User:Arboyle/reflection

The Wikipedia Community: Reflection Essay
Amanda Boyle

Introduction
In an effort to provide useful, actionable feedback I am breaking my reflection into streams of thought. This format aligns chronologically with my lived experience as a novice contributor to Wikipedia. To not just write this for the sake of a grade, or to live in the depths of my Google Drive, I will address my arguments and share my thoughts with the team at the Wikimedia Foundation and the supporting community. To you, wonderful people, I hope this is helpful. Thank you for all you do to facilitate the sharing of knowledge through this free encyclopedia. I cannot imagine you get thanked enough, but your efforts have a significant positive impact on society.

Under the Hood of the Wiki: My First Impression
I was intimidated to start this project. Wikipedia in my opinion is an institution. It’s a trusted resource, with layers of dedicated moderators and contributors guarding and debating the integrity of contributed content. Who am I to be a part of that? I questioned if I was smart enough to add anything helpful, or if for shame my efforts would be wiped away in an imagined editing swipe of digital red ink, reverted back to more reputable information, rather than my poorly cited contributions. Like many new things we try - I didn’t want to look dumb.

Those fears were not immediately dissuaded, but through the slow build of the training modules, the encouragement of Mako, and the vast need for updates to stub articles with clear calls to action, I started to gain interest in contributing.

I have to share that I found Wikipedia as a platform to have a high barrier to entry. You have to really want to learn what makes a good post, to dedicate time to research - both of the platform, and of external sources for validity - to have a meaningful impact. Quick fixes and low level moderation opportunities are vast, but if a new contributor is truly motivated by a service based mindset and finds value in giving back or teaching through sharing knowledge, they could possibly be an ideal long term contributor to Wikipedia.

The Onboarding Experience
My most generous compliments to the learning & development team that put together the resources made available through Wiki Education. The dashboard and training modules were constructed with intention, and include content able to be consumed by users from various learning styles. As I was going through the training I looked to see if the content was localized, and if these resources were as widely available to marginalized communities of potential contributors. I found no evidence to support this, so if they are not already in existence and just not visible in the portal we used, I would encourage the team to localize as much of this training resource content as they can. I respect that this is an expensive effort, but you could start with targeted posts of the most trafficked content in the most widely spoken Hindi, Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish, and Portuguese. From there track engagement data and page views. Have a baseline and platform average and see if people are using the information. If you can include a feedback mechanism all the better. If you can create localized content that is actually useful to help spread knowledge in partnership with the target audience, you are on to something good.

In much the same way Wikipedia was able to grow through community supported engagement and facilitation, I would explore if any of the same approaches to community-generated-content could be applied to localizing content. Instead of just word-for-word translation, which I don’t think is that common anymore anyway, you would want to ensure that the content and references it contains are relevant to the target audience.

Beyond my absolute awe at the learning interface, I found the onboarding tasks easy to process and I liked how they built on each other, enabling capacity building and helping me feel more confident and comfortable as I progressed. It wasn’t all easy, as I often half consumed instructions and found myself lost and I was trying to navigate a task. If I couldn’t muscle my way through it I would need to go back and rewatch the training video and follow with more intention.

Learning any new technology I expect to encounter similar roadblocks. I am of the “learn by doing” tribe. I turn off Google Maps when things start to look familiar, I try to rely on my memory of a place rather than ask for help, I put together furniture without the instructions. When it comes to a system like Wikipedia, with a seemingly intricate version control system, I think I know what I am doing. I lean into my tech adjacent professional role to just try and see how it goes. That foolish confidence seems to me a byproduct of privilege through education and access to technology, and a real risk to the integrity of a resource like Wikipedia because I don’t fully comprehend the risks, and if I were to do something wrong and mess up someone else’s work, I would not know how to recover the original work.

