User:Jasonguoo/Report

Wikipedia has been helpful in many people’s everyday life as a free, open content online encyclopedia. Personally, I have benefited from this online platform because I was able to learn a lot of new knowledge through others who contributed to Wikipedia. However, I never felt the urge to contribute to any Wikipedia articles – not because I do not want to help others in a field I am knowledgeable about, but rather I do not find the motivation to do so. In this article, I will explore what makes people want to use and contribute to Wikipedia as well as how to drive engagement to gain more users and contributors. The analysis will be separated into a few parts – how to onboard someone to use Wikipedia and how to onboard more users that contribute to Wikipedia. First of all, I advise Wikipedia Foundation to identify its current users. This is usually a great first step to make changes. How old are current users? Where do users live? What social classes do most users fall into? These questions are important because we should be mindful about who we are designing technologies and online platforms for. But let’s assume that 65% of current users are between 25 – 30 years old. Wikipedia community can focus on getting more younger audience (18 – 25 years old) to use and contribute to the site because this age group is active in academia and is learning about new definitions in higher education. In addition, people in this age group are generally more experienced with technology so they can find it easier to contribute to Wikipedia site. Given this assumption, Wikipedia should consider surveying this user segment a variety of questions to understand what keeps them from using or contributing to Wikipedia. For those who do actively engage on Wikipedia, we can ask them what makes them use the platform and what their intentions are. Knowing these could help Wikipedia continue serving this group of users as well as onboarding new users who fall in this age bracket.

Based on my experience and observation of my peers who are in college, lack of time is one of the top pain points. People who are between 18 – 25 have a fast-paced lifestyle. They consume knowledge and move on, making it harder for them to contribute to Wikipedia. In addition, many of them are not even aware that they can contribute to Wikipedia articles. Lastly, even if they know they can contribute, navigating Wikipedia and creating an account make it seem like a daunting task for many. We can come up with a few strategies and features below to mitigate these pain points. To address the issue that many young people who do not have the motivation to contribute, Wikipedia can incentivize them by offering them recognitions and small payments. For instance, when a user contributes, they can win a daily streak. The amount of streak someone has will show up on their profile if they have been consistently contributing for more than 7 days. In addition, if a user has contributed every day in a year, they will receive a 365-dollar gift card of their choice. To prevent people from adding invaluable writing to any article, their contribution has to be verified by the moderators and other Wikipedians.

People wouldn’t contribute if they don’t know they can. A way to spread the knowledge is a referral program to introduce more users to contribute to articles. An existing user who refers a new user to make 10 contributions will receive a 25-dollar gift card. This motivates to promote this to their friends and family. Wikipedia can also partner up with many colleges to have some Wikipedians and community members give talks about benefits of contributing to articles and recruit new members to contribute this way.

For people who think it is daunting to create an account and contribute, Wikipedia could simplify the onboarding experience and add onboarding tutorials for people who recently created their account. The onboarding tutorial guides them through the process of finding an article to contribute and adding a new sentence to the article. Wikipedian can also visit different colleges and offer workshops to guide students through onboarding and contributing to articles. These strategies could make it easier for people to contribute to Wikipedia articles.

Once more people use Wikipedia and contribute to articles, I advise the foundation to foster a good norm and set examples to the newcomers. This will help retain this group and integrate them well into the current system. For instance, moderators can set rules and enforce them while any community member violates a rule. Wikipedia could showcase some good behaviors for its community members in the onboarding process as well as its other marketing campaigns. Overall, Wikipedia could benefit from having more active users contribute to articles. My above analysis offers a perspective on how to achieve that.