User:Kanraru/Report

For the past five weeks, I've been learning and working on expanding the Wikipedia article Namuwiki. As I am a regular reader of random articles that come my way within Namuwiki itself, I thought that perhaps editing in Wikipedia may be fun, and may serve as a gateway for me to start editing in the wiki that I've been reading so much of. However, it didn't exactly come to that.

As a newcomer to editing within Wikipedia, I had the experience of Wikipedia's own newcomer 'program' to help me get settled and editing. There are many attempts to recruit more newcomers for Wikipedia; that much is apparent from bunch of communities within Wikipedia dedicated to answering user questions and helping out new editors. However, Wikipedia has to acknowledge that it is now a more scholarly source for information more than it is a social community. Hence, it will naturally restrict whoever actually wants to edit within Wikipedia to be more scholarly individuals who seek to distribute information within their grasp to others for help. The main niche within Wikipedia as I see it right now is exactly that- satisfaction of helping others with information about something, anything. It is exactly why there have been multiple communities that is dedicated to helping newcomers, because their motivation comes from providing information to others when they've become a Wikipedia editor. As Wikipedia is so focused on its restrictions nowadays on providing a genuine article where there is no source of bias, I don't believe there are any more rooms to have Wikipedia grow more as a community with socialization. And as I see it, there is only exponential growth to a community when there are socializing aspect involved with others. Ability to talk with an editor who has perhaps been working on the same article that you were working on off-topic stuff. Wikipedia is hugely not intuitive in the communication within users aspect, as communication is basically done through writing on a blank paper one by one while signing a name on it. The user interface is not intuitive for social communication at all.

Of course, it is not the focus of Wikipedia anymore to allow users to socialize with each other. Wikipedia isn't a community based on online commitment for social relationships; it is a community based on online commitment to provide more accurate information to others. Hence there are many scaffolds to help these people become editors, and not a removal of those barriers themselves lest they'd lose their academic importance within the online world. However, it is because Wikipedia set its goal to be providing information in the most accurate way that it is perhaps not getting as much growth as an online community with newcomers as it possibly could have. We took a look at multiple rules within class that may turn down the users with the amount of things they have to look out for- that's exactly the case with Wikipedia. The rules are another way to tell the newcomers to Wikipedia that its goal is to provide accurate information, not to socialize.

It did exactly that for me. Although I didn't have too much trouble writing the article and finding the source in the end, it seemed more like a research project for school than having the satisfaction of providing others my knowledge. The number of rules that I had to keep in mind while writing exactly told me that this community of scholars who summarize and neutralize information as much as possible to put on display weren't exactly my type of niche. The rules were too much for me, as it would for any other newcomers who are more into casual writing rather than formal writing. Perhaps those who are able to put a casual mindset to formal writing would be more apt in writing for Wikipedia, but for me, a casual writer and a casual reader of content within Namuwiki which was also dedicated for the casual writer and readers, writing and becoming an editor at Wikipedia was too much of a leap. Committing to that, nonetheless, would take far much higher of a leap- a leap where I see no benefits for, and therefore will not make.

As Wikipedia is currently at that state of stalemate in deciding what direction it could take in terms of changing. If it were to bend in more for the newcomers, it would have to take in some hits towards their accuracy in the articles. If it were to bend in more for the information being even more accurate than it already is, they would lose what little newcomers they have(in the grand scale of the website) that are coming in. So my feedback is: keep things the way it is now. The newcomer programs are engaging enough for people who are the type of people to stick to being an editors. Any sharper regulations would decrease the overall accuracy of the articles, so keep the regulations as they are.