User:Destiny Hartanto/Report


 * 1) Working on contributing and editing a site is new to me. Hence, I do not feel like I have the say to give feedback to the Wikipedia community. I enjoyed learning about Wikipedia and its criteria for contributing to the site. The videos were easy to comprehend, there were a lot of graphics, short paragraphs and not that long. However, when switching from the education dashboard to the actual Wikipedia, it was hard to navigate through the actual Wikipedia website. I'm not sure if it was due to the small letters or the extremely many buttons and actions to take that confused me on where to start. Or maybe it was the design of the website, it is easy to see as a user, but for contributors, I could not really see where I can access the Sandbox or Talk Page on different part of the website. Often times I had to go back tot he training module and see a step by step list on how to access my own pages. From my experience getting used to modern platforms like social media sites, the onboarding process for Wikipedia is one fo the hardest that I had to do so far considering the many features it has. One thing that could help is to add more bullet points and how tos. Accessing the training modules is a solution, but a navigation page could be easier for contributors. On a design respective, the Wikipedia training module and the actual Wikipedia has two different designs and I have to say that the Wikipedia training page is easier to navigate and get used to compared to the actual Wiki page where we will be contributing. The Wikipedia website itself is a bit outdated and could use a new web design that can also be easier for the yes, especially when the community wants to appeal more towards younger contributors like the millennials.
 * 2) Contributing on Wikipedia, like many other online communities, require a motivation to start contributing. My experience on Wikipedia was due to a class requirement which meant that I had to do all the checklist correctly. However, it was interesting to experience each training and to see that not everyone can contribute easily to Wikipedia. Each training in the beginning phases were easy to do. They were informative and explained each purpose of the training quite well. The transitions were also relatable and doing each task did not seem like a chore. I would say the most enjoyable experience would be to choose articles to edit since there are many articles that are not yet made or is still a stub that we could potentially work on. I have to note on the automatic citation machine the Wikimedia Community provides. I think they made citing sources much more enjoyable and easier as some users might be turned off to contributing because they do not want to manually add citations, I think the feature makes this process a lot easier for new contributors. Evaluating articles is a task that I find needs more practice on because knowing what good articles look like will determine how contributors will write on a page as well. I feel like Wikimedia dis a good job in creating lessons and small tasks that are detailed enough to let new contributors know what a good article looks like. I learned that it is not enough to just write, it has to be informative yet also have a flow to the article. Information has to be relevant with a broad range of subtopics inside a topic. I always have to keep reminding myself what the audience will be reading and adjust to their needs so that my content will always be straightforward, informative, and precise.
 * 3) &4. My experience in Wikipedia reflects several theories including motivation, the free rider problem, and network effects. When diving deeper into why users contribute to Wikipedia, I find that in my experience, they will need intrinsic motivation to love working on the projects and for the purpose of getting people to know topics. Extrinsic motivation could come from Barnstars but as a newbie curator, they would most probably join the community to add value to Wikipedia. There is this Normative obligation that they feel to contribute towards duty. Although there is some sort of Needs based commitment, it would not be as costly because of the ongoing free-rider problem Wikipedia has due to the creators not getting anything. As a user of Wikipedia, personally I also would like to be the consumer who gets all these information without having to research and contribute. Because of this, people take stuff fro free from Wikipedia and is usually one sided from the Creators to the Users. Wikipedia's barrier to enter the community, requiring training and proof of commitment to the platform, is also an effective way to filter out people who are less committed. This is why there are less trolls on Wikipedia. Concepts that are not applied in Wikipedia including getting users to participate by lusting stuff to do. Since Wikipedia contributors only have two tasks to either edit or evaluate, new users are left with less option. One concept not available to Wikipedia is the competition for users' time as a scarred resource. Because Wikipedia is not a social media, they do not need to beg for users to be on their platform 3 hours a day. Even though they do fight for users attention and for them to read the creators' work, they create out of quality not quantity. More importantly in Wikipedia, users apply the important of a niche and a particular area they're interested in to be able to contribute and be invested in the area someone likes to research about. This adds on to the intrinsic motivation mentioned above. For network effects, Wikipedia provides value to me and millions of users on the web. The fact that many people are using it concludes that Wikipedia is the leading online encyclopedia that has helped internet users for years. Hopefully that 1% of readers could also contribute and keep Wikipedia alive despite the incentives. I think my recommendations should be taken as advice because I use Wikipedia on a daily basis and after taking this course on online communities, I can finally see why this platform is influential as well as an example of a successful online community which I am glad to be a part of.