User:Blasianmanda/Report

Reflection Essay Report
Amanda Greene - 1628910

Reflection Report

COM 482

February 17, 2020

At the very beginning of the course, when Prof. Mako brought up the Wikipedia article assignment, I was unsure about Wikipedia due to the negative connotations surrounding it that I've heard throughout most of my academic life. It wasn't until actually attending lectures and contributing to Wikipedia that I realized Wikipedia is actually an important Online Community that has credibility, and this was something that never crossed my mind before. I was always told that Wikipedia is not a reliable source and that we should never incorporate Wikipedia as references or sources into our academic work. However, after my experience working on Wikipedia, I was able to learn this community's rules and restrictions, especially their copyright restrictions, and how there can be some ups and downs with Wikipedia just like any other online community. While in the process of learning as I edited my Wikipedia article, there were definitely aspects of Wikipedia that surprised me as a newcomer, getting bit as a newbie, and some rules and restrictions that still confuse me as well. I was unaware of how strict their community is, until now. On the bright side, this experience as a whole has surely shifted my thoughts and opinions on Wikipedia. I was able to gain helpful experiences and skills that can be reflected on and I am able to make sense of what I believe Wikipedia could improve on as an online community based on my experiences. This experience as a whole sure has shifted my thoughts on and opinions on Wikipedia.

The stub article that I decided to edit and hoped to improve was about the Brooklyn, hip-hop artist, Flipp Dinero. I choose this article because my first option of SOB X RBE was unfortunately taken by two other classmates. At first, Wikipedia's article on Flipp Dinero (rated Stubs) did not have enough information and had very minimal details with only around 7-10 sentences, one table, and a few references.

To begin my editing process, I started off by looking up many sources involving Flipp Dinero regarding his background, childhood, his career and how it came to be, all his albums, mixtapes, and songs, and even deep down to his motivations, songs he featured in, television performances, and overall just all the nits and bits I could gather about this new hip-hop artist. Gathering sources was a bit tricky and I struggled with this because of what I learned from one Wiki Edu Module. In the module regarding Evaluating Articles and Sources I understood that it is important to use "good sources" such as independent sources, academic sources or textbooks, and sources from reliable publishes. I also understood that "not good" sources include blog posts, company websites, news, and such. It was difficult for me to gather academic material, I mean, you don't usually find academic textbooks about new hip-hop artists. Overall, there were not really many resources other than sites like YouTube for interviews, Company websites like BET, Complex, Billboard, and other mainstream culture sites, as Salt mentioned to me that using interviews and such are okay since I noticed there weren't many "good sources" about Flipp Dinero to begin with! He's not as big as other artists, but many artists that came after him or "contributed less" music wise have C-Class rated and higher importance wikipedia pages so I was driven to making his just as important.

After gathering sources, I did summaries on them in my notes and then began adding these details to my article's draft. I did not add every single summary at this time in which during the peer review I received feedback on needing to add much more detail, which was helpful because I ended up adding much more while making my article revisions. During my revisions, I then began to struggle again.

This was the first issue of strict rules that I ran into as a newcomer, but not the last! I uploaded an image of Flipp Dinero after reaching out and finally receiving the photographer's permission to do so, however, my photo was taken down from my article's draft sandbox by someone on Wikipedia due to copyright reasons! After this happened, I immediately emailed permissions-commons in order to explain why I uploaded the image and how the photographer, Chad Giffith, gave me permission to do so, so I included screenshot attachments as well of the messages between us. And for some reason this wasn't enough, they suggested I send the photographer a permission template where he could fill it out and email it to them or I had the option to fill it out on his behalf and email it to them. The photographer messaged me to release permission to fill out the template on his behalf, in which I proceeded to do so, and emailed photos of our messages and the template back to permissions-commons. Unfortunately, this was still not enough and they did not accept the template by responding, "We are unable to accept forwarded permission statements or proxy statements for legal reasons. Please ask the copyright holder to e-mail us directly, if possible using the template available at: (inserts link to template of consent)". At this point I was frustrated, I did not reply and had given up due to such strict rules and processes of just uploading images. Wikipedia norms and rules can be overwhelming to newcomers of the online community. For me as a newcomer, I found there are many guidelines, expectations, regulations, norms, and policy pages of Wikipedia rules and I found them to be extremely wordy and quite nerve-racking/stressful to grasp as a newbie. I would say that my experiences of Wikipedia’s strict rules and processes relates to how we discussed in class that long and lengthy rules could be intimidating and overwhelming for newcomers (Class lecture). Based on my own personal experience, I strongly believe that if Wikipedia were to shorten and make their rules much more straight forward, newcomers would not stray away. I also suggest this because it makes things more straight forward, rather than a bunch of pages that may cause confusion for newcomers. I believe newcomers would feel more like, “Oh, I get this!”, rather than “Oh shit, I don’t get this, this is too much!”. If Wikipedia were to consider this, they could also benefit from increasing their community’s arrival of newcomers/contributors, as well as newcomers staying and contributing more to become long-term members. As said in the lecture, “Users who’re more invested feel a stronger commitment” – Benjamin Mako-Hill.

As days/weeks went by, I was able to add a good amount of details, information, and references for my updated version of the article. It was now time to finalize and wrap things up for submission. Once I completed editing this article and submitted, I was very happy to see my results and felt proud because anyone also interested in hip-hop artists like Flipp Dinero could read and even contribute to what I have done! I extended the lead, added more sections, paragraphs of details and information, inserted templates of tables of: studio albums, mixtapes, and songs featured in and also extended the songs table, adding 16-17 more songs. As well as adding 50 new references. I felt really good about contributing, until another Wikipedia User:Hipal left a message on my talk page and I come to find that this user completely removed all of the work that I moved to the original article.

