User:Kensu.bates/Report

As someone that has created online communities specifically within Facebook and worked with different social media accounts, I was interested and excited in joining the online community of Wikipedia, one of the largest online communities today. In this reflection what I’ll be discussing about is my experience in Wikipedia and my suggestions to the Wikimedia Foundation.

First off, my motivation to contribute to Wikipedia was because I wanted to learn more about interpersonal media and how to create successful online communities. I felt like I was able to learn a lot from contributing to Wikipedia and I think what helped me the most was the "Wiki Edu". This helped me because it went step by step into what is expected within Wikipedia, the policies of what plagiarism was within Wikipedia, what are the ways to contribute without falling out of the norms, and it informed me how to edit within Wikipedia. Through this I was able to contribute more to Wikipedia and I saw how within online communities, especially Wikipedia, there is an underlying sense of intrinsic motivation, emotional reward, when contributing. I was at first reluctant to wanting to contribute to Wikipedia but when I was able to work more on creating a better in-depth page, I felt committed to Wikipedia and as I contributed, I felt a sense of accomplishment in being able to serve the greater Wikipedia community. It took me some time to get use to understanding how Wikipedia worked but what helped was going back to the norm of Wikipedia of being bold and remembering that everyone together is learning and working together to better Wikipedia.

What I did within Wikipedia was that I edited the stubs page “Earshot Jazz”, a jazz nonprofit organization in Seattle, Washington. Before I edited the page, what was on the page was three small paragraphs that simply stated what Earshot Jazz was, some dates and information that was relevant to the organization. What I was able to add and edit was add six new sections that went into detail what the organization is about. The six sections that I added are: “History”, “Earshot Jazz Festival”, “Earshot Jazz Education Programs”, “Golden Ear Awards”, “Earshot Jazz Magazines”, and a “See also” section. Throughout writing these sections what I was trying to do was be concise and also think about the different users and what they would want to know about this organization when coming to the page to read and learn more about Earshot Jazz. I was also able to add a couple of photos, which were able to give life to the page but also a visual of what the information the sections had. The last touch I was able to add was an infobox that gave simple information about Earshot Jazz.

Having contributed to Wikipedia, the first suggestion I have is if the home page had a way to showcase how to be part of and contribute to Wikipedia. I think that at first glance Wikipedia seems like an online community where specific people can only contribute to bettering the information on Wikipedia. I think that one practical step that could help is on the home page there could be an option to contribute to the Wikipedia community. Within this option, it goes to a page where users are able to learn more about why and what it means to contribute, how to help make edits within Wikipedia, and how to start contributing to Wikipedia. Through doing this it would make the newcomers have an easier time to participate with Wikipedia. As I have learned throughout this process of contributing is that Wikipedia can become confusing to work in because there is so much within Wikipedia and it can feel overwhelming. I think that if Wikipedia was to be simpler and clear with how to navigate and get more information, I think more users would contribute. This would help the Wikipedia increase participation and have more volunteers contribute within this online community. With having this within the online community more people would feel the motivation and incentive to be bold, one of the norms of Wikipedia, and to take a step towards being a member of the Wikipedia community.

The second suggestion is implementing more videos into Wikipedia. As mentioned above "Wiki Edu" was something that helped me work through contributing to Wikipedia because of how it was interactive, but I don't think that this course is available to everyone, so I think that if Wikipedia could create tutorial videos on how to contribute to Wikipedia, it would increase contributors and also create a more user friendly online community. I think that this could help people that learn more visually, like myself, to understand how Wikipedia works and through this the new users would have an easier and smoother transition to learning more about how to contribute to Wikipedia after creating an account. A practical step for this is that Wikipedia could create an optional tutorial video session on how to contribute to Wikipedia when creating an account. I think that making this an optional choice is important because not everyone is going to want to learn through a video and through doing this it doesn't create a block for newcomers that want to contribute to the Wikipedia community. I think that the optional video could help a lot in easing the newcomers experience in contributing to Wikipedia and also help in not having the new users make mistakes and go against the rules/norms of Wikipedia.