User:Iskang15/Report

It is often considered to be a common mindset when newcomers find a community to which they want to participate in but are either overwhelmed or lost in the regulations and norms placed within it. Initially, that was the case for me starting out this quarter with the Wikipedia project assigned by this course. The objective of the assignment was for us to understand the theories applied by the course materials and for us students to put it into practice by participating, and contributing, towards the well-known encyclopedia community of Wikipedia.

Based on my personal experiences with the website, and the academic portal associated with it, this course provided a newcomer such as myself to have a better understanding of not only the representation of Wikipedia’s online community, but specifically the way it functions and garners users. For example, our first few assignments for the project involved interacting with the website, such as creating an account and choosing an article topic, while also utilizing the Wiki Education portal by completing orientations every week. Immediately, I have already sensed that participating in this particular online community was going to be complex. However, I would also argue that this is the reason why Wikipedia’s online community is considered to be successful, specifically in that due to the interconnectedness of users and the systems set in place, motivations for normative-based commitment are high.

Speaking of norms and regulations, Wikipedia really demonstrated the importance of norms within their online community, specifically answering the question of what “should” users be doing if they want to participate within the community. In our lectures specifically about norms, we were introduced to three ways in which users can learn norms within a community, such as observing people’s behaviors and the consequences that come of it, having a code of conduct, or even directly receiving feedback from moderators. In our lecture involving norms and regulations, we specifically when into detail about the threats that can come from online communities when maintaining order. We were introduced to plenty examples of involving spammers, trolls, and most importantly users that are uninformed about the regulations of a community. On Wikipedia, spamming edits on an article has the consequence of the page becoming locked from future edits, even moderators reversing user edits and directly addressing them for breaking the code of conduct. However, for the uninitiated users, this raises an interesting perspective about them “acting in good faith” due to them being unclear of the norms within the community.

A code of conduct is often defined to be a set of rules that sort of outline the norms and expectations of a particular community. We seen plenty of examples in regards to our case studies involving Ruby, Ubuntu, Gnome, and even Slashdot, in terms of the injunctive norms requested by these communities. However, a major aspect that was mentioned within the lecture was that norms usually, as they should, vary between communities. This was particularly mentioned within the lecture, where there were three different Wikipedia communities surrounding the Star Trek fandom, them being canon, non-canon, and fan-fiction material. For a more course-related example, during our discussion of the case study involving multiple community code of conducts, it was heavily noted that Ruby’s code of conduct was quite barebones and generalized in comparison to Ubuntu and especially Gnome. While Ubuntu represents a sort of “middle-ground” between the two in terms of expectations and goals, Gnome goes specifically with a code of conduct that specializes in prohibiting inappropriate behavior and focuses on the “safety” of the community rather than “comfort”. This in return can make the community more intimidating and daunting for newcomers, which again emphasizes that different communities will mostly likely favor norms and regulations that vary from their similar counterparts.

Often those enforcing these norms and regulations within communities are a group of users known as moderators and admins. With the goal of limiting the effects of bad behavior within their respective communities, they may result in the use of both reactive and pro-active moderation. For example, with our Wikipedia assignments, Wiki Education staff members assigned for this course have the ability to remove or change our contributions if it becomes problematic towards community guidelines and does not contribute meaningfully towards the website. Of course one of the main ways in which we can directly receive these forms of feedback is none other than the utilization of “talk pages” of our articles and sandboxes. It is because of this form of communication between other users and even moderators that pro-active methods not only moderate content, but also enforces the behaviors expected of the community.

In regards to things that I believe the Wikipedia website could change or improve in some aspects could involve how users find more intrinsic motivation to make them contribute meaningfully, while also creating incentives through external rewards. With the utility model of motivation, we learned that users would contribute if the benefits outweighed the cost in doing so. Therefore, similarly to Reddit, maybe an added feature of a reputation system for users can balance the extrinsic status gained, while also motivating these users to find ways in making their contributions to the site more intrinsically interesting based on their article’s topic.

Another aspect that could be improved upon for Wikipedia is the needs-based motivation that provides users with experiences that will keep them committed with the community. In our lectures, it was noted that participation often leads to value and also “sunk costs”, specifically in the terms of unrecoverable investment. Often these barriers of entry, such as the Wiki Education orientations, were helpful in creating commitment towards our article contributions due to the costs in which we “permanently” invested in with the portal. However, Wikipedia’s tools and functions can be criticized to be quite “archaic” or unrefined to modern standards of accessibility. Therefore, I think making these orientations more interactive and in tandem with the main site, can be greatly beneficial towards the community and their contributions.