User:Jasmair/Report

In my past experiences being a newcomer to other online communities, I have never been introduced or learned about a platform through a game. My first exposure to editing in Wikipedia was through the Wikipedia Adventure. It exposed me to the different norms of Wikipedia, such as signing with four tildes along with the rules of replying with the correct number of colons and much more. Additionally, as a newcomer, it gave me protection where I was given a safe space to learn and experiment with Wikipedia—as did my sandbox page. This, in turn, gave me more confidence in adding a new section, “Decision-Making Styles,” to the article “Decision-Making.” Though the Wikipedia Adventure was outdated in terms of it glitching while I was attempting to accomplish the missions and feeling as if it was targeted towards a younger age group, I was extrinsically motivated to complete it. Aside from having to complete the Wikipedia Adventure for assignment purposes, the ability to earn badges significantly increased my motivation to complete each mission. When the game would glitch and fail to award me a badge, I would restart the mission to earn all of my badges. The glitching downfall in the Wikipedia Adventure forced me to relearn some of the material and practice it once more, which ended up being more helpful than harmful.

Moreover, I have never been involved in an online community or platform that edits information added by users. Therefore, Wikipedia editing was altogether a new experience for me. Prior to Wikipedia, I had never interacted with any type of code, so learning Wikicode for source editing was unfamiliar yet rewarding experience. Furthermore, unless I hold a position of power, which more often than not entails posting in Facebook groups, I do not interact with most of the online communities I am a part of; after all, most of these communities are offline communities as well, and I prefer offline interactions over online ones. As a result, interacting and engaging with an online community that I do not know offline was an entirely new experience.

I noticed that while the “Watch this page” feature, which sends an email to the user’s account when an edit is made to the page, increases engagement, it is also a deterrent to contributing to Wikipedia. When an email is sent, it should specify if the new edit was made to the user’s previous edit itself or to the page itself. After all, an individual may only be interested in the edit they made to the page, rather than all of the edits occuring on the page. Drawing from my own experience editing the page “Decision-Making,” I am only interested in decision-making styles which are the edits I contributed to the page, rather than the all the sections on that page. I would argue that this feature is a barrier to contribution because it costs users time and can deter them from contributing to Wikipedia. For example, if there are continual edits to a page that an individual is watching, they will receive email notifications that the page has been changed. If every time this individual opens and follows the link to see that the edit was not made to their section or what they had contributed in the past, than this individual will start deleting the emails. Moreover, they would eventually stop checking which edits are being made to the page as a whole because they are not interested and it is a waste of their time to do so. If the individual loses motivation because of the “Watch this page” notifications, they would be less likely to transition from a new editor to a casual editor or from a casual editor to a hardcore editor for Wikipedia. The solution I would recommend is adding a box when publishing changes that gives the opportunity for the user to select either “Watch this page” or “Watch this page for my edits.” By doing so, the user decides if they are interested in receiving email notifications for edits made anywhere on the page or for edits to their edit. For the information I added in “Decision-Making,” I personally would select “Watch this page for my edits.”

Another recommendation I have for Wikipedia is to integrate visual editing into all aspects of Wikipedia, but more specifically, the talk pages. Learning Wikicode for source editing might seem like a small barrier to some, but to others, it could be the factor that impacts an individual’s decision to not continue their Wikipedia experience. Visual editing is more user-friendly and easier to navigate, since the code in source editing needs to be memorized. For instance, to create a bullet point in source editing, the user must use a pound symbol followed by an asterisk (#*). Whereas to create a bullet point in visual editing, the user only needs to click on the bullet point icon and then select “Bullet List.” In his article, Almost Wikipedia: Eight Early Encyclopedia Projects and the Mechanisms of Collective Action, Hill mentions that familiarity was one of the reasons Wikipedia was more successful and attracted a larger community than the past online encyclopedias that tried to launch. I think this principle can be applied to not only attraction of new users for Wikipedia’s initial success, but also in the retention of users. Hence, in the case of bullet points, visual editing is more widely recognized and more familiar to users than is learning Wikicode for source editing.

Overall, after reflecting upon my Wikipedia experience as a newcomer, a few main takeaways stand out. Through the Wikipedia Adventure game, I first learned how to navigate the norms of Wikipedia, particularly related to editing, in a comfortable yet glitchy space. After understanding the downfalls of selecting the “Watch this page” box, I recommended enabling users to specify whether they receive notifications for edits to the page versus edits to their previous contributions. Another suggestion I had was to integrate visual editing into the talk pages.

Works Cited

''Hill, Benjamin Mako. “Essays on Volunteer Mobilization in Peer Production.” Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013.''

''Kraut, Robert E., and Paul Resnick. Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design. The MIT Press, 2012.''