User:Ijustinns/Report

After having worked on the article that I assigned myself to (Group threat theory) along with peer-reviewing other articles, my scope and perspective on Wikipedia has widened to see the potential of its uses within the online community it creates.

Before anything, I would like to highlight how much influence the Wiki Education website has in a person’s understanding of Wikipedia in general. Given that the Wiki Education Dashboard provided the training to follow and guidelines to go by when creating or editing Wikipedia articles, it complemented Wikipedia so well because of its capability in simplifying the purpose of Wikipedia. Besides doing it for classes, when I was engaging with the training on Wiki Education, it gave me a sense of commitment in which we talked about in class. This commitment was cultivated in many different ways. These ways included notifications of training that need to be done accompanied by buttons that give visual feedback of what needs to be completed or not by certain days. But within these training sessions, it detailed the rules and guidelines that Wikipedia goes by in a very interactive way. I was able to understand the Code of Conduct and the guidelines that Wikipedia goes by when creating or editing articles, which made me recognize that Wikipedia’s purpose was to allow users to have a general sense of unbiased information in topics that they were searching up. I felt that this was one of the ways that engages users to have a sense of commitment to know the rules of Wikipedia, which ultimately leads them to have a motivation in trying to complete “tasks '' to go by the guidelines. For me personally, I felt that I had more intrinsic motivation to spread what I knew and what I researched to share with other people. It also gave me, a newcomer coming onto the website to edit articles for the first time, better understanding in the potential of Wikipedia is and what it can provide.

On Wikipedia itself, it was hard to see the point in why editing articles and adding articles was important. Being someone who was aware of Wikipedia from even a younger age, my perspective on Wikipedia entailed two main thoughts: 1) Wikipedia has unreliable information. And 2) Wikipedia asks for money a lot. But having worked on this article, I feel have begun to understand why Wikipedia has that kind of reputation to others and why it is underfunded. I feel like because Wikipedia is a community that is mostly reliant on user engagement, that there needs to be more ways or avenues for users to be motivated to engage with the website. I think to increase commitment and motivation in these communities, the “Talk” page needs to be more prevalent and useful. In my time of encountering the “Talk” page, I feel like it was so easy to pass by the Talk page because my main focus was to edit my article rather than be in discussion with other users. There was no sense of responsibility or commitment for me to do so. I think if there was another forum that was established, it could create a sense of community which would have more engaged users who would edit and create more articles. In my opinion, I think I would try to stay away from extrinsic motivation to push users to edit articles because it can only go so far, but I think there should be a starting point that is reachable by awarding users who are engaging a lot with Wikipedia, whether it is awards or achievements for the users to obtain. With more users to engage with, I think there would be a better chance to let people know of what Wikipedia really is about rather than just be seen as a source that is unreliable. If my perspective has changed from this to seeing Wikipedia as an opportunity to spread general information and contribute to public knowledge, then I think my recommendation should be taken seriously, as we need to think of ways to utilize Wikipedia and Wiki Education as websites that users want to engage with. This can be through advertisements to let others know of Wikipedia, sponsorships with other people to create trust and credibility, or intrinsic motivation to motivate users to engage with the website.

I also would like to note, that in my experience with Wikipedia, not many people look at the references or engage with that part of the article. I wonder if there is a way for Wikipedia to rate references or sources to identify the credibility of certain articles, or to make a separate database that rates the sources. That way, it can turn the minds of people who do not trust the information of Wikipedia. This can simply be reflected or shown by a color or rating system that shows whether sources have been examined for its credibility, and Wikipedia can be seen as a place where sources are checked for their credibility. This is just an idea that I had that could change the view of Wikipedia from some people, but it may take another team to work on this.

Overall, I enjoyed seeing and exploring how Wiki Education complemented Wikipedia very well by teaching users how to engage with Wikipedia. From the process of making an account to taking multiple training sessions, it motivated users to learn and kept them committed to engaging in with Wikipedia. I wish that there was more focus from Wikipedia to bring in newcomers, because its presence as an online community is not very prevalent. But all of this experience taught me to see Wikipedia as a hub of information rather than something that needs to help me fulfill my research papers, which should not be seen in a negative light.