User:Bcmbarreto/reflection

After 2 months of contributing to Wikipedia, I do not feel like a Wikipedian or part of the community. Kraut et al. (2016) defines an online community as a group of people who interact primarily through computer-mediated communication and who identify with and have developed feelings of belonging to the group. These communities are structured by shared goals, norms, or interests that help foster a sense of connection and engagement among members. Reflecting upon my experience with Wikipedia, I argue that publishing an article on Wikipedia does not make you a Wikipedian.

Every community has and needs newcomers. Without them, there will come a time when the community will no longer exist. Kraut et al. (2016) touch upon the importance of socialization processes for newcomers. They emphasize that successful communities often provide structured socialization processes for newcomers, which can include formal mentoring or introductory tasks that are designed to facilitate the integration of new members. I relate to this claim since my experience with Wikipedia was purely academic. Our class was guided step-by-step on how to successfully integrate within the community. We had help choosing our topic and were presented with links to articles that needed help (design claim 1), we were part of WikiEdu which helped us have an understanding of how to contribute to Wikipedia before joining Wikipedia. However, even with the preparation, I was still anxious to publicly contribute.

In my opinion, several factors made me feel nervous. I have always used Wikipedia and always thought the editors had to be specialized in the topic they were writing about. I did not feel qualified to contribute and publish an article. I already had a misconception of the Wikipedia community before even trying to be a part of it. When I read Seven Ages of Wikipedians, I identified as a WikiInfant and even after publishing my article, I feel like I only grew into a WikiChild. This online community is so big and once I saw what happens behind the scenes of each article, it only scared me more. Having my edit history open for anyone to see, and my article being available for the whole internet to have opinions on it and edit my article as they wish only increased my nervousness. After reflecting on why this project was so uncomfortable for me, I noticed that, in my opinion, I took the safe way out and improved a translated article.

I found that Wikipedia is a welcoming community, but not an easy community to join. I am thankful that I was part of this class and had instructions to help me through this process, but I noticed Wikipedia alone does not. I suggest Wikipedia integrate more structured introductions to newcomers. Designing introductory guides to help through the initial stages of community engagement. This could include tutorial-like experiences, guided tours of the features, or even 'newcomer' tasks that could introduce the community's norms and activities. Another suggestion would be to provide personalized mentorship programs. Users could choose either what topics they enjoy or what type of editor they want to be and then they would be assigned to a mentor to help navigate this new space. One thing I think Wikipedia does well for newcomers is the ability we have to gradually integrate into the community. It is up to the users how much they want to edit or participate.

Before contributing to Wikipedia, I was oblivious to how regulated they were in terms of copyright. When I first started editing my article in my sandbox, I wanted to add images of the incident to my article. I looked up step-by-step guides and instructions on how to do it. Even though the information was there, I found it a bit hard to navigate. I even uploaded an image and had a bot address me on my talk page explaining how I should fix this error. It caught me by surprise how attentive they were to help fix these problems. On the other hand, in my experience, I found it harder to get attention from Wikipedians themselves. My article was a translation from an already-existing article. I was not sure of the rules about translating a page so I reached out to a Wikipedian translator. I did not receive a response. I also barely got any comments or edits on my article after I published it.

During our reflection in class and weekly check-ins, I felt a little behind because it sounded like most students had some type of interaction with another editor. It wasn't until the class where we reflected on our experience that I felt like we were all on the same boat in terms of feelings towards the project. I noticed how most students also felt scared to upload their articles and felt like they were intruding on the Wikipedia community. I felt like part of the student community within Wikipedia, where we are there to learn, not the Wikipedia community where they are there to share knowledge.