User:Bellsam4/report



As apart of this course, COM 482 - Interpersonal Media, we as students have been immersing ourselves into the online community of Wikipedia for the past six weeks. Throughout this time within the Wikipedia world, I have been trained through modules and guided practices, worked on a live article within the safety of my sandbox, and then published my edits in the live article itself. Aside from Wikipedia itself, I have also been learning what motivates users, causes them to commit (or not) to online communities, the norms users follow, how to engage newcomers, and some theories of how to create an online community to begin with. Through this new lens I have been able to reflect on my personal experience with Wikipedia and provide advice on how to improve based on the knowledge I've gained in the past few weeks.

Personal Experience
I was able to follow the training and then work on drafting a stub article, bear claw (pastry). Within my sandbox I was able to work on the live article in a safe place to experiment, peer reviewing others articles, and taking those comments into my edits. Having encountered Wikipedia my whole life and utilizing its information to understand the basics of many people, place or things, being apart of the community is a whole new experience. Being able to see how it works from the inside out and saying that I am now a contributor is a special status to hold. I have learned the time and effort that goes into understanding the norms and rules of Wikipedia, that it is not just a free for all or people joining and immediately making edits. I have learned that it is much more of a process, that involves much more research and planning than I had previously thought. Throughout my education I, and most my peers, have been told to not cite Wikipedia as a reliable source, but now being apart of the community I feel much more confident about using Wikipedia as a serious source of information.

Wikipedia & Course Material
There are some course concepts that Wikipedia is implementing already in a successful way. One being the Utility Model of Motivation which is when an individual will do something if the benefits for the individual outweighs costs to them. This became more clear when we talked about how Wikipedia takes traditional products and uses new methods/tools of doing so. Another aspect of Wikipedia that helps build it up is the variety of ways one can be committed. Wether that be normative based which is a sense that you are contributing to a greater goal, or bonds based which is profile pages, personal conversations and identities. Allowing people to get involved and committed for different reasons brings a wider scope of users with different perspectives and commitments.

Recommendations
When thinking about engagement vs commitment dynamics we remember Scratch and how there were more remixes of a project if that project was simple. This led to a lot more remixes of those projects but all in all was shallow in terms of engagement. While this usually may be considered an unwanted outcome, maybe Wikipedia needs more opportunities that are broad to increase participation without having too much commitment. Seeing as Wikipedia could be overwhelming for most, having something that is overtly simple yet fun and engaging could expand the community. A big issue for Wikipedia is the “clueless” group of members in terms of maintaining order for norms and regulations. These people are acting in good faith but unsure on what the norms are. They have done a good job with protection from these good faith newcomers by creating safe spaces for safe learning such as the sandbox. However adding more socialization for newcomers could be beneficial to Wikipedia by having a mentor help teach along the way. As we have had Mako to answer any of our questions about the process, other newcomers could benefit from an experienced user being there to guide them. These recommendations have been carefully articulated throughout this course from a place of research and learning in hopes of assisting in new ways to look at Wikipedia and how to grow and enrich the community.

Changes & Additions
What I would change or add based on my experience is opening Wikipedia up to make it an experience for everyone. Not just those highly versed in research and writing, but those who have smaller contributions to make. One way to do this could be creating a survey that newcomers take that would assess their interests and commitment and then generate a list of stubs that they could consider working on. While looking at the formal way of ensuring order within a community which is to evaluate each other by a system of public feedback. This in itself has a variety of ways to go about it, whether that be qualitative or quantitative, reflect on only positive contributions, or both positive and negative. At the end of each training module there was a submit feedback button that I did not utilize. To myself I thought since it wasn't required why spend more time on this module. Instead if this feedback was mandatory, these newcomers could explain what was helpful or tricky about the process. Making the user experience more navigable and simple would also help clear up confusion. Wikipedia is unique in the way that it is an online community that everyone knows about but is not a part of. Personally, during this course our professor has mentioned a dozen of online communities and the only one that I did know before this course was Wikipedia. The issue than becomes how does mostly everyone know about this community but most people do not participate in it? Although recruitment is challenging for a successful community, by furthering the clarity and the scope of participation, Wikipedia can continue to grow.