User:Jfinlay8/Report

As a student enrolled in the course “Interpersonal Media: Online Communities” this quarter at the University of Washington, I’ve learned numerous ways to analyze online communities. In this class, I also utilized WikiEdu to improve an article on Wikipedia. In doing so, I’ve learned a great deal about the community’s rules and norms. My experience with Wikipedia before this course was minimal. I was purely a reader and periodically at that. After about two months of viewing WikiEdu tutorials on how wikipedia works and learning its norms such as being bold, everyone is welcome to edit, write in the talk pages for better communication, expect that people are editing in good faith, and so on (Expectations and Norms of the Wikipedia Community ); editing a sub in my sandbox; editing a couple of my peers’ articles; and finally transferring my edits to the article’s main page that I chose, I’ve learned a few valuable takeaways. One being, it’s not as difficult to contribute as I thought. It’s an amazing place to find information but it has room to become more of a social community in addition to a source of information. Wikipedia has a lot of potential for further creativity and numerous additional contributors. There are about two-thirds of articles on Wikipedia marked as stubs (Kraut, p. 21 ); this is a problem for the community. I have two recommendations for Wikipedia specifically in the area of grabbing newcomers to the community either for the first time or regular readers to get them to then participate, interact, and stay as well as those already deeply involved to strengthen their commitment to the website.

I suggest the Wikipedia community and the Wikimedia Foundation change two things about the Wikipedia website. First, in order to increase the number of people editing articles there should be a quick tutorial on how to make edits on Wikipedia as well as the core norms for the community on the article pages as a pop up on the top of articles so newcomers can clearly see it but regular Wikipedians (editors) wouldn’t be annoyed by it. Currently it is in small text on the side which is hard to see and doesn’t grab people’s attention at all. Socialization (teaching them how to behave (Kraut, p.180 )) is important for newcomers so they know what to do and how to act to fit in with the rest of the community as well as have the confidence to participate. Like we discussed in class, there’s a pipeline funnel of participation in online communities (which is the process of not knowing about the site to becoming an avid contributor.) It starts off with a vast amount of people who aren’t part of the community at all and as we move further into the funnel less and less people contribute. Since Wikipedia relies on volunteer editors and there are a lot more readers than there are Wikipedians, it’s important to get newcomers to contribute and stay and this pop up would help gain the many people who haven’t made that step to editing.

Second, create a place where Wikipedians can cultivate more of a personal connection to other Wikipedians besides talking on talk pages about the articles. I believe creating separate topic pages where people can go on and chat freely (as long as they are respectful of each other) will strengthen their ties to Wikipedia and make the cost of leaving higher. Currently, the most prominent commitment in this community is normative (feeling they ought to contribute for the greater good). This is great because there’s a study done by Vroom that shows people will work harder if they think that what they’re doing is meaningful and will lead to an outcome they value (Kraut, p.23 ). But adding on personal connections makes an even stronger commitment. Creating this space for sub-communities could help create another type of commitment: affective which includes both bonds-based (feeling close to individual members within a community) and identity-based (feeling apart of a community and wanting to help it fulfill its mission) and later needs-based (feeling like it would be costly to leave a group) because their friends are all on Wikipedia on those pages (Kraut, p.78 ). Having multiple types of commitment makes it less likely for people to leave. When I was using Wikipedia I felt like it was missing a sense of connection with the other members.

All in all, because contributors are crucial to Wikipedia, getting newcomers to stay and add to articles in a thoughtful manner is imperative to grow the community further. Keeping valuable Wikipedians is also incredibly necessary to the community’s success. Based off what I’ve learned from my course so far this quarter, adding clearly stated steps as well as rules and making a space for a personal community to connect with one another on specific topics will assist Wikimedia Foundation’s mission to “empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in a public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally” (Wikimedia Foundation Mission ).