User:JulianaRios11/Report

Throughout the course of engaging with the Wikipedia community and the Wikimedia Foundation, I have experienced many positive and negative aspects of Wikipedia. In connection with my course about online communities at the University of Washington, I have been able to synthesize these experiences with communication theory. As a result, this report will summarize a proposed change that I have for the Wikipedia in order to improve this online community using existing literature and theory in the field of online communication.

The change that I believe should be implemented is in regards to newcomers and their experience upon first making a Wikipedia account. The Wikimedia Foundation should require that new users complete a checklist tutorial of some kind in order to become a fully registered user. Ideally, this checklist would involve completing a small set of easy edits that would not be particularly time consuming. This change would positively affect Wikipedia as a whole because it would encourage a higher rate of commitment among users who complete the checklist while also increasing the quality and quantity of contributions made to Wikipedia. During my time editing a Wikipedia article, I found myself nervous to actually edit the page, and I second guessed even the smallest of changes, despite Wikipedia telling its users to be bold. I wanted to help, but the task of editing something with such a large reputation seemed so daunting that I didn’t want to risk messing up and breaking the page, or facing backlash from the community. In reflecting upon my difficulty, I think that it would have eased my hesitancy if I had already had some experience performing small and low consequence edits outside of the sandbox, thus showing me how the interface worked as well as how the Wikipedia community would respond to edits.

While it may seem like a large change from the current Wikipedia, there is lots of evidence from communication theory that demonstrates that this change could be helpful for Wikipedia. The question of how to create a strong online community through engaging new members is a well researched question with plenty of documented strategies. One claim about newcomers that supports this proposed change is the claim that having new members undertake a task upon joining the community helps to discourage those seeking to harm the community from joining. It also helps to discourage those who are less likely to be committed to the community from joining. Overall, this would mean that those joining Wikipedia as editors would be much less likely to engage in harmful or troll behavior, as well as less likely to leave the community just as quickly as they joined it.

Another way in which this proposed change would benefit Wikipedia is through helping committed and well-meaning new members to understand the rules of Wikipedia and contribute to the best of their ability. According to communication theory, teaching newcomers about the rules of a community, both spoken and unspoken, helps newcomers to make sure that they do not break those rules, or ‘norms’, whether it is intentional or unintentional. Undoubtedly, this theory explains why my proposed change would have improved my experience with editing Wikipedia for the first time, as it would have given me a better grasp of the Wikipedia norms and given me more confidence to “be bold”.

Finally, this proposed change would positively impact Wikipedia through encouraging users to make more edits. One communication theory claim on the topic of motivating those in online communities to participate claims that giving users a set of small and easy tasks to complete increases the likelihood that those users will feel motivated to complete harder tasks. When specifically applied to Wikipedia, I already see this strategy somewhat implemented through the “Suggested edits” on the homepage. This strategy seems well supported by the existing theory on motivating participants in online communities. However, this strategy could be expanded and made more effective through the implementation of a mandatory list of real edits that prospective members need to complete in order to complete the registration process. Successfully completing the checklist will motivate new members to feel confident enough to tackle more complex editing challenges.

While there are potentially some negative consequences to my proposed idea, such as making it harder for interested people to join the community, I believe that the benefits far outweigh the potential consequences. Wikipedia, at its core, would remain a community where anybody can edit pages, but only after they’ve been shown how to do so.