User:Emmaaitelli/Report

When I first began my journey of navigating Wikipedia, I felt slightly lost and overwhelmed. Wikipedia is a site I have visited for so long yet actually creating a Wikipedia account and becoming a contributing member of the community opened up the door to a world of challenges for me which ultimately brought me a new sense of both understanding for the site and respect for other members of the community.

Wikipedia’s success as an online encyclopedia is clear and, while diving deeper into that process on my own, I continued to be impressed with the thoroughness of the site as a whole. This thoroughness can be attributed to the work of contributors who, as I learned firsthand, have the responsibility of creating and editing content for Wikipedia that is meticulous, unbiased, and informative. Although barnstars can be given to contributors on Wikipedia, as we learned throughout various examples in the readings, these rewards that have no value outside of the community itself may not always be the greatest motivators. Wikipedia contributors, unless extremely drawn to barn stars, are only intrinsically motivated to contribute. If Wikipedia were to change this and add some sort of reward program for the top tier of contributors, those who contribute but not consistently would feel the desire to step up their game to contribute. This benefit system is similar to the case studies we examined in class such such as Yelp or Twitch that also benefit their top users, however, these programs don’t come without a cost. If Wikipedia offers extrinsic benefits for Wikipedia contributors such as events, rewards, etc. then there might be an influx of contributors who might not be contributing efficiently or for the right reasons. Would there be more articles created just for the sake of being created? Would users make thousands of minor edits on articles just to contribute? Would new users unfamiliar with the norms of Wikipedia attempt to create articles prematurely because they want to reach this tier of Wikipedia supremacy? There’s no telling how this would change the community for better or for worse and it also raises the question is this kind of program necessary at all?

When thinking about how I would improve the Wikipedia community I instantly thought of the contributors who I had a newfound respect for after becoming an editor of a Wikipedia page myself. However, perhaps the reason that Wikipedia succeeds the way it does is because these contributors aren’t seeking an extrinsic benefit outside of a simple barnstar. Long time contributors work to improve the community for the greater good and maybe they feel an identity based commitment with the mission of the online encyclopedia but since Wikipedia is a unique online community, they probably don’t feel the same level of attachment as users on community sites like Reddit do. This brings me to my second opportunity for improvement which is creating a sort of chat room in Wikipedia where contributors could connect, improving the experience for contributors by giving them a deeper sense of community and also benefitting Wikipedia since contributors could develop a deeper identity based or even bonds based commitment to the site.

My own Wikipedia experience as I’ve described briefly was challenging but gave me a deeper understanding of Wikipedia’s success. In completing the training modules, I learned more how to best contribute to the community but was also starting to worry that as a newcomer my contributions would not be up to par with a seasoned Wikipedian. One thing that helped with this anxiety was my sandbox on Wikipedia where I was able to begin editing the article I chose to revive without doing any damage to the published article itself. Having this space for myself gave me a sense of security and took some of the pressure off when editing. This ties into the reading on integrating newcomers into the community in the sense that working in my sandbox was not only a way to teach me how to engage in normative behaviors but it also protected the existing community from newcomers like myself. My sandbox gave me a space to learn without the risk that comes with editing live articles.

Based on my own learning experience, another recommendation I would make would be to create a bot that could provide helpful tips and explanations for the different tools when editing in your sandbox. Although watching the learning modules was helpful, often I would have to go back and reference them several times while editing because there was simply so much information that I got overwhelmed. There is something to be said about learning by doing and if given assistance while editing for the first time, many errors could be prevented and new users could become familiar with the tools described in the modules. Creating a bot to offer suggestions and explanations for each new member’s sandbox would also benefit experienced contributors because there would be less mistakes to correct. I experienced this when a user outside of our class made several minor edits (adding colons) to my draft of the article I was editing. This error was one I never would have been aware of if it wasn’t for that user, however, if I had been reminded to include said edit I wouldn’t have made the mistake in the first place. Although from an outside perspective, creating this system of reminders may seem like an ineffective waste of time, coming from a new user myself, I would have benefited from a bot like this and could see my classmates enjoying a feature like this as well.

Wikipedia is a community that differs from a lot of the cases we covered in readings, case studies, and lectures through the way in which the majority of its users are not contributors. However, in making the transition from a browser to a contributor myself, I gained a deeper respect for the platform’s contributors and realized some of the ways this community could be improved.