User:Ingrid chanhy/Reflections

Wikipedia used to be something that is in my daily life but also far away from me at the same time. I look up Wikipedia every time I needed instant information or background about something or someone for my homework. However, over half of the professors do not accept Wikipedia as a reliable source as they believed that articles on Wikipedia was not built upon through research and monitored by people closely. But they don’t know is that Wikipedia is actually monitored by contributors around the world, and there are a lot of guidelines to follow in order to publish an article on Wikipedia without being removed by contributors. When the project just started and we have to go through the online orientation, there were so much that we have to pay attention on, especially plagiarism, copyright and notability. Wikipedia are on a high standard just as research paper—the article have to be notable and neutral. It wasn’t like a forum where people can freely throw out biased and disrespectful comments. I was a bit struggling in my article at first as I couldn’t came up with any idea of what topic I could write. In my mind Wikipedia already included everything in my knowledge. Later I tried to randomly clicked on articles on topics about Hong Kong, and I found that there were actually more stubs than I originally would have thought. There were some topics that might be notable to some people in the world there wasn’t a page about it, or that wasn’t well-developed yet. I chose to expand the stub on Russell Street, Hong Kong as I believe some people in the world might have interest in this street with the highest rent among the world. Throughout the whole editing process I put more effort than I have expected—I have to do a lot of research in order to back up my information written on this article, just as any research paper that I have done before. In the meanwhile, I have to try my best to find English sources for my article as it is on English Wikipedia. Although there were so many obstacles in my way to complete my article, I have learned a lot from being a contributor for Wikipedia. The effort you have to put into contributing an article is as much as you have to put into a loud and sound essay. It is a trustworthy source and strictly monitored by a lot of contributors.

The thing that made me think Wikipedia is so far away from the public was that most of the people have never thought of joining and contributing in the Wikipedia community. I didn’t join Wikipedia before as I thought that I wouldn’t have the ability to do so. But after I started contributing on this community and finished the online orientation, it came out not as bad as I had imagined. In fact you would have “addicted” to editing and reading articles on Wikipedia as you feel like you are part of this community, and you would like to help polishing it. Moreover, it feels so good to have contributions in a community where millions of people access per month. So I believe that extrinsic values of editing articles that might be read by thousands of people is actually a drive for new comers to continue editing.Wikipedia used to be something that is in my daily life but also far away from me at the same time. I look up Wikipedia every time I needed instant information or background about something or someone for my homework. However, over half of the professors do not accept Wikipedia as a reliable source as they believed that articles on Wikipedia was not built upon through research and monitored by people closely. But they don’t know is that Wikipedia is actually monitored by contributors around the world, and there are a lot of guidelines to follow in order to publish an article on Wikipedia without being removed by contributors. When the project just started and we have to go through the online orientation, there were so much that we have to pay attention on, especially plagiarism, copyright and notability. Wikipedia are on a high standard just as research paper—the article have to be notable and neutral. It wasn’t like a forum where people can freely throw out biased and disrespectful comments. I was a bit struggling in my article at first as I couldn’t came up with any idea of what topic I could write. In my mind Wikipedia already included everything in my knowledge. Finally I chose to expand the stub on Russell Street, Hong Kong as I believe some people in the world might have interests in this street with the highest rent among the world. Throughout the whole editing process I put more effort than I have expected—I have to do a lot of research in order to back up my information written on this article. In the meanwhile, I have to try my best to find English sources for my article as it is on English Wikipedia. Although there were so many obstacles in my way to complete my article, I have learned a lot from being a contributor for Wikipedia. The effort you have to put into contributing an article is as much as you have to put into a loud and sound essay. It is a trustworthy source and strictly monitored by a lot of contributors. The thing that made me think Wikipedia is so far away from the public was that most of the people have never thought of joining and contributing in the Wikipedia community. I didn’t join Wikipedia before as I thought that I wouldn’t have the ability to do so. But after I started contributing on this community and finished the online orientation, it came out not as bad as I had imagined. In fact you would have “addicted” to editing and reading articles on Wikipedia as you feel like you are part of this community, and you would like to help polishing it. This actually implied the affective commitment—people feel like a part of the community and want to continue helping. Moreover, it feels so good to have contributions in a community where millions of people access per month. So I believe that intrinsic values of contributing to an article which might be read by thousands of people is actually an important drive for new comers to continue editing. Regarding the three ways of motivating participation in online communities, external rewards is definitely not the right one for Wikipedia as it would ruined the whole ecology of the community—as we have discussed in class, some people are going to make money out of this, and some might not be willing to volunteer anymore. Persuasive techniques might help as it helps to attract more people to join the community. And once they joined, they might feel the joy of accomplishment which lead them to continue editing. If I have to change one thing on Wikipedia, I would change the online orientation as I believe it would scared a lot of people out. The online orientation is informative, yet too long for a new comer to read. People might feel overwhelmed and quit. I would suggest Wikipedia to keep it as short as possible, and put information as little reminders that pop out in the time when people were editing their articles. For example, pop out reminders about plagiarism and copyright when people are clicking the button, or when they don’t have any references after inputting a certain amount of words. And with the articles edited or contributed by new comers, Wikipedia can assign it to certain contributors to read before publishing it to the whole world. This help to protect the community from getting harmed by new comers, and also socialize them into the new community. Moreover, it is also an affective commitment for the experienced contributors as they will feel they are needed in this community.