User:JaysenC/Report

Wikipedia is one of the world’s largest online communities that work, practically from an intrinsic perspective, to provide the general public with information and knowledge. The depths and coherence of Wikipedia were not something I was expecting when I was first starting to create my account. I want to start off by referencing back to some notable impressions and experiences I had on Wikipedia through this exercise. Wikipedia is complex, and even sometimes anxious, to work on. Much more complex than I originally thought. But this is a great thing. Wikipedia users help each other out, edit each other's articles, and even provide thoughtful suggestions or critiques, usually, through the talk page. When I first started off on my article on “International schools”, the talk page comments pointed me in the general direction I should orient my information with.

In the lecture regarding “Slashdot”, we learned about the importance of moderation. Why moderating is important and how meta moderation is even necessary for some instances. The reason “Slashdot” is able to be so successful is because of its strict and effective moderation system. Although Wikipedia doesn’t use an identical system, users adopt a similar mindset in moderating each other. When my article went live, I had minor changes within my article on the first day, even though “International school” is a “C-class” article. The response rate from users is incredible. And although not all these responses will be met with complete agreement, this will be able to spark further discussion and debates, which is always good. In other online communities that we have discussed in class such as Twitch, Reddit, or even Discord, moderation is sometimes the key to an online communities' success. It reduces spam, controversial comments, behaviors that go against the guideline, etc. In Wikipedia’s case, misinformation, uncited information, unoriginal images, or repeated information are all cleaned up quickly.

With so much that Wikipedia does great, there are aspects that I could potentially see improvements in. This specific suggestion is to help reduce spam and trolls. On Wikipedia, anyone can make an edit. Making good edits does not really provide the users with any real, tangible benefits within Wikipedia. It is mostly intrinsic satisfaction. Although long-term, more reliable users are given the title of “Experienced Editor”, it does not give that person the ability to edit more articles. A complete novice editor like myself is still able to edit the same amount of articles that an “Experienced Editor” can. This gives way to the occasional spam or troll edits in Wikipedia like the Jeremy Renner as a velociraptor example given in lecture. Of course, those edits are quickly removed, but there still exists a period of time where Jeremy Renner on Wikipedia was said to be a velociraptor, and the removal of this information has to always be manual. Taking the Jeremy Renner Wikipedia page as an example, the article page is categorized as BLP (biographies of living persons). Because he is a celebrity and his name is often searched, the information that the page provides has to be correct. I think that a way to incentivize more tangible rewards is through “Experienced Editors” being able to make edits on certain pages with higher importance. Just like how meta moderators on Slashdot can only be selected from people who have been long time users with high karma, certain Wikipedia articles can only be edited by “Experienced Editors” who have been long term users and contributed to many different articles. I understand that this can go against Wikipedia’s philosophy to let everyone be able to edit any information, but I think this can be a great way to filter out any spammers or trolls on high importance articles and still have new users edit on most articles they are interested in. Since Wikipedia already has a class system for the importance of articles, this new type of moderation and “reward” can go hand in hand. This will also be a way to reward long-term users in a more extrinsic manner.

Another suggestion I have is regarding the newcomers to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is complicated. Especially by just scrolling through the front page of Wikipedia, it is filled with buttons, tabs, and information. One portal leads to the next. It is easy to get lost. The only reason it was easier for us to navigate the site was through the instructions provided in class and the explanations of the professor and TA. For someone who isn’t in a university class specifically focusing on online communities, it can be off-putting to start working on articles. I think there are two ways to combat this. One is to offer more early adopter and participation benefits. So even if newcomers are having a hard time working through their first couple of articles, these extrinsic benefits can help them carry on. These benefits can include resources for training, like the ones we did in class each week. Wikipedia can also adopt a more “collective” format when welcoming newcomers. Old, more experienced users can be tasked to reach out, through “talk pages”, and help newcomers with any questions they may have. I believe Wikipedia adopts a more “sequential” and “fixed” approach when it comes to newcomers. This is shown through the step-by-step learning modules we did in class. I think that this type of training method is great and really helpful for someone getting started in Wikipedia. However, the issue is being able to actually navigate to these sources without the help of an online class. Even with the help of a class syllabus, I was still having a hard time navigating through the different “/talk” or “/user:JaysenC” links that I needed to type in at first. Wikipedia can potentially make this process more streamlined and simplified for newcomers. This means adding images and direct links to the training process can really help. Videos and entire video explanations through the Wikipedia site itself, not YouTube, can be even more helpful for visual learners.