User:Allie partridge/Report

Allie Partridge

Reflection
To explore the Wikipedia online community, I help contribute to the “Capital Punishment in Massachusetts” page. Before this assignment, my only experience with the Wikipedia community was as a reader. Although I did not browse the site, I was consistently directed to wiki pages from google searches in order to find answers to my questions. As a new editing user to Wikipedia, I found the community side difficult to navigate. Unlike other online communities, it did not have the typical chat and comment features for Wikipedians to communicate. I struggled to figure out the difference between user pages and talk pages, and when was the appropriate time to post on either. Without the tutorials from our class and Wiki’s Edu quizzes, I would not have been able to make comments on my fellow student’s user pages. I am unsure how necessary this is for Wikipedians outside of our class, however, communication is key in an online community. If a new member is unable to connect with other users on the platform, then it is likely they will not continue to use the platform. After I watched the tutorial videos, I found editing articles to be simple and intuitive. The editing platform mimicked most writing platforms like Microsoft Word, Pages, and Google Docs. This allowed users to edit articles with little guidance necessary. I particularly liked the simplicity of citing sources and hyperlinking to other Wikipedia pages.

As I edited the “Capital Punishment in Massachusetts” page, struggled to write from a neutral point of view and paraphrase what I was writing. In other assignments, I am used to writing persuasively and using quotes to back up my claims. Encyclopedia writing is different. Luckily, the stub article I started with had some good information to start with. The problem was it was terribly disorganized and most of it was uncited. In order to improve the page, I added headings and many subsections. In these subsections, I was able to expand on the writing left by other Wikipedians. I also used the University of Washington library website to find scholarly sources to not only find new information, but also cited information that was previously uncited.

After experiencing the Wikipedia community as a new editor, I believe there are several changes that would allow the community to grow its number of editors. As we discussed in class, the Wikipedia community has seen a drop in the number of active editors on the platform. The largest reason for this, in my opinion, is the users lack of understanding of how to get started or how to find a new project. In Kraut and Resnick’s book, Building Successful Online Communities, they discussed a large problem in content creating online communities is a contribution gap. Wikipedia has attempted to close this gap by marking articles as stubs and by highlighting work to be done on the “Community Portal” main page. While it is helpful to have content needing improvement marked, it is difficult for users to find work that interests them. For example, while choosing which stub I wanted to improve I looked through a few stub subsections only to find thousands of topics I knew nothing about. If Wikipedia, however, created a suggestion quiz to help editors find new pages that need edits, I believe they would see an increase in the total amounts of edit made by new and existing users. By suggesting topics that may specifically interest that user, then they will have more intrinsic motivation to research and improve the article. These suggestions could expand beyond just the quiz results and also include suggestions based on other articles the user has contributed to.

Another change that I believe the Wikipedia community should make is creating a chat feature directly on the website for users to discuss article contributions. After navigating around the “Community Portal” main page, I found links to other platforms Wikipedians use to communicate (including IRC and Discord). By forcing users to find other sites to communicate, Wikipedia is driving users away from the platform. Kraut and Resnick’s book highlights the importance of contact with other contributors and its ability to motivate users to contribute more. Their current system is different from many other online communities which makes it very difficult for new users to use. If users don’t understand the platform, then they will not contribute more content. I believe that an onsite chat feature would allow new editors to feel more comfortable making edits, because it would allow them to ask questions and discuss edits in a format that is familiar to them, unlike the current talk page format. It would also help foster interpersonal connections between Wikipedians, because they could discuss their contributions within Wikipedia as well as other subjects of interest. Overall Wikipedia is a very interesting community due to their high volume of content and readers, but their dwindling number of contributors. Without large changes encouraging readers to become contributors or making the process of contributing more intuitive, the site will become outdated and unreliable. Given the site’s current untrustworthy reputation, it’s crucial that they continue to recruit active Wikipedians.