User:Jeremy Chi/Report

I am a recent user of Wikipedia, who has contributed a large portion of the wiki article “peanut milk” and have made the necessary edits that my COM 481 class taught by Mako Hill has taught me to. Through taking this Wikipedia class, learning material about online communities, practically creating a wiki article, and using four weeks worth of knowledge to apply it to the Wikipedia community, I have enjoyed this journalistic experience and believe my advice to the Wikipedia community will help create not only better articles, but a better community. Honestly speaking, at first glance, I was held at a wall, trying to learn Wikipedia's in’s and out’s of its online platform. However, there was one element of Wikipedia that I found monumentally helpful, and that was the community within it. The community of helpers that create Wikipedia articles also leave helpful comments on your talk page! Through constructively criticizing my article and leaving empathetic comments on my talk page, I was able to create a viable article to publish onto the wiki web. Therefore I would like to share my input on my understanding of Wikipedia and give advice to this thriving community.

One way I believe that Wikipedia has such a great online community is because 1) the individual's ability to participate and 2) the participation of others. With newcomers entering this vast and intimidating online community, it seems difficult to participate. I believe this is the case because I have had the same thoughts when first starting. However, participation in writing articles is quite easy. Being able to start in this online community does not take much. And all it takes is a profile to be made, and you can go ahead and start editing. Of course this is not all it is to a good quality article, but for someone just starting, it's quite simple. What's more is the participation of others makes one feel like they can comfortably be a part of the community, creating a sense of bond based commitment. One way Wikipedia does this is through talk pages. Through personal experience, it was because of talk pages that I was intrinsically motivated to create a quality article. The function of having people make constructive comments almost immediately was quite amazing. With Wikipedia’s vast population, this is possible. I believe this is a good quality for any online community. One example would be Zooniverse, where newcomers can participate in viewing discussions and can help be involved with research almost immediately as well. I feel that they do a good job of socialization, where they can make a newcomer feel almost as if they are already a valuable member of the community. Another great platform that does this is Teahouse, an online community used for guidance for newcomers in wikipedia. Though using hosts and moderators, Teahouse allows for a newbie friendly zone, socializing them to the norms of Wikipedia.

Though Wikipedia does a good job of participation, there are still some minor barriers to full commitment to the online community, to allow for full and complete articles. Though there is a good bond based commitment in Wikipedia talk pages and the Wikimedia commons, I don’t find that it is enough to keep a newcomer editor in the online community to produce quality articles. One example of this is the large list of stub articles in Wikipedia. As I was picking my article, I found that there was a stub article for almost every subtopic. In other words, participants start a Wikipedia article, but do not finish it. My solution to this would be to have sooner incentives to create, let's say, your first article! One form of incentive would be extrinsic incentive like receiving points for every Wikipedia article you create. One community I find does this well is reddit. With reddit’s karma system, they reward users “karma” to incentivize liking posts and making comments, where you can then buy different avatar outfits or even show off your profile when a user comes across it.

Another thing I would like to add about Wikipedia's online community is the almost unavoidable culture around trolls and bad edits. As I have looked through other Wikipedia articles, there is most certainly an issue for people who create bad edits in live Wikipedia articles through intrinsic motivations. Though it is very understandable that it is quite normal in any given circumstance in an online community, it keeps from the professionalism of the platform. Knowing that Wikipedia is up there among the most clicked on sites, next to news sites like CNN and New York times, the credibility of Wikipedia is not the most reliable source of information. This is due to the personality of the platform, and freeness for anyone to make edits. I propose a solution to this, and that would be to allow for structured programs like Wiki Edu to be implemented into Wikipedia itself. Doing this would allow for new users to receive professional guidance and advice to create a proper article. I personally have known about Wikipedia's freeness to let anyone edit, and remember as a young teenager, fiddling around with articles and, well, trolling the platform. I believe this was due to a lack of training and guidance, which a platform like Wiki Edu or TWA does best.

Feel free to contact my on my talk page, as I would love to hear your input on my advice to the Wikipedia community!