User:Elizabethpopoff/report

As I enrolled in the course COM 482 Interpersonal Media, students were rapidly introduced to a very common, flourishing, and active online community, Wikipedia. However, we very quickly made the transition from viewers to active participants within one of the most well-known communities on the online spectrum. Within my seven weeks of participation, I contributed endless hours to researching and learning about Affogato, the Italian dessert. It was simultaneously that I also was receiving knowledge on how to interact and develop content that would be meaningful to both the community of Wikipedia and for viewers of this online encyclopedia of knowledge. Throughout these few weeks I have advanced my familiarity with a universal online community, Wikipedia in due to my experiences and course content connections which furthermore lead me to develop a sense of the communities ambiance and room for improvement.

Experience
Within this course, my experience with Wikipedia has transformed from an often viewer relationship to a participant relationship throughout these seven weeks. I was quite nervous when the idea of participating on an online community was the essence of the majority of our classwork, even though participating in online communities such as social media platforms was something of my regular agenda. However, when we were developing what we wanted to improve by picking a stub topic, I was quite excited to create a short piece of information that many people may view in the future, just as I have done in the past. The most difficult thing I found was finding new content to contribute to the preexisting page but by meticulous research and creative writing techniques within my sandbox, User:Elizabethpopoff/affogato, I was able to contribute my own found research into an already well-developed stub. I have found great appreciation for participants of online communities, using Wikipedia as a backbone for this statement, in due to the significant amount of time and effort it takes for the "behind the scenes" to make ready made information accessible to anyone across the world. It has been an enjoyable experience to understand how this online community is able to flourish and continue to be a source for endless amounts of research and fact.

Wikipedia & Course Content Relationship
As stated before I enjoyed my experience within Wikipedia but this gratification could only be derived from the idea that my participation was involuntary, in due to my enrollment in the class. It is interesting to evaluate and connect differing motivations for the users that make Wikipedia possible to be at level of large participation it is now. Both, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can be seen within a users ability to participate. As from my experience, it was intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as it was a fun opportunity but also I was receiving a grade and credit for my actions. I believe Wikipedia is so successful because of their ability to combine both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to create a vast majority of user commitments to Wikipedia itself. As we saw in Yelp forums, many individuals had to be both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated in order for them to keep engaging in the content and creating commitments for them to pages such as Aww! , which now has a Discord Server because of such great commitment! This we also see in Wikipedia as identity based, bonds based, normative based, and needs based commitment is a common factor of why a large group of different individuals continue to participate in Wikipedia, the core principal in why this community is able to survive with the vast majority of interests being in different spectrums of research and topics.

Recommendations for Improvement
Within Wikipedia, I believe there could be an easier way to show newcomers the ropes of how to participate within the online community in a more effective hands-on method. The short tutorials before each week were very helpful in understanding how to navigate this online community, however it was not very helpful in order to begin my active work on my page. It was quite confusing how to access your personal sandbox, insert links and references, return your finished work to contribute, so on and so forth. With a mentorship program or another way to allow hands-on training before accessing article's live versions, I believe newcomers would both understand how to navigate Wikipedia better and not feel so timid in this online community to make changes. This could also increase intrinsic motivation as it is more intriguing and fun verse the contrary which I felt as a newcomer as nervous and afraid to make changes and mistakes within Wikipedia. This being said, Wikipedia could also create a section of their online community which includes various articles that could be edited for newcomers without creating grave consequences of editing something incorrectly. This could be as easy as creating almost a game like feature that allows newcomers and Wikipedians who need refreshing to learn the norms of the Wikipedia community by participating in a training that does not exhibit great risk to the essence of the community itself. This would almost lower the bar for newcomers in regard to making their first post in the active community by beginning to become comfortable in a low risk mode of editing articles, creating sandboxes, and uploading research and pictures. All in all, I think Wikipedia does a wonderful job of maintaining a stable and active online community.