All that to say, I respect the high barrier to entry. I don’t know what I don’t know, and when it comes to an asset that is at its core for the public good, I would not be destructive or damaging to it. Not assuming bias of intent on any one or any one persona, I am confident that Wikipedia must be under a constant onslaught of spam attacks. The onboarding experience does a lot to share what to do to learn, and how to use your sandbox as a safe space. It’s more of a carrot than a stick approach, and I think that it is healthier in the long run for community engagement and participant retention, but I do think it would be compelling to feature stories of the efforts done by normal people, average contributors to Wikipedia, who dedicate time and resources to building and enhancing protections for the platform. From a marketing perspective, tell the hero story and highlight what can be done to support and engage and be a part of the Wikipedia community beyond just contributing to content. This is a robust and evolving platform and it would be really cool to know more about that. Is there a future roadmap for the platform that is public facing? And how do you take in and respond to the voice of the customer feedback? Ideation trackers, or forums with upvoting mechanisms are common in many online communities. Is anything done like that today to build the Wikipedia of tomorrow?

Navigating Established Norms
Navigating the article updates, talk pages, bot responses, and conversations that span over a decade, I found that understanding what is a descriptive norm, and also identifying the nuances of injunctive norms fascinating. From a professional who works as in online community strategy, being a fly on the wall to some of these conversations was captivating. I can’t find any resources that explicitly say, “These are the rules of engagement.” I think it’s just too vast to distill down to a bulleted list, but I find time and time again there is a “common good” and “assume positive intent” ethos at the heart of this community. It’s a true pay-it-forward model that has become a template for so many others who have tried to replicate it over the years.

Gaining Agency & Understanding the Need for Urgency
In the second stage of enlightenment in my journey towards Wikipedia Nirvana I found myself with functioning confidence. I knew just enough content creation navigation to be dangerous, and was well on my way to editing a topic for my coursework that was a bit of a softball. After a false start and failing on the topic of organizational communication, I had settled into editing an existing piece on the neighborhood I live in, the Central District in Seattle.

I knew what to do, and how to do it, but I lacked the urgency or sense of purpose. Nothing needed to change. Nothing in the article was incorrect or up for debate. There were areas or personal interests that I could expand upon, but to what end? What was the return on investment beyond me checking the participation box for this course? For me, from a data driven perspective, I would be keen to know the value of my impact. What about page live Google Analytics data that is easily accessible for individuals to see and evaluate? Before I want to invest my time in updating something I have to ask - what is the value here? How many people will this serve? Is this the best place I should be spending my time and energy - or is there another article in more urgent need of content development? Could you engage and drive participation with editors and contributors by showcasing a dashboard with “areas or urgency” or a “hit list of quick fixes” on high traffic pages where there will be more impact and potentially more benefit?

This loosely ties back to where I started in this section where I mentioned my false start with Organizational Communication. When we were discussing the coursework and Mako mentioned we would need to edit an existing page, I thought it would be easy. That I could just jump in, look for some lacking citations, clear up some grammatical errors, and then add in a bit of breadth and depth to existing content. One long hard look at the highly developed article on Organizational Communication had my tail between my legs. I was punching above my weight with what I assumed were academics with decades of experience in the field. I have no idea if that’s true. I don’t know who any of those editors were, or if they had any notable credentials or qualifications, or experience that supersedes mine. To a new contributor though, that topic was not the place to start to build confidence. It took me finding an easy-in to build the confidence I needed to feel comfortable pressing that commit change button.

Lingering Questions & Conclusion
At the beginning of this course, Mako asked us to think about this question: Why do some attempts to build online communities attract enormous crowds, while the vast majority never attend even a second contributor?

In its infancy I can imagine users and web aficionados felt compelled to contribute to Wikipedia. The purpose of a free and open encyclopedia, making trusted information available to every person with internet access was compelling. Contributing, even in a very small way, could have a massive impact on others. In the beginning the topics and opportunities for contributions were not only endless - many were accessible. What began as an opportunities model, which Kraut & Resnick describe as a complex constellation of activities evolved and was strengthened by its members' contributions. As more and more content has been added, and the expected match_value increased, I wonder if there has been a tipping point? At what point do we say, for the bulk of things, this is good enough? I don’t know the answer, but as a novice contributor I am left with that thought.

Growth in communities is not always good, so what can you say is the focus for growth (or improvement or optimization, etc.) for the next evolution of Wikipedia? Where could this content resource and repository of all known knowledge expand to? How can you tell this growth story to your users? How can you compel them to join in the effort? These are big, exciting questions, and I personally am very excited for the future of Wikipedia.