User:Evyn08/report

I will be the first to admit that I pretty much owe my high school diploma to Wikipedia; not because I didn’t care enough to exercise multiple outlets of study, but because Wikipedia was the one-stop-shop of all websites. The Costco among corner stores. But while Wikipedia might have been a saving grace for students, you, Mako, are my first professor to ever endorse it. All other teachers have condemned its accuracy and threated essay grades because anybody could edit any page. But that right there, is the beauty of it; anybody can educate, write, and share their research. English Wikipedia currently has over 6 million published pages; if you can think of it, there is probably a Wikipedia page about it.

Actionable Advice
However, I do think Wikipedia has room to improve, mainly in the reputation department. As I mentioned, Wikipedia is kind of the academic bad boy on the block; people think he’s up to no good but, once you get to know him, he has a heart of gold. In more classes than not, my teachers have declared that any information found on Wikipedia could not be used for reference. But I think that misconception stems from a lack of emphasis on Wikipedia’s editing procedures and training.

Something that I did not realize before this project was that editing Wikipedia is not just a click of a button. While anybody has the opportunity to edit, there are training courses and expectations that must be followed first. There are rules in place that restrict plagiarism and modifying content requires citations to reliable sources. I think that Wikipedia should work harder to highlight that workflow associated with publishing a page.

If Wikipedia took a better stab at advertising that process, training, and background, I think more users would trust what they were reading. The Wikimedia Foundation has a done an impressive job of creating both clear and effective norms for both casual visitors and dedicated contributors. Injunctive norms like neutrality and assuming good faith weld teamwork with education. But by not properly promoting those codes of conduct, Wikipedia gets cast aside as a lazy scrapbook full of construction paper misquotes, instead of worshiped as a collaborative collection of encyclopedic material.

Popular articles can have hundreds of active users watching that page for edits. If someone contributes false information, its often caught sooner rather than later. Many changes are discussed between multiple users in the talk page well before publishing, and a citation is always expected to accompany new facts. I think that Wikipedia should consider emphasizing these and other expectations whenever a user clicks on a new Wikipedia search result link for the first time. It will be a supplementary reminder of the standards Wikipedia sets for its content and also poses as a checklist for interested contributors. In lecture we discussed a method of encouraging injunctive norms that reaches users specifically at a time when that norm might be violated; I think this suggestion would offer a similar thought process against the current negative Wikipedia associations.

Personal Experience
Now I have already established that I was and still am a Wikipedia frequent flyer, but prior to this assignment, I had never explored any kind of contribution past reading. It was probably because I didn’t feel educated enough on any one subject to merit sticking my nose into an already supplementary article. But it was also because I just did not know where to even start. Luckily, this class paved my way.

I’m not sure exactly what dashboard other freelance users have, but I think that our Wiki-classroom dashboard was a critical part of my Wikipedia experience. The assigned tutorials were easy to follow and really helped me understand how to be a conscious and respectful community member. Before I made an account, I never even really thought of Wikipedia as community to begin with. But now that I have experienced the collaboration firsthand, I see how connective the Wikimedia-verse can be.

At first, I found the format of Wikipedia to be a little intimidating; I don’t know much code and internet shorthand is not my native language. It felt outdated. But after I started walking through the tutorials and setting up my sandbox and subpages, I grew more and more comfortable with creating and editing. When the time came to choose an article, I wanted to find something I was interested in; that I would choose to visit unprompted. I went with Adobe Lightroom, surprised that it was so underdeveloped; photography is such a huge part of my life, my career, my passion, I forget that most other people don’t feel as strongly about it as I do.

I felt like I had so much information to add just off of the top of my head. But in that moment, I realized Wikipedia is not that easy. I can’t just submit an opinion, an experience, a thought, as a published reference for this program. Wikipedia expects community members to be well researched, neutral, and informative; just because I think I have all the answers doesn’t mean they’re all correct. I have to follow the steps, one foot at a time, just like everyone else.