On lecture 01/27/2020 about norms, we learned that norms are something socially acceptable and are what members of an online community should do, emphasis on "should". We also talked about the different types of explicit norms there are to regulate behaviors for Wikipedia: (1) Assume good faith, (2) Neutrality, (3) Be Bold, (4) Sign your messages with 4 Tides, and (5) Notability (Class lecture). However, User:Hipal behaviors towards me as a newcomer, went against these explicit norms. Instead of Assuming good faith and invite newcomers to Be Bold.

This user decided to not assume good faith and did not encourage me to be bold, he decided to "Bite the newbie". During another class lecture, we learned this concept of "Don't bite the newbie" as don't be mean and hostile towards newcomers, it can scare them away. Throughout the Wikipedia article: Please do not bite the newcomers, it basically talks about how it's important to welcome newcomers and encourage their engagement. To assume good faith that newbies want to help out, so let them get a try at it and let them be bold. In this article, it is also mentioned that if a newcomer may have made a simple mistake, you could correct it yourself and not SLAM the newcomer. User:Hipal decided to bash me by taking down my work I moved onto the original article and then writing on my talk page that my new version of the work was "very poorly referenced while being highly promotional". Underneath this user left suggestions for not using YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify, or Sound Cloud as references, however, in my defense there are already NOT many sources of this new Hip-Hop artist, Flipp Dinero, to begin with! Many of his interviews where he talks about important details regarding his early life and career are on YouTube! Many details about this artist are from sources like YouTube and social media and obviously not from academic textbooks! And as a newcomer I was discouraged and upset, I mean, there are also many other Wikipedia articles such as: Pop Smoke, G Herbo, and much more that did not have a banner mark of "promotional" and are marked C-Class while consisting of references like YouTube and Apple Music/iTunes. After this incident happened, I freaked out! As a newcomer I felt scared and definitely discouraged to contribute, as if I did something completely wrong. I immediately messaged Professor Benjamin Mako-Hill about being bit. I went from seeing Wikipedia as fun and enjoyable, learning some aspects of Wikipedia and editing, to not wanting to contribute anymore. Luckily, I have Wikipedia experts like Mako and Salt to back me up, Mako suggested to write on their talk page for clarification and I did. They responded to my talk page with suggestions of removing the references. Professor Mako said that he will help me with this process, which I appreciate and will attend his future office hours. Throughout the Wikipedia assignment process, I NEVER expected to get bitten by a user, but I guess expect the unexpected!

My own experience of getting bit as a newcomer made me understand what Professor Mako meant when talking about socialization and newcomers and how there's this "lack of social acceptance" (Class lecture). When the User: Hipal removed my work, I felt discouraged and hurt as if my contribution wasn't enough and I didn't belong because of my hard work being criticized and taken down by another user. Based on my experience I highly suggest that Wikipedia make stricter guidelines/rules about not biting newcomers. Their norms against unfriendly interactions need to be stronger in order to end up with a trade-off of more newcomers. Maybe even limit users from editing for a day if they do bite newcomers, I think this would ensure that users abide by these rules. I believe that my recommendations should be taken seriously as a new user because future newcomers could also experience this kind of treatment and issues/struggles of being on Wikipedia. Biting newcomers only lead to potential Wikipedia wars, scaring away potentially valuable contributors and newcomers leaving! If users keep biting newcomers, then who will replace them in the online community and continue the cycle when they all "retire"? Something Wikipedia and its users should consider.

On the other hand, there are many welcoming parts of Wikipedia. Aside from the helpful and welcoming parts like the teahouse, Wikipedia was welcoming by messaging me, "Welcome to Wikipedia, Blasianmanda! We're glad you're here" when I first created the account! There were also welcoming users such as Shalor who greeted me on my talk page. With the heading "Welcome!" They said, "Hello, Blasianmanda, 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". As a newcomer this made me feel welcomed and as a newcomer I am valued and a sense of belonging. Other than my professor, T.A, Shalor, peer-editing from a few classmates, and one "meanie" user, there was not much interaction for me on Wikipedia. I wish there was more engagement happening. As Wikipedia is welcoming, I think it's difficult for newcomers to find communities to have engagements and interactions aside from the teahouse and on talk pages, so I believe that Wikipedia could also develop a way of changing this.

Although I encountered unfortunate experiences: from struggling to obtain photos, going back and forth with the photographer and Wikipedia's permission-commons to obtain image permission with the copy-rights template and then getting bit by user:Hipal, I still enjoyed my time contributing on Wikipedia. I do not hold anything against Wikipedia or the users that discouraged me, in fact, this is a memorable experience for me. I was able to reach my goal of better understanding how to use Wikipedia: working in sandboxes, contribute in talk pages and include signature (~), including details without plagiarizing or paraphrasing, adding citations, inserting tables/templates, working with visual vs. source editor, attaching other Wikipedia article links to any word, and most definitely the long and strict process of permission templates for uploading images and media files! Even though I experienced some setbacks, thanks to my support systems, Salt, Professor Mako, and other classmates, I was able to learn and understand parts of Wikipedia, contribute to my best ability, complete my edits for a stub article, and produce a newer version of the article. Overall, my experience of joining the Wikipedia community and completing the assignment was a bit of a rollercoaster, but I still enjoyed the ride. Blasianmanda (talk) 05:35, 21 February 2020 (UTC)