User:Kaia UW/Report

When I first started this assignment, I was not sure what kind of article I wanted to use from Wikipedia. It was very challenging for me to find an article to work on so I ended up changing my topic twice when I was working on the assignment. The reason that led me to change my article twice was that I was unfamiliar with the topic and did not know how to improve the quality of the article. I learned to choose a new article with the topic that I am interested in and also evaluated which areas I can work on to make the article better. Therefore, I chose Vietnamese coffee to be the article since it was not a complete article and there are many sections that I can expand on to make it a bit more informative and insightful. Because I changed my topic after reading the peer review, I did not end up having another peer review on the new article that I chose. I only got a quick round of feedback from the instructor. An advice I have to anyone who works on a Wikipedia page is to have a solid idea for a topic that you are interested in to avoid changing the topic a couple of times like me.

I found Wikipedia to be a bit hard to navigate because there are few details combined that make the whole process complicated to make any changes to the article. In addition, finding images was challenging due to how strict the requirements are. I have to make sure images are free and there is no violation of copyright. It felt like it was impossible to find an image that has good quality for the article. Overall, I was able to strengthen my research and writing skills while completing this Wikipedia assignment.

From what I learned in this class, Wikipedia is doing a great job of helping people find information that they need to know about a certain topic. However, due to a lack of validation of reliable sources, Wikipedia becomes an unreliable source for academic research purposes. I believe that Wikipedia needs to provide a procedure when there are changes submitted to validate the content as well as sources that are provided by various authors to make its articles more reliable instead of letting everyone visiting the website make changes once they are logged in with a verified account. Wikipedia could do a better job of keeping authors’ information anonymous to protect them from identity theft because currently, for every single edit that has been made to an article, the site shows the username of whoever made an edit. Wikipedia can improve the safety of its users by having the usernames stay hidden from the site.

Speaking of anonymity, it can protect the identity of the user who made changes before them and users don’t need to know who made changes other than themselves. Most sites don’t make it easy to protect our personal information, oftentimes from as simple as our birthday to our location. Staying anonymous would protect our personal information and maintain it to stay confidential to protect ourselves from identity theft. I believe it’s best practice to keep our information private and to remain anonymous so that people can’t have access to our location anywhere in the world as well as to avoid getting harassed by scammers. Anonymity is important, especially in the cyberspace world where there are thousands of people every day who has the intention to steal others' information and sell them for money. Therefore, it would be good practice for Wikipedia to implement and promote anonymity to protect its users.

Wikipedia has the potential to be a reliable source if it included more scholarly sources instead of people who have their own perspectives. It should carry out more rules about security when it comes to people who take advantage of the information. Wikipedia does not include an anonymity option because you have to include your personal information in order to edit a Wikipedia page. Even if you do not provide your information, Wikipedia can still track you using your own personal IP address to know your exact location. Thus, a security system should be implemented to increase the safety of personal data.

Another thing that Wikipedia could improve on is the ability to save automatically for every change. I made the mistake of accidentally closing the tab and all of the work I did in one sitting did not save. I was very sad because I felt like I wasted my time. I feel that Wikipedia should be able to save the work you have done automatically since there are so many people that use this platform, implementing this would make it easier for the writers. This feature would put the writer at ease knowing that their changes are saved simultaneously as they edit.

Overall, having the opportunity to work on this project was very interesting. It was definitely a challenging experience for me. I was able to practice and enhanced my research and writing skills by expand on a Wikipedia article for the first time. It was a really unique experience to be able to interact with the platform itself as a contributor and was also able to identify a few pros and cons about the site. I hope that Wikipedia can consider my recommendations to improve the user experience for the contributors. Until then, I do not think I would  go back and edit a Wikipedia article because I found it to be quite stressful due to many small details or requirements that the site expects writers to do in order to make changes to a Wikipedia page.