User:Jfeldman26/reflection

People use Wikipedia every day without realizing that they are infiltrating a community. In December 2023, Wikipedia had 4.3 billion unique global visitors on its site. But of those visitors, only 47,192,549 have a registered username and of those only 123,564 make edits on average every 30 days. So although the site is one of the most known online sites with the highest traffic, it still has a rather small community. In one of our first classes, we defined what makes a community and we decided that in order to be categorized as a community there must be a sense of belonging in the group while also feeling like you are making a difference to the group. After this semester I can confidently say that Wikipedia is the perfect example of a community as members are an integral part of the site, everyone has a shared interest in it, and they accept newcomers with open arms and encourage them to enhance their contributions through constructive feedback and peer review, not only for their own personal growth but also to maintain Wikipedia's standards of quality and integrity.

However, Wikipedia does still have its hardships and although they try to help newcomers as much as they can, I found the first weeks on Wikipedia to be a bit daunting. I feel as though I dove right in and although I was given many instructions I found the site a bit hard to manage at the start, especially with all of the nitty-gritty rules that users must follow when communicating or posting on the site. However, as someone who is joining their community, I did know that it was important and a non-negotiable to conform to the way they do things. Some of the aspects that I would often have a hard time with included remembering to sign in before writing a comment or a QIC, and learning to sign all of my messages. Something as simple as commenting back to someone became the most tedious task and I was scared to do something wrong and have the community yell at me. However, rules are an important part of any community and prospective members usually know that this is something they need to follow for the community to run smoothly as this is part of socialization.

Despite the detailed rules and customs of Wikipedia, its design makes it quite welcoming for newcomers. My first look at this is when choosing my topic. I was surprised to see that there is a requested articles page. On this page, users can request articles that they hope to see on Wikipedia under different categories such as sports, philosophy, music, medicine, and others. I saw this as a perfect example of how they go about the management of newcomers. By doing this I believe that they are providing a sort of guidance to newcomers because newcomers may want to contribute but may not know how to go about this or know what still goes unwritten. Additionally, I find this to be quite inclusive both for existing members and newcomers because existing members who request topics on what interests them make them feel like their voice is heard and their opinion is valued. This is similar for the newcomer, but it is also a way for them to feel like their perspective is valued and that they are welcome into this community. I found my topic, Contagious Depression, under this page and it did make me feel like I was making a difference to the platform and contributing something of value that was requested by its members. In a way, it feels like I am indebted to the community for allowing me to join and this is me reciprocating thanks to them in the form of a requested article.

When it came to actually sitting down and writing the article I was shocked at how “difficult” it would be because of how detail-oriented Wikipedians are. However, in a way their thoroughness makes me feel good because it just goes to show that they value the legitimacy of the site. This was also interesting to me as my whole life I was told that using Wikipedia was unacceptable because it is not a reliable source since it is being written by average people. However, what people don’t realize is the amount of fact-checking and editing that goes into place before an article can even be made public. It was also interesting to me that all of the articles that are written must not come from a place of bias or be about something you have a connection to, so truly every single article is unbiased. The format when writing an article is quite tedious as well as the citations. I wrote the first draft of my article with citations, as I am used to doing and posted it on the main page and it was immediately sent back to the sandbox as the citations weren’t up to their standards, and they weren’t in the correct format. Normally, when writing a paper I will admit that I will suffer the consequences of having the wrong citations but on Wikipedia, I understand the importance of having the correct citations in the right format because my article is acting as a reputable source for users to use and reference. After fixing these issues, I moved my article back to the mainspace, and the citations were further edited by a user by the name of “BluberryIntoTheWild”. This user edited my citations as well as made my article “uncategorized” but later on another user categorized it under the category of depression. Although at the time I thought this was unfair that I was being kicked off of the main space, I know that it was important and it was a form of moderation. It was moderation because they were making sure that I was enforcing the guidelines, again to maintain the integrity and quality of the site. This moderation also makes sure that all the content being posted is credible and a valuable resource for all those who utilize Wikipedia.

The last thing I came to like about Wikipedia was something we touched upon most recently in class and it is the concept of gratitude on Wikipedia. Wikiepedia’s backbone is its users and its collaborative nature so it is important to give back to those who help you. Many of my peers had a lot more interaction on Wikipedia than I did which made me feel a bit inadequate so I decided to reach out to users with similar articles to mine and ask them to validate my work and give me feedback. I commented on an article called Emotional Contagion and asked the Wikipedian if they would glance at my article and add to it or give me feedback on if its good or not. However, he didn’t respond and this did hurt my sense of inclusion within the community especially since all of my peers seem to have such great interactions with other people on the site. I also think something else I struggled with was knowing who to contact and I was worried that even in the informality of the user’s talk page I was still reaching out in the incorrect way or format.

After this project, I have a different view on Wikipedia and a higher level of respect for those who are active members of this community. I also have found a new meaning to peer editing and find it quite interesting how people with vast and differing expertise and interests can come together to work on one piece of work for the greater good of the community. I also got to see the different power dynamics and societal levels even within Wikipedia with the differentiation between the seasoned veterans and the newcomers. I have learned a lot from my time on Wikipedia and even from the first weeks on the platform to now I believe that I have improved my skills and I believe that looking forward not only will I become deeper integrated into the Wikipedia community, but I will take the lessons learned here and apply them to my everyday life even off line. Some of these lessons include, learning how to handle constructive criticism, how to conform to the norms and rules of an established group, and that it is possible to impact a community even if you are a newbie.