User:Germanna84/WikiReport

When I first started learning about editing on Wikipedia and all the rules that go with it, I was quite intimidated. It’s a very large site that millions of people read every day, myself included, so the thought of making changes to it was initially daunting. This challenge was made easier because I am in a Wikipedia education group for my class at the University of Washington and was introduced to the Wikipedia norms and rules along with my fellow students by our instructor. Although my introduction to the Wikipedia community was positive overall, I see some areas of improvement that the community could work on when onboarding and retaining newcomers. Specific areas include mentorship, connecting to personal interests, goal setting, and normative commitment based on what our class studied in Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design by Robert E. Kraut and Paul Resnick.

The first step in my Wikipedia community introduction was the online student orientation which took me through a series of multiple choice style quizzes about different rules for writing and editing on Wikipedia. This was a very easy way for me to learn the most important Wikipedia community norms at a high level, and it was a very helpful introduction to what it means to write and edit on the site. One of the biggest fears of Wikipedia newcomers is that we will make an error when editing a page and mess up somebody else’s work. In my experience, Wikipedia did a great job of communicating to me that I couldn’t mess anything up because of the extensive system of saving previous versions of pages that one can always revert to. I was encouraged right at the start to just jump right in and try it out, or rather to ‘be bold’. This type of encouraging language helped assuage my initial fear about joining the community and making edits to pages.

The other introductory piece that was very helpful for me was the interactive tutorial that didn’t just show where certain buttons were (edit, cite, insert, save, etc.), but it was set up for me to practice entering text, making edits, and saving my work. That style of teaching appealed to me because I’m a visual learner and learn best by doing. Somebody can tell me how something works several times, but it won’t truly make sense to me until I can do it myself. Extending this practice into my sandbox was very helpful as well because it was a safe space where I could experiment and learn before officially moving my article into Wikipedia. The sandbox is also a great strategy used by Wikipedia to not just make sure I feel comfortable, but that I’m practicing these rules in order not to disrupt the existing community.

As a member of a Wikipedia education group, my onboarding experience was more structured and included support from my cohort and instructor. I felt much more safe and welcomed than an individual might feel discovering the community on her own. Although a new Wikipedia member receives a welcome message on her talk page that may link to useful resources, it would be more effective if each new member could be paired with a mentor to personally help with the onboarding process, answer questions, and check in with the newcomer during the initial writing and editing process. The newcomer would feel not just welcomed but valued, and in turn she will be motivated to contribute to the community in the long term. Since Wikipedia is a very large online community, it may not have enough people to participate as personal mentors. In that case I would recommend that newcomers be invited to join and contribute to a WikiProject or other subgroup where mentorship could be found. When a newcomer joins Wikipedia, she could be given a survey that aims to learn about the topics she finds interesting and/or has expertise in. A welcome message could then be generated that recommends specific WikiProjects and groups tailored to her interests so she doesn’t feel lost when trying to find groups at random. The invitation from established community members in a smaller group setting will help to increase participation by newcomers.

Wikipedia can be very overwhelming due to its size and large number of articles. In addition to a more personalized welcoming experience, the community could also make the list of requested articles and current stubs more prominent so that a newcomer knows exactly where to go to get started with contributions to the community. The welcome survey could also recommend requested articles and stubs that specifically relate to the newcomers’ interests and expertise, which would lower the barrier to entry and make newcomers more likely to contribute to the community. This would in turn also be a way for the community to help newcomers set contribution goals and check in with them on their progress as they edit and write articles on familiar topics.

While these recommendations are to appeal to newcomers’ personal interests and motivations, I also recommend highlighting the history, goals, and values of the Wikipedia community upfront so that newcomers can understand the intended purpose of Wikipedia and why it’s important. In our education group, we were assigned to watch the TED Talk by Jimmy Wales that told the story of how Wikipedia was created and what the vision was behind it. That really helped me understand the bigger picture of Wikipedia’s purpose and what the community wants to do for the greater good. If I hadn’t seen that video, it would have been more difficult for me to put the writing and editing tasks into context. Highlighting videos like this front and center will help newcomers see that they are an important piece of a larger movement and can increase normative commitment to the community.