User:Adrifaye/Report

Reflection Essay
Throughout this project with Wikipedia, I learned a lot about the Wikipedia community, Wikimedia foundation, and about those who share interests with the topic of my article, SZA and her song Blind. Wikipedia, as we discussed in class, is an online community with strict guidelines, and the users in this community are very obedient to these rules. Throughout my experience during this project, I ran into users who were very adamant that I obey these guidelines, even in my sandbox draft. For example, I had found a cover from SZA’s album that had already been uploaded to Wikimedia, and decided to upload it to my sandbox. Within a day of having this picture uploaded, it was taken down from both my sandbox and from the Wikimedia commons. I was surprised to see this as at the time I didn’t believe that other users were actively viewing my sandbox, and also because a few other articles had used this same image so I had assumed that it was a usable image. I also had a few users go into my sandbox and change and update some references, which again caught me off guard as I didn’t think many users were monitoring my draft that closely. Although a lot of the users were doing useful work to my draft, I did run into a little bit of trouble with my sandbox being visible to all. A few days after I had finished my first draft, a user had updated the original article with some of the new information that I had on my draft almost word for word. This was frustrating for me as it left me feeling like my draft wasn’t useful anymore, and also rubbed me the wrong way as Wikipedia is very supportive of citing your sources, and there was no credit given to me and my words on the topic from this user. A few hours after making my draft live, I was again shocked to find that a fellow Wikipedian had left me a very detailed message in the Talk page of my article about all of the things that I should have done differently in my contributions. This user was incredibly passionate about SZA and her song Blind and was very passionate about the quality of the article.

Everyone that I interacted with on Wikipedia was very intrinsically motivated. They weren’t gaining any money or status by making these suggestions and revisions to my work, but were rather focused on the quality of the work that I was contributing. The Wikipedians that I interacted with also seemed to be committed through both an identity-based commitment and a normative commitment. The majority of them identified very strongly as a Wikipedian and were there to enforce the rules within their community, and a few identified based on the topic of my article, as SZA fans, and were there to make sure all of the information about SZA was correct, and all of them were committed to the greater good of making sure Wikipedia was a reliable and accurate source of information. The Wikipedians also made me very aware that I was a newcomer to the community, and I would be treated as such. The majority of them didn’t care if my contributions were in good faith or not and simply wouldn’t let anything slide that didn’t adhere to Wikipedia guidelines, even if it was just a simple mistake. I expected as a newcomer I would have received a little bit more direct feedback from the more experienced users about how to improve my contributions and my draft in my sandbox, but instead would usually get my work deleted or changed with no explanation behind it.

Although my experience with Wikipedia wasn’t the best, I do have to credit Wikipedia for how well they stick to their guidelines and well how this identity based commitment as a Wikipedian entourages their users to make sure that every article and draft adhere to these policies. To better their community, I would suggest a few changes to the Wikipedia community. First, I think it is extremely important to provide a reason for changing someone else’s work. Although there is a prompt to explain changes before publishing, I noticed that this wasn’t used as often as I expected, and was often left wondering what I did wrong to allow my work to be deleted. In class we discussed how newcomers can be harmful to a community, but also their importance to the growth of a community, and one of the aspects of that was making sure that they were well socialized and aware of normative behavior, which simply deleting a contribution does not teach a newcomer the “correct” way to contribute. I also would suggest making the sandboxes a little less public, and maybe only open to those who are Wiki educators. As I mentioned, my work was copied directly from my sandbox to the article with no credit or notice of this happening, which was incredibly discouraging as a newcomer. This removed any normative commitment that I had to the group as I felt like I was no longer contributing to the greater good and sometimes that my draft was somehow detracting from the greater good. I also didn’t feel any identity-based commitment compared to the other Wikipedians that I interacted with as a lot of the times it would come off as them thinking since they identified as a Wikipedian, they were in the right, and I was always wrong. If newcomers were allowed a more private spot in their sandbox to grow and experiment with the community, it likely would allow for them to become more committed as they too would feel more like a Wikipedian and as if they were contributing to the greater good. Overall, the socialization aspect as a newcomer was incredibly hard as I felt unwanted as treated a bother in all of the spaces that I contributed to, and because of that, will likely not be a part of the Wikipedia community again.

Through our Online Communities class I was able to learn about what motivates a community, what makes a member commit to a community, and the importance and risk of newcomers, all of which I believe apply directly to my experience with Wikipedia. I believe if Wikipedia were to implement some of my suggestions, newcomers would be more socialized and therefore better contributors and members of this community. I also believe that these recommendations would allow for newcomers to become more committed to the community if they were treated more as a fellow Wikipedian and as if they were actually contributing to the greater good of the community. What was unique about my experience on Wikipedia that differs from what we learned in class was that there weren’t many spammers or trolls, so the main threat to articles is newcomers. Because of this, Wikipedians have to work extra hard to ensure the quality of work by newcomers and could likely be the source of the lack of motivation and commitment that I felt to this community.