it is evident that this is taking place. For example, this is my first time participating in helping contribute to Wikipedia, before then, I always relied on people to do the work for me. Additionally, in a case study example, Justin Knapp and Steven Pruitt are examples of how in a larger group one or two people do a majority of the work. Justin Knapp and Steven Pruitt are currently two famous Wikipedians that have contributed the most to Wikipedia. Knapp has made over 1.85 million edits on Wikipedia and was the first to 1 million edits. Steven Pruitt is the current record holder in edits and has contributed over 3 million edits and created over 35,000 articles.

One of my last pieces of advice for the Wikipedia community is the idea/ implementation of entry barriers. During class lecture, we talked about this idea as an appropriate way to respect users who have been a part of a media platform for a long time as well as a way of allowing new users the ability to edit articles and gain trustworthiness in order to access higher levels of Wikipedia status( almost like progressive access control). I think by implementing this idea, Wikipedia could reduce the number of trolls that delete entire pages. Under this system, new users could be only allowed to edit S-class articles until they have proven worthy to give them access to more articles ( this method might entice new users to stay apart of the Wikipedia community, and it might also fend off trolls or new users that are less committed, while preserving the peace of existing users).

To round off my suggestions, I want to compare the Wikipedia norms to what we have discussed during lecture. As someone who is new to the Wikipedia community, the norms for Wikipedia were very overwhelming. The Wiki Edu module did a strong job of helping with that, however, that being said, the norms and regulation page for Wikipedia is very long. As mentioned in lecture, a long list of rules can intimate new users. As a final suggestion, I would suggest simplifying the Wikipedia expectation page. By doing so, Wikipedia may gain even more participation from new members.

Overall, the Wikipedia experience has influenced me greatly as an individual. I can now successfully add quotes, cite, add photos, create sections and effectively use my sandbox. I don’t know how much in the near future I will contribute to Wikipedia but I appreciate the assignment because it pushed me out of my comfort zone, therefore forcing me to try something new that I haven't done before.

Link to google docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vdwUKZH3UehO4vuOFO5jDt5SGTJszP2tuhEBIx43jX0/edit