User:Emkajo0216/Report

As our world and lives become more centered around the internet, the way we discover and find information does as well. This information finding takes many different forms via the many different online communities present on the internet. One of the most popular and one that I have become familiar with is Wikipedia. In this assignment I chose to expand on and edit the “clothing swap” article. In its original form it was rather brief and lacked the important aspects of a clothing swap. My goals for this page were to expand the information covered and create a page in Wikipedia explaining the importance of this activity. During my time researching I discovered there is a substantial amount of information on clothing swaps if you take the time to look for it. Through my research I was able to add to the description, history, and create the motives and barriers section of this article. Throughout my time spent on this project I learned two substantial lessons. The first is that when participating in these types of communities it is important to have goals. These goals, such as mine mentioned above,  help ensure your commitment to the community. The second lesson is having a community to lean on and communicate helps ensure success in your contributions. Without the community of COM 481 I do not feel that I would’ve been as successful with this assignment. After reflecting on this experience and assignment I have two pieces of advice to share with Wikimedia. The first is I recommend that they implement a well developed status system for their platform. The second piece of advice is to increase the opportunities for social interactions between users on Wikipedia. Both of these recommendations focus on the motivation and commitment aspects of users. Together my advice can help Wikimedia to be even more successful in the future.

As stated above, the first piece of advice that I would give to Wikimedia would be to implement a well developed status system for their platform. By including this on their platform the developers are creating a new incentive system for users. These incentives or gain in status on Wikipedia will motivate users to engage with the platform more often and in more complex ways. Giving users incentives to participate is important to all online communities because  it is motivating. By providing users with the opportunity to gain status you make them want to come back and be more committed to any platform. When it comes to Wikimedia this is especially important. In order for Wikimedia to be a successful platform, reliable and up to date information is crucial; but to get that information users need to be constantly engaging and editing the current pages on the platform. By increasing the incentives for users, Wikimedia can work to ensure success for their platform. A valuable example of successful incentive systems in an online community is Slash dot and its karma system. This community has discovered how to encourage users to meaningfully add to the community in order to gain more status and privileges on their platform. These privileges the users gain are also beneficial to Slash dot because they increase regulation in the community. Wikimedia could benefit in very similar ways to Slash dot if they chose to implement a system like this into their platform. This recommendation should be taken seriously because it has the potential to extensively increase user engagement on this platform. By increasing engagement, the platform will become an even more dependable community for users to turn to when wanting to discover new information.

The second recommendation I made was to increase the opportunities for social interactions between users on Wikipedia. By opening the opportunity for users to engage with one another beyond talk pages, Wikipedia can help facilitate the growth of deeper relationships between their community members. Substantial relationships are essential to all online communities because relationships help to cultivate bonds based commitment between users and the platform. This form of commitment increases the assurance the users will return to the platform. When it comes to Wikimedia, increasing the potential social interactions creates relationships between users who are all here to achieve the same thing- contributing to Wikipedia. By sharing interests, experiences, and information Wikipedia can become a more solid online community via it’s users' social interactions. One way to approach increasing this opportunity could be for Wikimedia to create spaces similar to a Reddit page, like a place where all things related to science or the arts can be discussed by the users who contribute to those specific Wikipedia pages. Clearly Reddit understands user motivation and commitment and Wikimedia can benefit by modeling something similar on their platform. This recommendation should be taken seriously because this is an opportunity for a new version of engagement and interaction on Wikipedia. Creating a new place for users to interact will allow the dedicated users to share ideas and concerts with one another. Yet again, this recommendation focuses on addressing the commitment aspects of users with Wikipedia and will help to build a more robust online platform.

In conclusion, there are two steps I believe Wikimedia can take to improve their overall online community- implementing a status system and increasing social interactions between users. By choosing to focus on the motivation and commitment aspects of users, Wikimedia can help to further engage users and create a stronger informational platform. It is important to also recognize what I believe Wikimedia is doing right. During my experience I was very appreciative of the modules that explained the basics of Wikipedia as well as the simplicity of the platform. Due to these two elements I feel I was able to create stronger additions to the clothing swap page. In my recommendations above I chose not to focus much on norms and regulations regarding the Wikimedia community. I feel the platform does this well with the modules previously mentioned and those topics did not have much relevance in my personal experience. I choose to focus on motivation and commitment because I feel that is what this community could benefit the most by addressing. Overall, I learned many new things through my participation in the Wikimedia community. It is exciting to share my work with the community I have outside of this class and look forward to adding to more pages in the future.