User:Benjamin Charles Baird/Report

In this assignment, we were tasked with assigning ourselves to an unfinished or “stub” article on Wikipedia and contributing to bettering the information present. The article I chose amongst the list of stubs was the article “Off-speed pitch.” This article refers to different types of pitches thrown by a pitcher in baseball that complement their fastball. I thought this would be a great article for me to edit, as I am currently a pitcher in the minor leagues with the St. Louis Cardinals. When I first was presented the article, it had only a few lines in the lead section giving a very broad definition. I knew that I wanted to expand upon the current definition as well as include a couple of new sections. I included a section named “Types of off-speed pitches” in which I detail the main different types of off-speed pitches. I talked about what each pitch does and how to throw it. I also included my own images showing how to grip the baseball from a couple of different angles. After this section, I included a brief history section that details when some of the first off-speed pitches were thrown. Throughout my time using Wikipedia for this course, I learned a lot more about the community than I ever knew before. As a contributor, I also was able to experience a new side to the platform, and see how the concepts from this course apply to creating a functional online community.

Wikipedia has clearly experienced a lot of success as a community. However, that is not to say that it does not have its own areas for improvement. When first creating a Wikipedia account, the information can be rather overwhelming. Fortunately, throughout several weeks of exercises, we were led through the process of how to properly adhere to Wikipedia’s guidelines. This process helped familiarize us with the interface, as well as taught us how to properly add information to an article. It is evident that this is something all people looking to use Wikipedia should do. While, of course, this information is available to all, Wikipedia does not require any type of training. However, in making this training a requirement, Wikipedia could ensure that new editors are contributing properly, thus spending less time formatting and citing improperly.

Another area that I believe could use some work is Wikipedia’s formatting options with regards to images. When I uploaded images to my article, there were not many formatting options. While this helps to keep it simple, I felt that I was unable to place images where I wanted them, thus making the article look a little less appealing. My last suggestion for Wikipedia, based off of my usage of the platform, is to create more incentives for contribution. Of course we were tasked with updating articles for this class, however I just cannot really see myself contributing much to Wikipedia in the future, due largely to the fact that there is not much motivation to do so from the platform itself.

While Wikipedia can be a bit confusing and hard to navigate, I definitely learned a lot and had an intriguing time studying the community. The first interesting feature I learned was how to use the sandbox page. Before this course, I was unaware that all contributors on Wikipedia have their own user page and sandbox. Here is where you can create or edit articles while experiencing all the formatting Wikipedia has to offer. It is a space where you can edit freely, without having to worry about the changes you make being seen live on the actual article. While editing in the sandbox, I learned about Wikipedia’s different forms of editing. These two types of editing were visual and source editing. Visual editing refers to editing the article as it appears to everyone, while source editing displays all of the unique information on the page as lines of code. During the peer review process, I learned how to assess the work of my classmates in their sandbox, as well as how to comment in their talk page. Every article on Wikipedia has a talk page where editors can collaborate on the contributions made to the page. Lastly, I learned about copyright and fair use for images and media integrated into Wikipedia articles. Learning to use Wikipedia proved to be much more in depth and complex than I ever would have guessed. However, learning to properly add and edit information, while adhering to plagiarism and citation guidelines, was a valuable experience that I will certainly remember.

In this course we have discussed and learned much about the inner-workings of different online communities. While online communities vary drastically in their services, the core foundations and principles they are built on are generally the same. One of our main topics of discussion throughout the course has been the idea of motivation and commitment to an online community. As I mentioned earlier, Wikipedia does not have a lot to offer in terms of motivation for users, and I believe this to be its biggest flaw. In chapter 2 of Building Successful Online Communities, we learned about how motivation for users can be a particular challenge for online communities, “Many of the requests members receive in online communities involve actions and decisions that they don’t care strongly about and are therefore unlikely to evoke deep processing.” The book goes on to discuss how this problem can plague online communities, particularly with new users. Now that I have used Wikipedia and have a good understanding of the platform, I believe they can do a better job motivating new users, and users in general, by implementing some sort of survey when registering for an account. By completing a broad survey of topics the user is interested in, Wikipedia can then push stub articles under those topics for editing. By doing this, Wikipedia does not only make sure its editors are finding stubs more easily, but it also promotes more thorough contributions, as editors are working on topics of interest. A system of this nature would have certainly made finding a stub article simpler at the beginning of this assignment.

After having learned the guidelines involved with Wikipedia and editing an article of my own, I believe that I have developed a good understanding for how this community works. The course material we have studied and discussed in class helped me to identify the aspects of Wikipedia that has made it a successful online community. I also believe the material has helped me to identify areas where communities such as Wikipedia can still improve in order to thrive for years to come.