User:HyeyoungKimuw/Report

Although I engage in many different online communities in my daily life, contributing to Wikipedia was an unordinary event which I never thought I would engage in. Every time I visit Wikipedia, it makes me wonder what motivates people to contribute to Wikipedia when there is an absence of rewards. To me, it was a strange thing to do to invest my time and effort when there are no rewards. However, through class lectures and discussions on different theories and concepts, I realized that there are more than just rewards in terms of motivation and commitment.

Besides donations, Wikipedia needs contributors in order to sustain its service. In order to attract people who would actually contribute to their community, Wikipedia must have special features that attract people, especially when there are no external rewards.

Through my project on Wikipedia, I found several things that made it possible for Wikipedia to succeed in attracting contributors and maintaining their service. The first thing I noticed was that the benefits of contributing outweigh the costs. Edits on Wikipedia are easy and instant, which allows people to contribute without burdens. I personally found making edits on Wikipedia easy as well. There were no extra steps that I needed to take to make edits. With a few clicks, I was able to edit the article and make it come alive. This simple technology gives people the notion that anybody can make edits, and anybody can become contributors. The second thing I found was that ownership of content is very low. Since Wikipedia does not require users to use their real names, users have the freedom to remain anonymous by choosing their own username. I think this feature lowers ownership of content. When it is difficult to distinguish the author or contributor of the article, it encourages people to contribute without pressure because they are no heavy responsibility. This authorless concept of Wikipedia has definitely removed the barriers to participation because people have to less worry about their content and the burden that comes with it when information they provided is proven wrong.

Other than Wikipedia’s features, making contributing more intrinsically interesting is also important. According to the book, “Making the list of needed contributions easily visible increases the likelihood that the community will provide them” (Kraut et al. 26). Wikipedia has categorized the topics that need more contributions into “stubs”. Wikipedia’s publicizing lists of needed contributions can elicit motivation and makes contribution intrinsically fun and interesting. Wikipedia also did good on marking things that needed to be done. Guiding people about what is missed and what is needed to be done can help contributors complete the task much more than not providing anything. Letting people know about their mistakes and what they need to improve can help them upgrade their content to a higher level, which eventually higher the Wikipedia as a whole. However, I did find that those warning messages were quite frightening. Those warning messages can overwhelm newcomers with all the rules and norms that they need to follow in Wikipedia. I think it will be better if they provide the warning messages in a more friendly manner, which can make the learning experience more satisfiable.

As a person who had an opportunity to explore Wikipedia and make contributions, I thought about some possible ways for Wikipedia to improve for better engagement among participants. Wikipedia already has a system where it categorizes articles that need more contributions into “stubs”. Adding to this feature, I thought what if Wikipedia had a more personalized categorization system where it tracks down the edits that each user made on and sorts them into a category which they work on the most, and send the recommendation of list of stub articles based on the data. High frequency of their previous data on a certain topic means that they are interested in that topic and have more knowledge on it. Therefore, sending recommendations will elicit more contributions because “providing tools for finding and tracking work that needs to be done tends to increase the amount that gets done” (Kraut et al. 27). This approach might also increase the sense of belonging among users. Getting asked to contribute from Wikipedia will remind them that they are a member of the community and that the community needs their contribution.

Wikipedia already has thousands of contributors who made today’s Wikipedia. However, it is true that Wikipedia has very formal rules and norms within its own community, and it can be overwhelming for newcomers. In order for Wikipedia to continually grow, I think it is important to increase the sense of belonging and make a friendly environment for newcomers. I think adding features that I explained above can help to bring more engagement and contribution to Wikipedia.

Work cited

Kraut, Robert E., and Paul Resnick. Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design, MIT Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=3339407.