User:Fronado/Report

Ashley Lee COM 482 Wikipedia Reflection Essay

Working on this Wikipedia assignment has opened my eyes and mind in many ways. Prior to being assigned this project, I always knew anyone could edit a Wikipedia page but I never knew exactly how a person could do so. Luckily creating an account was easy to do. I consider myself as “older” than most of the students enrolled in this class and definitely technologically challenged. Despite me being considered a millennial and should know a lot about computers, I truly have no idea what I’m doing half the time. While working on Wikipedia, I found that the sandbox was difficult if you did not know what it meant, I wouldn’t have found stub articles if it weren’t for our professor, WikiEdu training exercises were overwhelming but helpful, and the difference between visual editor and source editing was confusing until I was able to distinguish the difference myself. Let me explain below.

After being competent enough to create an account, I got stuck on where to begin on our WikiEdu dashboard. I’m not sure if everyone is assigned a WikiEdu after creating an account but if we were not directed to work in the WikiEdu dashboard, I would have given up right then and there. While working in the WikiEduI didn’t know that the training corresponded to each week of our sandbox assignments, which led me to do five of the training modules making me believe that I was ahead of the game, all to realize, what is a sandbox? I had to go back to the beginning of the training modules and start everything all over again but this time, follow along on the actual Wikipedia site. I think the concept of WikiEdu is great but it should be easy to navigate to as an additional source of guidance to edit or create a Wikipedia page.

When it came to introducing ourselves to our classmates and to our professor on Wikipedia itself, that was when I realized I don’t know if I can do this. I couldn’t figure out which page was our professor’s and which one was his user page. The WikiEdu dashboard had a lot of information for this section (sandbox) which made it very overwhelming and challenging to follow which is why I believe I had issues early on.

If it had not been for our professor providing a link for a list of stubs and for describing to us what a stub article meant, I don’t think I would have been able to find these articles to help contribute to. Most of the time when someone goes to Wikipedia, they already know what topic they are looking for and if it’s not there, they move on to the next article in Google. Now I know that Wikipedia has a lot of contributors, however, I feel that in order for Wikipedia to gain more contributors or to make it known that you can create a page for a topic if there is not one yet created, the “you may create the page….” message in the search results should be bigger and bolder. It’s italicized and faintly states that you can create a page but it's not enticing. Additionally, somewhere on Wikipedia’s site, it should have an area/ link to stub pages for people to click on allowing them to contribute if they can. I also understand you don’t want to attract just anyone to Wikipedia to edit pages due to potential norm violations, but in order for people who are there for the right reasons to help contribute, an area that suggests you can create a page and a list of stub articles should be displayed somewhere on the site.

The time has come, I finally found a topic I want to work on and it has been started by someone else but I can spruce it up. But where do I begin? Again, thankfully we had someone guiding us but if I had to do this on my own, I wouldn’t do it because I would have no idea where to begin. Again, I’m not sure if people are assigned WikiEdu to help but if it is not assigned automatically, a pop up should be displayed explaining the functionality anytime you hover over a word such as “sandbox,” “beta,” “contributions,” “edit,” and so on. A mini excerpt of what this button does could be beneficial. For example, while editing my article, it defaulted to “source editing” which to me was basically all computer codes. Immediately I thought I clicked on the wrong thing and ended up going back to the original page multiple times. It wasn’t until I clicked on “visual editing” I realized this is how you edit a page. Granted, when you first start editing, there are little pop ups that are displayed to give you an idea of how to edit the page but once those pop ups are gone, you are on your own. Speaking of being on your own, I feel like Wikipedia is a site where people can create identity based and bonds based commitments. I think at first you might not feel any type of connection with anyone but I think eventually those relationships begin to build on its own and if I do decide to be a part of this community, it is something I would hope to develop with other Wikipedians. In addition to creating a relationship with other Wikipedians, welcoming newcomers in a personable way would help a lot. For instance, once you’ve created an account, a chat box or message can pop up that suggests where to get help and who to contact if you are having difficulties. This may seem like a lot of work for Wikipedia but in order to have people continue to engage in your community and have them come back, the site should be more welcoming and more eager to provide or suggest any type of help a person may need.

Finally it was time to add photos. I was able to request the usage of photos from the owner himself and photographer which both granted me permission to utilize their photos. The owner was able to load the images for me and once that was done, I uploaded them to the page without too many problems and once everything was done, I moved the page out of my sandbox and into the live page. Seeing the finished product was an incredible feeling. I understand that anything that is new to you, will have a learning curve. I think with the guidance from our professor, editing/ creating a page on Wikipedia is do-able, however, editing or creating a page on your own, I don’t think is that easy. In general, I think Wikipedia is a wonderful community and is a community I might come back and contribute to.