User:Ivy Zhao 0704/Report

After finishing the Wikipedia project and becoming a Wikipedia article editor, I became familiar with this specific online community, and it brought some thinking about the community as a whole and as a member of the community. And the experience of editing the article also strengthened my understanding of the course concepts and helped me have reflection on them.

When the project was done, I felt a sense of accomplishment; but during the process, some of the confusion and problems I had made me want to give some advice to the Wikipedia community and the Wikipedia Foundation. When I first started the project, I felt a little bit overwhelmed by the training. It is a good thing to teach the newcomers about policies and rules for editing the article, but the training seems to contain too much information. It feels like that Wikipedia is trying to pour all the information into the newcomers’ head at the same time and hope they can learn all of them at once, then start to edit their articles immediately. Therefore, I recommend that Wikipedia should improve its training module, which includes less instructive and formal texts that seem to lecture its users. They should simplify their texts to make them less boring and design other methods like interactive games to train new users. The article that I edited is about the Taoist temple, and since it was founded in China, I relied on a lot of sources in Chinese and from Chinese websites. Therefore, when I first tried to add my sources and adding images, there would be a warning that said some of my sources were unreliable. Even though some of the articles are from reliable and professional sources, they were identified as untrustworthy. Therefore, I suggest that the Wikipedia community should be working on identifying sources from different countries and different languages by making their censoring team more diverse and comprehensive. Moreover, when the error occurred, I usually felt very panicky since there would be a big warning sign and a large number of texts on the red background. Whenever that warning appeared on my screen, I felt something extremely serious was happening, but it turned out the problems were not that hard to solve, so I also suggest that Wikipedia should modify its visual design to make it less deterring and horrifying to users.

My experience with the Wikipedia community started with the “need-based” commitment. I never thought about editing and revising a Wikipedia article before if I didn’t take this course, and I started doing it because I had to, and I would fail this course if I didn’t join the community or leave. So there is a kind reason why I have to stay in the Wikipedia community. However, when choosing the article I am going to edit, the experience becomes more “identity-based” since the article that I chose is something I am interested in which is about Taoist Temples and Taoism. Therefore, I got more intrinsic motivation for revising and adding content to the article since there is more emotional connection to it. Also, I felt a kind of “normative” commitment to the community because Taoism is something I believe in and is part of my religion and beliefs. Therefore, I feel it is my obligation to make contribution to the things I believe in by making its Wikipedia page more complete and professional. This is why I recommend that Wikipedia make the community more engaging so that people will find their intrinsic motivation and emotional attachment to the community to become more committed to it. And during the process of editing the article, I violated certain rules as a newcomer; even though I finished all of the training and practices, there were some mistakes that I could not avoid. When I was trying to move my sandbox page, I once mistakenly moved it to the main page, so it was declined because the Wikipedia expert told me that I was trying to create a new article by doing that, whereas I was just adding new information to an existing article. Wikipedia experts are pretty efficient and respond to problems very effectively. They did a great job of limiting the negative impact by declining my attempts to publish my sandbox as a new article when I accidentally did that. However, when the Wikipedia expert declined my submission, the warning sign kept showing on my sandbox, and I didn’t know how to withdraw my submission or anything I can do to remove that warning, and it made me anxious and feel depressed. So, I recommend the design team of Wikipedia make the visual design less striking, and there should be other ways to eliminate the warning sign after fixing the problems, except for directly deleting it from the source editing section. There also should be more encouragement to those newcomers who made mistakes unintentionally and give them more tolerance and chances when they violate rules they didn’t mean to.

One of the theories mentioned in the class is that when the barriers of entry for a community are high, the number of people who enter the community will be lower, but once they enter the community, they would be more committed. I think this theory would explain my experience. When I started the project, I felt overwhelmed by the rules and policies of the community, and I believe a lot of people were scared to join the community because of that. However, once I become familiar with the policies and rules, I would choose to stay to make more contribution because I think learning those skills cost me a lot of time and energy, so keep staying and making contribution would make my efforts more worthy. And what is special and unique for me is the sense of achievement that this project brought me, that the changes I made could influence a lot of people, and it is open to the whole public. And if I was part of the Wikipedia team, I would add more reward mechanism authors who make significant contributions or improvements to keep them passionate about the community.

In conclusion, it is a special and influential experience for me to become a Wikipedia editor, and with the combination of theories and concepts learned in class, I have a better understanding of how a successful community work and thrive.