User:Kimkev1/Report

= Wikipedia Reflection Essay = As Wikipedia is known to be the world’s largest encyclopedia, what makes it unique is that it successfully utilizes the “neutral point of view policy” (Wales, 07:37-10:55). It provides worldwide knowledge and issues to ultimately create accessibility of information to people around the world. Wikipedia’s servers are managed by diverse volunteers from around the world who are able to edit in various languages. Also, Wikipedia has this unique rewarding system of giving out Barnstars to their community members who worked diligently, representing civility and love for Wikipedia.

When I used Wikipedia to make edits and changes as a newcomer, I was given a task to find a low-stub class article for me to expand on to evolve it into a higher class. For these reasons, I knew that I could provide many credible resources and information to improve this article significantly. After receiving peer reviews from other Wikipedian users, I was able to make additional adjustments to prepare for my article to go “live”.

Through my experience, some of the main tasks that I learned was how to make a draft in a sandbox article, how to identify which sources are credible, and understand the function of talk pages and watchlists. The Wiki Education’s training modules helped me clearly understand these tasks by providing various interactive exercises. I was able to make several contributions to other users’ sandbox articles and significantly improved the article I worked on by adding relevant information and supporting credible sources. Through this and my knowledge of the functions of Wikipedia, I was able to adapt to the community and make an impact as a member.

Based on my experience using Wikipedia as a community member, some changes I would like to make involve enhancing the extrinsic reward system and providing a simpler tool to use WikiCode. BSOC mentions that “providing easy-to-use tools for finding and tracking works that need to be done increases the amount that gets done” (Kraut 27). Although Wikipedia provides an easy-to-use monitoring tool such as the “watchlist” to notify users about any changes, mentions, and comments left on a particular page, the WikiCode editing tool should also be made easy-to-use. Using the WikiCode tool was complex and confusing, acting as an obstacle and demotivating me from continuing to edit the article. Many users like myself have never learned how to code before, so complexities would decrease the amount of work getting done. Therefore, I would add a WikiCode cheat sheet listing out all the symbols and letters that need to be inputted along with a short description of what they can be used for, allowing anyone without coding experience to easily use it.

Another change I would make is to enhance the extrinsic reward system rather than just giving out Barnstars. I was not motivated to review, edit, and make suggestions to other articles since my reward was just receiving a badge and there wasn’t a system to keep me on track. Although Barnstars do play an important role in helping the Wikipedia online community grow and thrive, a point system where users gain additional privileges should be included. BSOC mentions how “nontransparent eligibility criteria and unpredictable reward schedules lead to less gaming of the system than do predictable awards” (Kraut 58). Users will unlikely experience positive utility from just thank-yous. The idea I put forth would ultimately have users be able to keep track of how many points they need to gain to unlock the next achievement milestone of greater privileges. This would allow users to look forward to utilizing more functions. The more points you get, the more things a user can do!

From reflecting on my experience as a contributor, an actionable advice I would encourage is for Wikipedia to focus on maintaining a consistent number of contributors to engage within the community and creating a bond-based commitment for the users. Since the contributions made to Wikipedia are not consistent, participation levels are always changing. Wikipedia should ask people to participate by sending them a reminder to do so through the alert system. A persuading technique of “ask and ye shall receive” can be applied to this case. However, in BSOC, when making such requests like these, it should be very simple and clear because it would “…lead to more compliance than do lengthy and complex ones…” (Kraut 30). For example, a friendly reminder should notify users about outdated or new article topics that need to be edited and reviewed. In addition, Wikipedia should try to persuade people to like their online community because according to Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, getting people to like something or someone will convince them to follow one’s orders or requests. Therefore, this would motivate users to adhere to requests from an online community they love.

Wikipedia should also create large contests within their community to create more engagement and motivation. A contest can be anything that involves the contribution to Wikipedia along with rewards for the winners. According to BSOC, contests have been known to attract many people’s attention through online communities. The more specific and challenging it is, the more motivation it would bring for people to participate. For example, Wikipedia could reward a $500,000 prize for any team that could create a bot software capable of detecting the credibility of various sources. You could add more specificity and share this contest through social media platforms to create more attention. Although this might undermine intrinsic motivation, this contest will allow participants to feel the importance of their contribution to a team, leading to goal-setting motivation.

My recommendations should be taken more seriously than other user’s random advice because my recommendations are not just opinions. They are backed up by social scientific knowledge where I have studied this course that addressed the functions, systems, and behaviors of various online communities that tie in with Wikipedia.

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