User:Erica-Schroeder/Win20 COM482 Wiki Report

Wikipedia Reflective Essay
Throughout this course, we have studied the ways in which motivation, commitment, rules and governance, newcomers, and creation affect the success of online communities. In the following essay, I will critique the ways in which Wikipedia approaches some of these concepts and offer advice to the Wikipedia community and Wikimedia Foundation for how to improve. I ground my critique and advice in principles and theories that we have covered in this course, as well as in my experience learning the rules and norms of Wikipedia through Wiki Education and contributing to Wikipedia myself.

Motivation is a key component to building successful online communities because the reality is that participation is both lower than desired and lower than it could be for most online communities, including Wikipedia. The Utility Model of Motivation suggests that people will be motivated to participate if the benefits, or rewards, for participating outweigh the costs. Rewards can be extrinsic, which are more tangible, like money or awards, or they can be intrinsic, which are less tangible, like the sense of personal enjoyment or “fun.” Wikipedia uses a virtual award-system as their approach to motivate participation in the community. This is a type of award-system is an example of an extrinsic reward even though the award is virtual. While these awards may be of great value and highly motivating to existing members, the challenge is that these awards have no value to outsiders and, thus, are less effective at motivating outsiders to join the community. In other words, the virtual award-system is effective once people are through the door, but ineffective at getting people in the door. In order to get people in the door, Wikipedia should partner with universities to implement Wikipedia into course work. While this would require a monetary cost, universities have access to current and reliable information on a variety of subjects; this partnership would not only increase the number of participants, but potentially raise the quality of information on Wikipedia.

The degree of commitment that members have to a community can dictate the longevity of a community. A community will not be successful over time if it’s members are not commited. There are different ways that members can become committed to a community; members can form personal connections, develop feelings of righteousness, or feel a need to be in a community. The type of commitment within Wikipedia is normative; members share the goal of contributing to a “greater good.” This goal is driven by the notion that you should help Wikipedia because Wikipedia has helped you, which is an example of generalized reciprocity. The concern with this type of commitment is that members may become less committed once they feel like they have “done their part.” In my opinion, a bonds-based commitment that is grounded in personal connections is a stronger, longer-lasting type of commitment that can be fairly easy to achieve in Wikipedia. While Wikipedia is highly collaborative and contributing to Wikipedia often involves communicating with other members, the communication is public and strictly task- and goal-oriented. I understand that Wikipedia is not meant to be space for socializing, but I feel that knowing the other contributors of an article that you contributed to could lead to collaboration in the future if bonds were built. To facilitate this, there could be a section on the talk page where contributors could introduce themselves. In addition, a direct messaging feature could be used for private conversations between users about future collaborations.

The norms of a community are established by rules and governance. As I learned through Wiki Education, Wikipedia has many specific rules and norms that are distinct to Wikipedia and violating these rules and norms can have severe consequences. While I learned about these rules and norms by executing training modules on Wiki Education before contributing to Wikipedia, it is not required that new members demonstrate their understanding of Wikipedia’s rules and norms before contributing, which can be a big problem for Wikipedia and new members. The challenge with increasing the understanding of rules and norms is providing enough information in a salient way without intimidating new members or turning them away. Training modules can be perceived as time consuming and long, detailed handbooks can be intimidating. Both of these common approaches are barriers to entry that many people are not willing to take because the cost of entering the community appears greater than the benefit of being a member of the community. Part of what makes Wikipedia attractive is the low barriers to entry and contribution. My advice to maximize both membership and understanding of rules and norms would be to keep a virtual handbook as reference, but to also send informative messages that prewarn new members of a violation that is likely to occur at every stage of editing. New members would have to click “OK” before moving forward with their edit. This would maintain low barriers to entry and make understanding the rules less costly, less intimidating, and more interactive.

My personal experience with Wikipedia was transformative. Initially, I was very overwhelmed and intimidated by the rules and with navigating an unfamiliar site. However, at the end of a seven week project, I felt confident navigating Wikipedia and a sense of membership to the Wikipedia community. Throughout the process of becoming a member, choosing an underdeveloped article, editing and developing it further in my sandbox, and turning my edits and additions live, I naturally learned the basic logistics of Wikipedia, but, more importantly, I learned the approaches that Wikipedia takes to create a successful online community and how effective those approaches are for Wikipedia. I learned that Wikipedia excels at motivating existing members in a cost-effective way and creating low barriers to entry for new members to contribute. However, I discovered that improvements could be made to motivate new members to participate, strengthen the commitment of members, and create greater understanding of rules and norms.