User:BrandieBreezy/reflections

Online Communities can have a very delicate balance. Newcomers while acting in good faith can actually destroy an online community. If that is true, why do online communities welcome newcomers? Growth is the only way to be sure that your community will continue to be sustained. That being said, I recently became a newcomer of Wikipedia. The following paragraphs will be complied of my experiences, findings, questions, comments, and concerns.

First off, my experiences. What did I do and what did I learn? Where do I begin? As a student in Interpersonal media, our assignment was to familiarize ourselves and contribute to Wikipedia. I completed two different types of online orientation, the Wikipedia Adventure, and the online orientation training for students. I selected an article topic that was a stub, in hopes of adding more useful content and interacting with possible other contributors. After I selected my topic, I took what had be written about the article thus far and transferred in into my sandbox. I spent a few weeks of gathering resources and then expanded my article, Chihuly Garden and Glass, while still in my sandbox. After completion of my write ups, I still felt something was missing. I wanted to add photographs. Every exhibit of glass I had referenced was so stunningly beautiful, they truly were works of art—little did I know, that would be my problem.

I searched Wikimedia Commons, but was unable to find photos for any of the exhibits. I just assumed that because there had only been a stub created, no one else had been interested in taking photos. While consulting my professor I learned that most photos can be used if they are your own and then are uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

I set off to Seattle with my roommate, camera in hand. I paid the $22, took about one hundred photos, then uploaded about twenty of them onto Wikimedia Commons, and added them to my article. My professor emailed me shortly after and flagged my photos for deletion. Apparently, even though I have every right to my photos, I did not have the right to the artwork in the photographs. Although the museum allows photos to be taken, I don’t have the right to reproduce, publish, distribute, sell, or commercially exploit the photos I took. Basically, a lot of my hard work had to be deleted. I was crushed. Why had I not known this rule? Because I was a newcomer I had yet to learn all the rules of Wikipedia.

Trying to connect my in-class experiences with my online experiences, I determined why I was even engaging with Wikipedia in the first place. What were the motivations and commitment that were pushing me to become a Wikipedian? One of our big focuses in class was about what motivates people to join communities. For me, at least in the beginning, I had an extrinsic motivation. There was an external reward, hopefully a good grade waiting for me on the other side of this project. Incentives can be very powerful tools and can help all people strive to achieve one thing or another. However, the only problem is what happens after you receive the incentive? If the goal is to keep long term editors will incentives actually work? While not everyone is same, I will tell you what I found true for me. If there had never been a grade depending on my joining of this community, I can ensure you I would have never signed up, or made a single edit to any page. However I found midway through my project that my motivations had shifted from external to internal. I was beginning to become very proud of my work and thoroughly enjoyed adding lots of content. I was so proud when I finished adding my photographs, and could see how much they represented all I wanted to say. I spent extra time, effort, and money, attempting to go above and beyond to make my article great—and it felt great. But then, I got that email and notification, all of my work had been for little payout. The photographs which I had been so proud and happy with, had to be removed. Just like that, my intrinsic motivation was gone, and I was left with waiting to see what grade I would receive.

Another concept we covered in our course materials was the ways in which people are committed. Commitment really helps community members of all experience levels stay involved. Identity based, bonds based, normative, or needs based commitment all contribute to why individual members stay in their communities. For me, it was hard to see how any of them affected me. I have only interacted with mainly one person regarding my Wikipedia experience, and that has been my professor. No offense to my professor, but this has left me feeling no sense of being a part of the community, wanting to fulfill its mission, or close to individual members of the group. Nor do I have a feeling of rightness or obligation as a normative committed member would. So that only leaves need-based, which is the only one that might be true. Although my subjunctive experiences don’t leave me with the feeling of I want to continue, or that I must continue to better the group, I do feel that I ought to continue. The only thing that is costly for me is once again, my grade.

One of the problems Wikipedia has right now is maintaining the number of editors that contribute. Recently the number of users has declined over the past few years. After being a newcomer on this site, I have a few ideas about why that might be. First of all what if someone is reading an article and wants to edit it? They click the edit or edit source button and start typing. In my experience it wasn’t that simple. The other day I typed in the first thing on my mind into the search box, cookie. I wanted to see how hard it would be as someone who was not logged in to edit Wikipedia. The site was semi-protected. I was unable to edit it, I would have had to either create an account or request permission. I went to another site, Mountain. There was no lock on it, but there was also no edit or edit source button, nor was there any explanation about why I could not edit it. That made me very discouraged. As I logged into my personal account I saw “you are encouraged to log in however it’s not mandatory.” I feel like it was mandatory though, because only after I logged in was I able to edit both of them.

For a newcomer, after I made an account, I would have to learn the Wikicode or how to properly edit. Being a student I had access and was introduced to the Wikipedia adventure, which was fun, interactive, but not realistic after the game ended. I also had access to the Wikipedia training for students which was the most helpful for me. But it makes me wonder, if I was just trying it out on my own, how the orientation would be different if any. Although helpful, the training module was an hour long. The cost would be pretty high, if I wanted to learn how to edit just a few things.

Even if someone was able and decided to complete the training, why would they stay committed to Wikipedia? One of the most influential types of commitment is bonds based, but you can’t make people interact. I only communicated with one person though the month I was involved in Wikipedia. If I had more interaction I can almost ensure that I would have stuck around, and wanted to stay a part of the community. One suggestion would be have more experienced editors volunteer to mentor certain newcomers, especially if they are making a substantial amount of contributions. Or if mentoring is too much even just giving feedback. For people that have either created a new article, or in my case those that have drastically expanded on an article, or say made numerous edits, feedback can be very encouraging and give us a reason to keep contributing. As a side note, I found formatting pictures to do what I wanted was very difficult. Being able to have the text continue to wrap around or have my picture be smaller or bigger was really exhausting.

To be honest, Wikipedia is a really informative site. However, I personally had a hard time becoming committed. While this could be a reason that many editors are not staying to contribute, it could be a lack of training for the average user, editing issues, or formatting difficulties. At any rate, Wikipedia still needs newcomers to join every day, and continue to contribute, how they decide to make that happen is up to them.