User:Andrea guerrerov/Reflection

Reflection
Without knowing much about Wikipedia, I felt nervous and intimidated to join, for the first time, an online community. At the moment I could not even define what an online community meant and I was already creating a user page on an encyclopedia with over 4,000,000 members. Due to my lack of engagement in the online world, it took me several weeks to grasp the most basic features of Wikipedia, reviewing over and over the online training for students and consulting existing members. Nonetheless, it was the hardships that encouraged me to contribute, collaborate, and ultimately commit to the community that had so openly welcomed me.

My contribution in Wikipedia started as I completed the online training for students. Although I was not engaging with other Wikipedians or editing articles at the moment, I had the opportunity to learn about Wikipedia’s culture and core policies and guidelines including the Five Pillars, Verifiability and Notability, among other concepts. Similarly, I was able to test my editing skills by using a sandbox, a safe, isolated area for exploration and skill development that helps newcomers learn the process and adapt to the community. It was through this resource that I was able to learn how to include citations and references at the end of articles. Once I completed the training, I received a purple badge as a symbol of accomplishment. The simple graphic acted as a performance feedback that enhanced my motivation to contribute to Wikipedia from that point onward. Although I received an automated (thus insincere) “Welcome” in my talk page, real users, including AmandaRR123 and Ian (Wiki Ed), posted genuine and friendly greetings that further encouraged me to commit to the community. As newcomers, we risk being isolated by existing members until we have proven we are committed and thus will not act inappropriately. I believe it is necessary to first understand the community’s norm and comply with them to be able to feel autonomous and a good fit.

From all the expectations and norms in Wikipedia, my favorite ones are assuming good faith (AGF) and adopting a neutral point of view (NPOV). Reagle (2010) mentions the latter implies “that contributors should abandon efforts to convince others of what is right or true, and instead focus on a neutral presentation of what is commonly understood about that topic”. Although AGF was demoted in 2006 as a policy because it did not focus on behavior and was therefore difficult to enforce, Wikipedians have implicitly integrated it to their editing culture. The AGF guideline reassured me that Wikipedia is a community that strongly works together to achieve shared goals. Both behaviors challenged me to contribute to the community by writing a trustworthy article and acting with patience, civility, and humor.

The article I chose was Taza Chocolate, a stone ground chocolate manufacturer in Somerville MA, that already had a Wikipedia page. Nonetheless, the article was very short, had unappealing images and a banner on top stating: “This article contains content that is written like an advertisement. Please improve it by removing promotional content and inappropriate external links, and by adding encyclopedic content written from a neutral point of view” (July, 2015). Determined to contribute to the Wikipedia community by achieving neutrality in Taza Chocolate’s article and working on a topic that interests me, I dedicated a lot of time and effort, with the help of AmandaRR123, to find primary and secondary sources that would make the article Wikipedia-worthy. In order to encourage contribution, Wikipedia has a “Help out” section in the Community Portal with “numerous lists of actions that people can take to improve the encyclopedia”. Instead of being bold and improve a couple of articles listed in the portal, I was afraid to make big changes and was only able to fix minor spelling and grammar mistakes in one article. In retrospect, I attribute the initial nervousness to a newcomer’s symptom; it was the first time I was editing a Wikipedia page and was afraid of breaking the community’s rules or codes of conduct.

Despite the few paragraphs I had written about Taza Chocolate up to that point, moving the article from the sandbox to the main space made me feel I was slowly meeting my goal of contributing to the Wikipedia community as any other committed member would. What appeared to be a mess of codes in my sandbox became a beautiful and informative article that everyone could access. Instead of feeling uneasy and afraid of existing members’ reactions, I felt accomplished and ready to peer review and copy-edit three classmates’ pages. Since I had not fixed major changes in the articles listed in the Community Portal, I took this opportunity not only to practice my editing skills, but also to adopt and further understand Wikipedia’s guidelines for a perfect article. I was surprised with what Natawhee7, Wikibicki, and Johnmdaigneault had worked on so far, and made sure to give them feedback on the article’s talk page. Similarly, I shared some “WikiLove” to them, AmandaRR123, and Ian (Wiki Ed) to thank them for their ongoing help throughout my journey in the online community. Templated “WikiLove” messages to appreciate Wikipedians, including cookies, brownies, cups of tea, among many others, are yet another factor that contributes to Wikipedia’s success as an online community. Being able to express my appreciation to fellow members through those templates made me feel part of the community; receiving one from Alexisvictoria93 reassured me I had contributed in some way or another to her experience online.

To further commit to the success of my article, I visited the Taza Chocolate factory where I had the opportunity to take pictures, listen to the process of making chocolate and overall, learn as much as possible from the company. Once I thought I was in the right track with the necessary information and photos to finalize the Taza Chocolate article, user Amanda reached out to and let me know the page had received a “speedy deletion” request. Despite my efforts to create a page free of bias that accurately represents a perfect Wikipedia article, a Wikipedian thought the article was written to promote Taza Chocolate and thus created a banner to “courteously inform that the page was created by a banned editor” (Wikipedia, 2014). Fortunately, AmandaRR123 removed the ban and replied to the request by saying:

''This page is certainly not unambiguously promotional -- there is primarily factual information here, even if you disagree that the tone is encyclopedic. The guidelines themselves say that this speedy     deletion tag is for articles that are exclusively promotional. The page has also existed since 2012, so if you disagree with some of the more recent edits, I think reverting back to an earlier version would be a far preferable method of addressing it. --AmandaRR123 (talk) 23:00, 18 November 2015 (UTC) Full disclosure: I am working with this particular student developing this article. AmandaRR123 (talk) 23:04, 18 November 2015 (UTC)''

I realized I had fully committed to Wikipedia when the “speedy deletion” request affected me. It was the moment when everything I had been learning about Wikipedia finally clicked; I had to take a step back and understand that the request was there as an act of good faith, and that whoever posted the ban was simply adhering to one of Wikipedia’s core content policies. I knew creating a page for a company in Wikipedia would be challenging, but the one thing I take with me from this experience is the dedication and compromise Wikipedians have to their community.Andrea guerrerov (talk) 14:52, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

References