Now that my article is live, I think I think my most significant takeaway from this project is the ability to navigate Wikipedia more efficiently. I am much more likely to work on articles in the future, I feel much more comfortable with the blog-esk technology, and I immersed myself in a new community.

Concept Connections
One thing I noted about Wikipedia right away was the sense of normative commitment. Users who contribute to the site are dedicated to informing and helping. When you improve an article, you are participating in a social movement; the spread of knowledge and access to information. As we discussed in lecture, there is a clear goal for the Wikipedia community; members work to compose and publish insightful and intriguing articles. And users feel like they are contributing to a greater good by paying their research and knowledge forward.

More specifically, I think that Wikipedia users exercise generalized reciprocity. As a user and consumer of Wikipedia you are accessing the combined knowledge and research of potentially hundreds of people. Many users strive to return that effort where they can. Wikipedia also supports this reciprocity by highlighting opportunities to give back and priming excellent work on the feature page.

I also noted in regard to group size, that while Wikipedia might have millions of users, the site struggles with activity levels. The Free-Rider Problem suggests that if someone can benefit from using the platform without having to contribute, they won’t be motivated to participate; but if nobody participates then there will no longer be a commodity to consume. I think Wikipedia struggles with this why-buy-the-cow predicament because their community, by design, is huge. While there are sub-articles that may foster smaller subgroups, I think most people, myself included, feel like a community outsider at first; unsure of where they fit in, if they even do fit.

I think one way that Wikipedia could mend this issue is by shifting their focus from intrinsic motivation to extrinsic motivation. Right now, users post and edit because they think it’s fun, enjoyable, immersive. But by further incentivizing participation, Wikipedia could create additional social recognition for those active users; a constant craving in the world of online communities. As illustrated by Yelp, a status award system can really help drive user contribution, without ignoring the social structure of the Wikipedia-verse. Rewarding active users with increased status or privileges through nontransparent and unpredictable awards can turn an occasional reader into an excited contributor.

Why Wikipedia is Unique
Wikipedia is definitely a unique platform. While websites like Facebook or Twitter might pull bigger numbers, there are still millions of click conversations lighting up the Wikipedia activity map every day. And it reaches a different type of audience for a different greater purpose. Why some people might turn to Facebook to connect with friends, Wikipedia user connect with peers looking to collaborate and learn.

I think one of the most unique draws to Wikipedia as a reader, is the convenience. No matter what you type into Google, more often than not, a Wikipedia search result will float to the top of your page, over any other source. It’s there, it’s formatted familiarly, and its time saving; it’s perfect for students in a rush to fill out their homework and it’s perfect for your grandma who’s trying to figure out what TikTok is.

A draw to Wikipedia as a contributor, in my opinion, stems from the welcoming of newcomers. As a newcomer myself, I was intimidated by the unfamiliarity of Wikipedia editing. But the socialization of Wikipedia’s training modules helped communicate the expectations of a normative community member. After growing comfortable with visual view, I was afraid to try my hand at editing in source; but my sandbox made learning and experimenting safe, while protecting the Wiki-community from harmful behavior by newcomers. And even though I contributed to Wikipedia as an assignment for this class, I would most likely self-select to participate in more articles in the future.

Closing
All in all, I enjoyed my introduction to the Wikipedia community of contributors. I’m excited to see if I get any comments on my article’s talk page, and I look forward to continuing this exploration into online communities. I think my most significant takeaway thus far has been the importance of cautious and educated participation. No matter how successful or stable a community is, destructive behavior can always do harm. And now that I can more confidently navigate Wikipedia and Wiki-tools, my chance of retention is, personally, much higher.

Furthermore, I think my most prominent suggestion to the Wikimedia Foundation would be better promotion of their barriers to entry. As I noted above, while anybody has the opportunity to edit, it’s not just the click of a button. If Wikipedia highlighted their training procedures and workflow expectations more prominently, I think more people would trust the collaboration of information process. That said, I also think that Wikipedia consumers should always make sure to double check the citations at the bottom of each article. Read over the article resourcefully and keep the tone and bias in check. As a community built on network effects and normative commitment, it’s important that users exercise their own better judgement and further research community contributions.