User:Goldfish2701/reflection

Before taking this class, I took Wikipedia for granted and thought of it as as little more than a normal encyclopedia. I knew nothing about the norms, culture, and rules of the Wikipedia community. My only experiences with the website had been as a user, casually reading pages to answer questions or learn about interesting topics. I also had little experience with any other online community, as I have never been an active user of Reddit or other platforms outside social media sites. Learning about and interacting with the Wikipedia community has given me a much greater appreciation for the years of individual dedication and community cooperation that contributed to the creation of Wikipedia. Even though my overall experience editing and interacting with the Wikipedia community has been positive, I found that Wikipedia’s online community is poorly designed to welcome newcomers. By improving socialization and interaction with newcomers, the Wikipedia community could improve retention and gain a new generation of Wikipedians.

Joining Wikipedia as a newcomer, I felt unwelcome and overwhelmed by the complexity of the community. In their book, Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design, Kraut and Resnick outline 5 main problems online communities face when dealing with newcomers. Recruitment, selection, retention, socialization, and protection. To maintain a healthy and functioning online community, platforms should optimize their community design to address these five challenges. As a new user, I think that Wikipedia has the most work to do in the areas of retention and socialization. In an online community that promotes retention, new users can quickly learn the ropes of a platform and engage with other users. As a new user of Wikipedia, I had no support or education from the platform itself. Luckily, I had the resources of the WikiEdu page and our class to learn about how to properly edit pages and engage with the Wikipedia community. On a basic level, I would not have understood how to properly edit Wikipedia without the tutorials on WikiEdu. As a new user with no prior experience in online communities, the Wikipedia interface was extremely intimidating. As Kraut and Resnick describe, socialization allows new community newcomers to learn the norms of the community and better understand their role within it. Increasing socialization benefits the both the newcomer, who feels welcomed by the community, and established community members, who can prevent any potential misunderstanding or damage to the platform. The absence of socialization and interaction with other Wikipedians only compounded my original feelings of intimidation. Without a community mentor to contact, I felt alone in the abyss of a new platform. The additional support of our class and WikiEdu programming was the only way I learned how to interact with Wikipedia, but the community itself was not designed to successfully welcome newcomers.

After choosing my topic of interest, exploring and immersing myself in related pages helped me to better understand the Wikipedia norm of "be nice". I chose to focus on the historically significant Boston restaurant, Parker’s Restaurant. To get a better understanding of common discussions within this topic, I began to explore related pages and talk page conversations. Specifically, I read many articles and corresponding talk pages about historic American hotels and restaurants. All talk page discussions I came across were highly civil and productive, and there was very little arguing between editors. When I encountered disagreements, like on the Union Oyster House talk page, disputes were resolved calmly and with decorum. The level-headed conversations I observed in my area of interest demonstrated the Wikipedia norm of “be nice” in practice. In the article “Be Nice”: Wikipedia Norms for Supportive Communication, Reagle describes the communication norms that govern Wikipedia interactions. The defined norms are distinguish the differences between supportive and defensive communication, encouraging editors to resolve conflicts rather than inflame them. On the Union Oyster House talk page, I witnessed the norm of supportive vs defensive communication in action. One user posted the question: "'I hate to be a dick, but theres no evidence for any of these claims -- I know this restaurant claims the oldest-restaurant, for examnple -- but theyve never backed up the claim. Anyone got a REAL history?'"Instead of becoming defensive in response to the original editor's emotionally charged and inflammatory language, another Wikipedian responded with constructive and neutral reply to resolve the issue. "According to Fox News (somewhat reputable source), the White Horse Tavern and Restaurant is 153 years older!!! This article is false and shameful to Wikipedia. http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/05/22/america-oldest-restaurants/ "Even on a site that is addicted to arguing, most interactions remain civil due to the well-established norms of communication and collaboration. After learning about Wikipedia norms and guidelines in class, seeing the conversations play out on the platform helped me to better understand and contextualize the concepts in action.

