User:Dowliad/report

Analysis of the Wikipedia community through cases and participation played a central role in the former part of our Communication Leadership course: Building Successful Online Communities. We began the course as new Wikipedia users by participating in an online student orientation and subsequent tutorials. We also attempted playing the “Wikipedia Adventure,” a gamified alternative to the standard orientation, which teaches new users about how to be an effective and productive member of the Wikipedia community. After completing these introductions, members of our class made contributions to Wikipedia in various ways, ultimately expanding on a “stub” article or creating an entirely new article and from scratch. While these experiences do not make us experts, Wikipedia has been experiencing a decline in editorship and newcomer retention over recent years, therefore we bring valuable newcomer insights to the project. Referencing my personal experiences and studies, I’ve developed practical feedback for the Wikimedia Foundation on how to improve the Wikipedia community. Broadly, Wikipedia should focus on the following areas for improvement and new member retention: Appealing to intrinsic motivation, investing in identity and bonds-based commitment, and creating a better system for moderation.

Intrinsic motivation occurs when a person feels compelled by internal factors, as opposed to receiving external/physical rewards or recognition. Wikipedia currently has an extrinsic motivating factor called Barn Stars, awarded to writers for excellent articles in a variety of categories. This variety of extrinsic motivation seems to work well for Wikipedia, so I do not suggest they modify it. From an intrinsic perspective, Wikipedia has room for improvement, especially concerning newcomers. According to course teachings, the top reason people participate in online communities is because they find it fun. The Wikipedia student orientation and learning modules may better embrace fun in a couple of different ways. Firstly, the modules should be more visually appealing. A majority of people identify as visual learners, therefore the tutorials should be less written-content heavy and take greater advantage of pictures and video. Presently, if people don’t know how to complete a task, they generally search for a tutorial on YouTube. Infographics are another fun feature organizations employ to explain various processes. Fun could also be in the form of celebrity endorsement or participation in the tutorials, which has demonstrated positive effects. Because people are accustomed to consuming content in this way, it makes sense that Wikipedia would want to utilize more pictures and video as means of instruction.

Another fun or interesting feature would be to cover more educational content in a “test” format. Based on course teachings, people respond positively to test environments because they limit newcomer anxiety while offering an authentic experience and application. Newcomers may feel anxious contributing to a community due to the risk of rejection by other members. The test environment ensures both newcomers and established contributors face lower risks in participation. The “Wikipedia Adventure” game was an attempt at making the newcomer experience more fun and test-based, but it was largely a bust with users for unknown reasons. Further investigation may be able to identify more concretely what the issues were to avoid future mistakes in these types of features. Further, while Wikipedia prides itself on accessibility, I recommend requiring a test-like tutorial prior to admitting newcomer-edits, limiting the potential for damage and thus a poor experience.

Even with the addition of “fun” modifications to newcomer instruction, I still feel the project is lacking connection to personal commitment. As a new user, I was left questioning: “What do I get out of this?” I believe the reason I felt this way is mostly because the education modules didn’t incorporate anything personal or make recommendations on how I might go about bonding with other users in a seemingly isolated process. I learned later in the course that there are several sub-communities focused on various topics within Wikipedia. Had I known earlier in the newcomer process that these groups existed, I might have been lead to join or engage with them. Wikipedia should consider having some kind of a quiz or informal interview matching personal interests with Wikipedia sub-communities. In turn, Wikipedia will encourage identity-based commitment, aligning personal interests with community participation while at the same time encouraging bonds-based commitment through forming relationships with users in the sub-community.

For my final recommendation, I am referencing the Slashdot community per course case studies. Slashdot is a successful online community with a remarkable moderation system that Wikipedia may consider partially-adopting. Both Slashdot and Wikipedia utilize community moderators to maintain process integrity and ensure quality. Slashdot is unique in that it randomly assigns community moderators and frequently changes them. It also implements a higher-level of moderation or administration called “meta-moderation” assigned to the oldest 92.5% of accounts. The point of the moderation system to supply timely feedback, highlighting the useful information and burying the damaging or useless information. The part of the process that will be most beneficial to Wikipedia is offering timely feedback to newcomers on their contributions to help guide them in the process and also considering a meta-moderation-like process whereby “super users” can step in during a disagreement between writers and make an executive call. Implementing a process of distributed moderation may also encourage greater participation and commitment to the project.

Through my experience as a newcomer to Wikipedia, I’ve come to respect many facets of the community that were unknown to me before this course. Moving forward, I plan on making further contributions and tracking changes to the community. I hope the recommendations I put forth in this paper add value and perspective for anyone considering Wikipedia improvements or enhancements.