User:Drewcherr327/reflection

My entire life, I've had teachers who have repeated some version of the phrase "don't trust Wikipedia" or "you can't use Wikipedia as a viable informational research." While I understand where they were coming from, this Wikipedia project has helped to highlight the dually mixed perception of the site. In an academic setting, it is generally frowned upon to use Wikipedia as a primary source of information because it is far from a peer reviewed academic journal and relies on people's summaries of easily verifiable sources with a neutral point of view. I will go more in depth about my problems with Wikipedia's obsession with "neutrality" later in this reflection but for now, I want to hone in on the other, more popular perception of Wikipedia. In daily life, people have the understanding that if something is on Wikipedia, it has to be true. Many an argument has been settled with one of the people fact checking their side of the story using Wikipedia. To this extent, the rigorous academic standards of knowledge do not match up with how people actually rely on the site and that has important effects throughout society. I argue that it can be dangerous to have such a monolithic site be the final decision maker on such complicated situations or ongoing global phenomenons when so many people put their blind trust in the site. Furthermore, if Wikipedia wants to continue attracting and keeping people involved in their collective encyclopedia in the long term, then it has to do a better job of attracting and engaging newcomers.

Before we go any further, I want to address what I feel is the elephant in the online room here in saying that I will not stay as an active member of the Wikipedia community after this class concludes for a number of reasons. Part of it is that I don't have the energy or free time to put all the work necessary into crafting perfect articles for free either when I'm in school full time or working full time. Receiving Wikilove from fellow editors or accumulating barnstars may make me feel good in the short term but does nothing to help pay the bills or further my career. Another part of it, however, is the fact that I heard so much about Wikipedia being an active community with sometimes overexcited editors and then had barely any engagement with other Wikipedians even as a newcomer who put a lot of energy into crafting Ryan Bundy's page from scratch. This reminded me of Design Claim 11 of Kraut et. al. on page 199 which said that "Providing potential new members with an accurate and complete picture of what the members' experience will be once they join increases the fit of those who join." I was under the assumption that part of the Wikipedia experience was having discussions and interactions from other editors who are interested in similar topics. In my experience, my perception was inaccurate, as no other Wikipedians outside of my classmates or Shalor commented on Ryan's talk page or really engaged with my article. As a Communication Major who likes to engage in good faith with people online, I was ready to discuss this topic and was disappointed this did not happen.

With all of that being said, I did have a very nice Wikipedian come to my Talk Page and I wanted to touch on that a little bit more. On the same day that my Wikipedia article on Ryan Bundy went live and was put in the main space, an experienced editor from Oregon with the username of Leitmotiv posted on my Talk Page and said "Welcome good sir or sirette!" Right off the bat, I appreciated that they did not assume my gender one way or the other as there was no way for them to know. Leitmotiv went on to say "Hey Drewcherr327! Looks like you're jumping right in and love the work so far. Just be sure you are annotating your edits so we know what you're doing and why! Thanks! And have a safe flight!" Again, I really appreciated the kind tone of the message, as I had previously heard some horror stories about people being rather terse about edits and was nervous that I would receive that kind of comment. Leitmotiv started with a compliment, recognizing that I had recently started editing and commending me for my work thus far, and then pointed out something that I could be doing better. They ended by thanking me and telling me to have a safe flight, a somewhat confusing sign off that I eventually came to understand as flights to whatever articles I was heading to. This type of interaction made me feel as though my work was not only being seen by other Wikipedians, but being appreciated and respected, which originally made me more open to staying on the site. This reminded me of Design Claim 18 of Kraut et. al. on page 208 which said that "When newcomers have friendly interactions with existing community members soon after joining a community, they are more likely to stay longer and contribute more." Leitmotiv's interaction definitely made me more likely to contribute more, and if more Wikipedians had engaged with my content and potentially made me feel more welcome, there is a much greater chance that I would have stayed more involved.

As previously mentioned, there is a competing perception between academics and the general population on how factual the content on the site is. Teachers, professors, and researchers repeatedly highlight that Wikipedia should not be used as a primary resource when researching information on specific topics. They usually say its a good place to start gathering information and great to find other usable articles in the references at the bottom of the page, but the content itself in the Wikipedia article should not be relied on as 100% accurate. On the other hand, most people in the general population see Wikipedia as the final arbiter of arguments or generally a wealth of information they can trust. The thought process goes that "If Wikipedia is as unreliable as certain people say, then why does everybody use the site and why is it the first site that pops up when I search something online?" I believe that this is a good demonstration of Cialdini's "social validation" tactic of persuasion: "If many individuals have decided in favor of a particular idea, we are more likely to follow, because we perceive the idea to be more correct, more valid." People perceive Wikipedia to be correct and valid in almost every way because everybody relies on its information and the site itself has been around for so long.

The issue, however, is that this blind trust that people put in Wikipedia is not always warranted and can actually have negative consequences. Take, for example, the longest hoax in Wikipedia history about the fake Nazi death camp. For over fifteen years, Wikipedia presented the verifiably false claims that hundreds of thousands of Polish people were exterminated by gas chamber at a concentration camp in Warsaw as facts to the general public. This was no mistake, but rather a concerted effort by Polish right wing nationalists to rewrite the history of the Holocaust, minimize the number of Jewish people killed, and advance the idea that Polish people were the main victims of the Nazi occupation. I believe that this situation demonstrates how bad faith actors on the site can manipulate information to their benefit to convince people of their mindset.

This misplaced blind trust can also be affected by Wikipedians' obsession with having a neutral point of view reflected in their articles. While I understand the reason for wanting articles to be written from a neutral and unbiased perspective, there are many complicated situations unfolding around the world that effectively do not have a neutral point of view. What one person would say is neutral, is actually still taking some position on the topic and specific word choices carry significant weight. Desmond Tutu highlighted this idea when he said "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." I saw this exact scenario play out with regards to the Wikipedia page about what I, and many others, would call the 2019 Bolivian coup d'état. If you go on the Talk Page or History of what is now titled the 2019 Bolivian Political Crisis, you see the ongoing argument over what to title the page. I understand that calling it a coup is likely still too controversial for Wikipedia and that 2019 Bolivian Political Crisis is an apt title for now, but the page originally was titled "2019 Bolivian Transition to Democracy" and stayed like that for several days while many people visited the page to learn about what was happening there. Under the guise of neutrality, this presents the coup to the English Speaking World as a positive development in the region and colors people's perceptions of this complicated event even while other Wikipedians argue about it behind the scenes.

In conclusion, I do want to say that it was pretty cool to have the opportunity to create a Wikipedia page from scratch about a person who I believe is fairly influential and at the very least, very interesting. I had previously always wondered about how the site operated behind the scenes and how regular people could go about editing the site. I further appreciate coming in with an understanding of the norms and rules on Wikipedia, as if I had tried to become a Wikipedian on my own, I almost certainly would have messed up and been criticized by the often strict community. I believe that Wikipedia as an organization or Wikipedians themselves should make a more concerted effort to welcome and support newcomers if they want people to stay active on their site, especially when Wikipedia is fueled by so much free labor. Finally, I argue that Wikipedia's "neutral point of view" can actually sometimes end up being biased anyway and hope that Wikipedians take that information into account when dealing with all the complicated international situations playing out right now.