User:Lalevi/Report

Introduction
For my first experience as a Wikipedia editor, I had an overall positive experience. It was simple for me to search through stub articles to find one that personally interested me. I chose to work on the “Seahawks Dancers” article. I am a captain for the UW Cheer and Dance team, and after graduation I plan on trying out for the Seahawks Dancers. I saw this as an opportunity to learn more about the team as well as learn more about Wikipedia editing.

My Experience
The Seahawks Dancers was a particularly interesting NFL cheer team to choose because of the recent rebranding of the team. They were formerly known as the Sea Gals until 2019. Because of this recent change, the Sea Gals Wikipedia article does not exist anymore, as it was changed to the Seahawks Dancers article. From the get-go, this set up a challenge for me as what was significant-enough information to include about the Sea Gals on the new Seahawks Dancers article page. I was hesitant to follow other NFL cheer team articles which include a “History” section, but after more thought and feedback, I decided to go ahead and include it. I was hesitant because I wanted to keep the article relevant and current. However, I realized it is important to note the history as it contributes to how the Seahawks Dancers came to be. In addition to adding the History section, I also added other sections such as “Junior Seahawks Dancers.” Most of my information came from the Seahawks website. The problem with this website being my main reference and other news articles was the issue of notability. This was unsurprising to me as it is a struggle to find facts and information on NFL or other sports leagues’ cheer teams. I think this comments on a bigger issue of representation and support for this sport in general.

Advice for Wikipedia
My advice for Wikipedia is based off of what we learned about online community Newcomers and my experience with working with Wikipedia as an editor for the first time. I feel lucky that it was mandatory for me to complete weekly trainings while learning how to edit on Wikipedia. Instead of just going for it with no guidance, I was able to take these trainings and quizzes to make sure I felt prepared to edit.

My first piece of advice for Wikipedia would be to require newcomers who wish to edit articles to complete a training similar to the one I completed. I say similar because my training was quite lengthy. I would suggest a new, shorter training on the very basics of beginning to edit on Wikipedia. I’ll note that there are guides to contributing on the sidebar of Wikipedia, but requiring a minimal training would decrease the amount of mistakes during editing or improper editing.

This advice ties to the idea of “socialization” which we learned about in lecture. Helping newcomers become socialized into the online community, in this case that would mean preparing them with training on editing, it benefits both the newcomers and the current members of the community. With proper training and guidance, the newcomers are able to contribute more effectively and cause less issues or mistakes in the community. This would also help combat newcomers from being “clueless” about the norms of Wikipedia. This ties to our lecture about norms. Sometimes, these clueless and uninformed newcomers are acting in good faith and still make mistakes. Some training would help to prevent this from happening, or at least guide them on what to do next if they do make a mistake.

My second piece of advice is based off of maintaining norms in the Wikipedia community. My advice would be to require logins before editing. Wikipedia can currently still track based on IP addresses who edits, but requiring logins in order to do edits I believe would be beneficial. By creating an account with Wikipedia, people are signing up to be an active member of the community, who will act in good faith. By requiring accounts, you can also bond the members to the Code of Conduct. If any part of the Code of Conduct is broken, the account can suffer consequences. This will stop the person acting in bad faith from simply getting on another computer and doing the same thing over again. Requiring accounts in order to edit would still follow the goal of Wikipedia to be a place where anyone can edit. The only difference would be, you need an account to do so, and thus tying the account to the Code of Conduct.

Conclusion
The concept that was the hardest to analyze based on my experience was Motivation. The range of motivation for why people edit and use Wikipedia is so great. For example, motivation could be needing information for research or for the fun of editing. My experience is biased because as much as I’m glad I was able to learn more about this online community, which is intrinsic motivation, I was required to do so for a class and a grade, which is extrinsic.

I feel proud of the advancements I made in my article. I acknowledge, though, that I would not have been able to contribute as effectively as I did had it not had been for the WikiEdu trainings. I’d say my advice should be taken more seriously than that of a random user because I was able to dive into Wikipedia for a solid amount of time, versus just one instance. Additionally, I was learning in class about the theories and concepts behind what go into online communities, so I understand a bit more than a random user the background of online communities such as Wikipedia.