User:Emmaemmay/Report

Wikipedia is a world-famous website, and as an active user of it, I have always been wondering how it works: who makes contributions on it, are they being paid for contributions, etc. Taking Com481 and completing the Wikipedia project helped me understand how Wikipedia works, even including the process of improving and creating articles. In this evaluative essay, I will reflect on my own experience of contributing to the Wikipedia community as well as the advice to possibly improve Wikipedia.

The first suggestion is to provide more specific rules and regulations. The reason for offering this advice is based on my experience. After finishing improving the article in my sandbox, I was excited for the final step: moving my work to the live article. Through carefully reading the instructions, I knew that we should mark that we copied the text from the sandbox with a link to the sandbox in the edit summary section. Therefore, I copied the link and pasted it to the edit summary. However, after a few minutes, I found my work was all removed by a bot called ClueBot NG, and the reason says “reverting possible vandalism”. I have completely no idea what that means and I panicked. Later, I decided to try again, and this time I copied the name of my sandbox starting with user instead of the whole link starting with http. This time my work remained. I guess the problem might be that copying the whole link from the website in the edit summary violates the rules, but Wikipedia could provide a more detailed explanation when letting a bot remove my work. We learned from Com481 that lack of clear norms and regulations can “make it difficult for new members to join and understand how to contribute effectively” (lecture slides). This is perfectly applicable to my circumstance: as a new member, if this was not my assignment, I might just give it up and leave the community. This is why norms can be so important. According to what we learned from class, people can learn norms from “seeing instructive generalizations or codes of conduct” or “behaving and directly receiving feedback”. In this case, my suggestion is either a caution of “do not copy the whole link of sandbox” can be provided in the instructions or stating a more specific reason of why the bot removed my work.

The second advice is to increase the diversity and representation in the Wikipedia community. When I was looking for articles and topics that needed to be improved, a lot of them were related to historically underrepresented populations. To close the equity gaps, the most direct and simple approach is to invite the underrepresented groups to make contributions, because they are the people most familiar with their own topics. Wikipedia could reach these targeted audiences using identifiability of the platform. To be specific, Wikipedia could use the individual information to see if the people were women or people of color. Then, Wikipedia could encourage and promote people’s motivation. The course reading Building Successful Online Communities describes three ways of motivating participation: the first can be persuasive techniques, for example, reaching out to specific people with appropriate tasks, just like I mentioned above. The second can be making the contributing process more interesting. The third way can be creating external rewards for contributors, in this case, the most practical method is to provide social recognition to contributors. Wikipedia could offer more “barnstars” to people who make contributions and close the equity gaps.

Last but not least, Wikipedia could provide more events either virtual or in person for the contributors to meet. Just like the Twitch case we studied in class, as an online community, Twitch has offered many opportunities for Twitch partners to meet up. This can help create a more collaborative and inclusive community environment. The editors can also connect and collaborate to improve the articles together. Both the Wikipedia contributors and Wikipedia platform could benefit from participating in the meeting events.

In summary, my experience of contributing to Wikipedia has been both rewarding and challenging. The problems I have seen and met through the process of making contributions have made me carefully reflect on how to make the Wikipedia community better. After finishing improving the Wikipedia article, I truly felt a sense of achievement and I am proud of myself. I hope my advice could be useful and taken into consideration!