My experience contributing to Wikipedia was overwhelmingly positive, but the lack of interaction left me doubtful of my work at times. I chose to upload my Wikipedia article as a new section of a pre-existing page. After drafting my article on Parker’s Restaurant, I chose to add it as a new section on the larger page of the Omni Parker House because the hotel’s page already made several mentions of Parker’s Restaurant and its innovations. In this diff, you can see my original edit to the page where I added a new section specifically focusing on the restaurant. After adding a new section to the page, I waited to receive feedback or edits from fellow Wikipedians. After a few weeks of no interaction, I posted on the talk page asking for feedback from other editors. Still, I received no feedback or interaction. I did not let the lack of interaction dissuade me from making further edits and I continued to make small changes and improvements to the overall page. Additionally, as seen in this diff, I uploaded a photo from Wikimedia Commons to the Parker’s Restaurant section. Even though I am personally confident in my article, the lack of interaction with my contribution made me feel like I was not a part of the Wikipedia community.

I believe prioritizing positive constructive feedback for new Wikipedia editors would motivate them to remain engaged with the community. After my experience contributing to Wikipedia and receiving no feedback, I did not have much motivation to continue working on Wikipedia. Readings on the effects of feedback and different types of motivation have helped me better analyze and understand my Wikipedia experience. In Kraut et. al. paper Effects of Peer Feedback on Contribution: A Field Experiment in Wikipedia, the authors conducted an experiment to see how receiving different types of feedback would influence the future contributions of Wikipedia editors. The study confirmed their hypotheses, finding that positive feedback increased people’s overall motivation to work, but negative feedback only increased effort on the editor's focal task at hand but had no impact on long-term motivation. The effects were much stronger with newcomers, the researchers found no significant effect on experienced members. This academic evidence demonstrates the significant effect and importance of positive feedback for newcomers, but Wikipedia makes little effort to specifically welcome or encourage new community members on their first contribution. If Wikipedia were looking to increase the retention of new members, incentivizing positive feedback to newcomers would be an excellent place to start.

Even though I believe Wikipedia could improve their treatment of newcomers, observing the dedication of the community allowed me to better understand the importance of intrinsic motivation. During the duration of our Wikipedia project, I was constantly struck by the level of commitment and care that Wikipedian put towards their work, especially considering the voluntary nature of the community. The depth of research, level of care, and time spent contributing to the community could easily be a full time job. Observing the interactions of passionate Wikipedians and exploring the intricacies of the platform raised many questions for me about why contributors were so dedicated to their voluntary projects. Intensive research, writing, and editing about encyclopedia topics is more like a school assignment than a fun hobby, so what keeps Wikipedians motivated? I believe the lack of rewards or financial incentives have been a main factor in Wikipedia’s development and success. In chapter 5 of Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards, Kohn explores multiple studies that demonstrate how reward-based extrinsic motivation negatively impacts people’s interest and performance in tasks, especially things they were already intrinsically motivated to do without reward. For people to have the most motivation towards a project, they must be internally motivated by their own organic interest. In studies where people began a project intrinsically motivated, but then began receiving rewards, their motivation drastically decreased. Kohn's book chapter helped me to understand how Wikipedia continues to function and grow as a volunteer community. The voluntary nature of Wikipedia is an essential function of the community, and introducing rewards for contributions would likely wreak havoc on community motivation. Learning about the complex relationship between motivation and reward allowed me to understand how Wikipedia was created solely by volunteers, and why it must continue to be volunteer based.

Reflecting on my overall experience with Wikipedia, I greatly enjoyed immersing myself in the online community. Even though I have consistently used Wikipedia since middle school, this project was the first time I understood the importance and complexity of Wikipedia as a resource and community. More than just a social platform, Wikipedia is one of the most prominent examples of how the internet can be used for good, with thousands of people working together to provide unbiased knowledge for everyone. Although I was deeply impressed by the community overall, my experience as a newcomer showed me that Wikipedia is poorly designed to welcome new users. To ensure a new generation of Wikipedians carries on the community, the platform must prioritize socialization and interaction with newcomers.