User:Jiyenita/Report

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is open and free for everyone to access and collaborate in editing and adding articles. Enrolling in COM 482, I received the opportunity to take part in collaborating on a Wikipedia article of my choice. After spending half of the quarter working on my article in Wikipedia, I am confident to say that I have managed to learn a lot--both on how to operate Wikipedia in general, and also on editing and improving articles professionally.

Through Wikipedia, I personally learned how to edit existing articles and the ways to further tailor it into a professional article with an encyclopedic tone. The existing article that I chose to improve on Wikipedia was “Deddy Corbuzier”. Deddy is a public figure who is very well-known in Indonesia’s entertainment industry. Coming from Indonesia, I feel like I can relate to who the article is about, which is one of the reasons why I am confident in my decision with improving this particular article. To start, I learned how to write in an encyclopedic and neutral tone. Creating an article in Wikipedia means having to write in everyday English expressions that can be understood by a wide audience. I gained the ability to polish my English to sound encyclopedic such as avoiding slangs or jargons that could confuse the audience. As for making the article sound neutral, I learned how to balance information in my article to not favor only one side of the story. I tried to do my research for every source that I found on the internet in order to include both the positive and negative facts. As mentioned in the Wikipedia Evaluating Brochure, “articles should not be read like persuasive essays, but instead like encyclopedia articles.”

With that being said, I also worked on picking the right and reliable sources to cite in the article. Through editing in Wikipedia, I picked up that I should not cite random sources in Wikipedia. In order for the sources to be reliable and trustworthy, I should not refer to blog posts that people write but rather from publications that are written by expert publishers. This would avoid the article to become biased. Aside from minor editing, I also learned the translation policy on Wikipedia. Since my article is about an Indonesian artist, I realized that the Indonesian version of Deddy Corbuzier’s Wikipedia article contains more information regarding the artist. I followed the Wikipedia guidelines on how to correctly translate the article, including putting the credit in the Edit Summary and in the target article’s Talk page.

Through this class, I received the opportunity to successfully learn of the ways to improve Wikipedia articles professionally, but I realized that there are still ways that the Wikimedia Foundation could take to further refine their platform for people to collaborate. One thing that I would advise is strengthening editors’ commitments with the article pages that they choose to create. After learning how to create and improve articles on Wikipedia, I realized how easy it is to join the Wikipedia community and create a new article page. I think one of the ways that the Wikimedia Foundation can start to think about applying is by making users only be able to create one new article page and work on it for a certain period of time, just like in the case of the “Area 51” platform discussed in class. After a few months, the article will go under review and the user will be able to create a new article page if they wish to do so.

I also think that it should not be that easy for users to randomly edit on big article pages, as it may be a way for trolls to disrupt the community by adding false or inappropriate information. My other advice is for new users to be restricted to only do editing for stubs articles in Wikipedia for a certain period of time. There are a lot of stub articles on Wikipedia ranging under different topics and categories that those new users can choose from. I understand that this might be hard to do for new users to pick a topic they have knowledge of under those categories, but I also had almost no knowledge of contributing on Wikipedia prior to this class, and I managed to find a topic under the stubs category that I could relate to. In short, I believe that with a wide range of topics of the stubs articles, new users will find a way to find an article they are interested in or have information about. I believe that applying this policy will limit the trolls on Wikipedia, as only people who passionately want to contribute to the community would create an account. This will also help stubs articles grow in terms of information. After a few months into the editing process, the article will go under review and the restriction for the new user can be lifted so that they are able to create a page or contribute their knowledge in other big Wikipedia pages.

In our course material, we talked about the concept of intrinsic motivation, in which people do particular tasks because they want to and they enjoy doing so. I believe that this is also the case for Wikipedia. The pleasure of writing about stuff or topics that they like are enough for people to contribute in editing articles in Wikipedia. This is also the case for me. Working on my chosen article in Wikipedia the past few weeks makes me feel happy as the thought that other people will find what I write informative becomes my intrinsic motivation. I also like that Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia. The editors in Wikipedia don’t need to get extrinsic rewards such as certain privileges or status to become a part of the Wikipedia community. In other words, although editors don’t get paid to create nor edit articles, there are still many people who contribute their knowledge through wikipedia because they find it pleasurable to share their knowledge. I think that this makes Wikipedia a beautiful collaborative platform for people to exchange knowledge.