User:BettyChipman/Report

Betty Chipman

Reflection Paper

COMM 482

14 January 2020

My thoughts on Wikipedia before joining were skeptical. I was always strayed away from using Wikipedia in school so it was interesting that I would be learning about Wikipedia in this class. I remember growing up and when conducting research papers my professors would say “Wikipedia is not a reliable source” and that it could not be used. I actually never looked at Wikipedia as an Online Community and I didn’t know much about Wikipedia. I would consider myself a “newcomer”, as I didn’t know what Wikipedia culture consisted of before joining this class or what rules that Wikipedia has to regulate their content.

When I first was introduced to Wikipedia and went to do my first assignment I was scared and frightened by the thought of messing up anything. In the book “Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design”, it states “Design Claim 18: When newcomers have friendly interactions with existing community members soon after joining a community, they are more likely to stay longer and contribute more” (Kraut, Robert E., et al. 208). I was very frightened by the thought of even contributing to Wikipedia, because I didn’t want to do anything wrong or mess up, but when I created my account, I was instantly messaged by Wikipedia in my inbox with it saying “Welcome to Wikipedia Betty Chipman! Were glad to have you here”. My first thought was that it was just an automated message sent to all new members, but it gave me the idea that they are looking for newcomers and open to the idea of growing their community which is always a plus. In the notification there is also a link to a Wikipedia page that has links to other Wikipedia pages that give instructions on how to use Wikipedia. I found this very helpful because I am able to move at my own pace and I have a directory for questions. It also tells newcomers that there are resources and help before you just decided to just give up and that there isn’t anything to be frightened of. I still felt very nervous about contributing or making edits though, because it wasn’t very personable. It lacked a connection with others and felt very isolated. It was great to get all these tips and instructions on what to do but it wasn’t a look into Wikipedia’s actual community and culture.

I received another message as well. It was a message from an actual member from the Wikipedia Community. His name was Shalor and his message said “Hello, Betty Chipman, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment. I hope you enjoy editing here. If you haven't already done so, please check out the student training library, which introduces you to editing and Wikipedia's core principles. You may also want to check out the Teahouse, a community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to helping new users. Below are some resources to help you get started editing.” I was instantly welcomed by a member of the community and given the opportunity to communicate and interact with him. I was also introduced to the Teahouse which I noticed is a community specifically for newcomers and to get help from more experienced members. Design Claim 18 explains that when newcomers are instantly able to interact with existing members right away, they are more open to interacting. That is how I felt, when I looked through the Teahouse community page, I felt more comfortable. I wanted to actually get started right away with editing in the community, as seeing that there were others like me. They had questions and were able to actually interact with other members. It wasn’t as isolated and there was a sense of familiarity. That sense of belonging is very crucial to newcomers like me, because nobody wants to feel like they don’t belong. The sense of not belonging discourages activity and interaction because it feels lonely and ends with disengagement. It discourages new ideas and productivity that these newcomers can bring and actually hurts more than it helps. The more I engaged with Teahouse the more I wanted to participate. I was able to set goals from the page and see if I could figure out how to do some of the questions that were asked in the forum. Communities and social platforms should always be looking for new and fresh ideas.

The next Design Claim that I had identified with was “Design Claim 13 Providing members with specific and highly challenging goals, whether self-set or system-suggested, increases contribution.” (Kraut, Robert E., et al. 38). I identified with this because even though most of the motivation to do the project was because of my grade, based on my opinion, I was able to pick and choose the topic I wanted to edit and contribute to. Wikipedia has a way for people to find articles based upon rating and I did choose a stub article, but I enjoyed picking the topic as it is something that interests me and made it easier for me to want to contribute as well. The article was a musical group called SOB X RBE and they were classified as a stub page. It had very little useful information and I set the goal to expand it. I wanted to expand the page because it has the potential, but I knew it would be hard because the group is fairly new and doesn’t have a lot of media coverage together. My goal wasn’t to make it a complete article, it was to expand it a lot more. My goal was to find more personal information on the group and to identify what the group consisted of. That was where most of my information came from to expand the article because as a group, they don’t have much but as individuals in the group they have a lot that they incorporate to the group. It was a lot of brainstorming and searching but my goal was to provide biographic information about each member in the group and I was able to do that successfully. I am not sure though if my motivation and contribution was biased based upon the fact that I did this as a reward for a grade which is completely different than if I had just made a Wikipedia for fun and found a stub article to edit and contribute to.

I really enjoyed joining the Wikipedia community. I think there could be more to get people more engaged and be able to interact with each other though. I did feel as though If I wanted to expand my social interactions, I would have to go find them. I was introduced to the Teahouse and Shalor but other than that, I didn’t get much community engagement. I am not for sure if that is because this work was based off of a class. I am not so sure I got the experience of actually joining the Wikipedia community because I felt like I engaged more with my classmates more than the actual Wikipedia community. I think Wikipedia needs to incorporate more ways for newcomers to find various communities. I think navigating and helping newcomers understand Wikipedia’s purpose and contributions is solid. Newcomers are welcomed with instructions on how to do everything, but I think it does lack community. You are kind of forced to find a community and not in an easy way. I still don’t know what other forum communities exist besides Teahouse. Overall, I think this experience made me knowledgeable about Wikipedia and I am not as scared or frightened to use it anymore.

Citation

Kraut, Robert E., et al. Building Successful Online Communities : Evidence-Based Social Design, MIT Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=3339407.