User:LaurenMichelleBrown/Reflections

Wikipedia Community After hearing everything that Professor Hill shared on the dynamic and complicated world of participating in Wikipedia’s community of editors I expected to have a great pool of experiences to discuss but most of my experiences were startlingly impersonal as I worked on my Vanga, Bandudu article. It is the minimal social ownership of Wikipedia content that I attribute the lack of socialization I experienced as a consequence of that characteristic. My initial experience was daunting as Wikipedia does not have a straight forward on-boarding process I found myself going straight from the gamified “Wikipedia Adventure” and the rule driven “Wikipedia Training Tutorial” into composing an article. I found this to be essentially a fake-it-until-you-make situation with a steep learning curve. Because anyone can contribute and edit each others’ work independently there is less necessity for social interaction, so I had no one to follow as I began discovering the norms of the community. I found the lack of social ownership of one’s own work contributed to my lack of communication with the few people who did edit my article. In other words, people would leave a small edit without any talk page message. Rather than being committed to the fellow editors or the people who are concerned with articles of a certain topic it seemed that people are committed to the type of editing. Again pointing to a larger motivation besides personal recognition or social motivation. From each interaction I had on Wikipedia I learned a bit more about why the community stays afloat without the social draw of other communities like Facebook, Twitter etc. Wikipedia creates dedicated editors by encouraging identity based commitment through the self-identification of roles. For example, we learned about the groups on Wikipedia for people interested in advocating for and improving articles related to South Africa, the Military, and Women. Though these measures are important in creating an identity on Wikipedia this theme transcends formalized groups. Editors seem to find other niches and roles, for example the one editor, not associated with the class, edited my article for disambiguation. This editor makes a majority of disambiguation contributions and even has a Barnstar for it. In this way we see that identity in the community is tied to roles and excellence in those roles is incentivized, thus producing a benefit for being a committed contributor within a role. These characteristics of the community shaped my ability to be successful as well. As a newcomer I had a preconceived idea that I would be motivated by the reciprocity and social pressure. I thought that my interest in contributing to a community that I had been using but not reciprocally adding to, paired with the desire to do the assignment well would be my primary motivation. However this motivation did not keep me engaged in when I felt inadequate as an editor. Since my online experiences had always had the benefit of social norming this impersonal platform felt frustrating because I lacked the benefit of observation. On the other hand, I knew the risk of a misstep was high given the expected quality of a contribution, this looming pressure intimidated me. I did not have commitment to an identity found in disambiguation, copy editing, and punctuation fixes etc. to keep me motivated. Ultimately I found that as a “role-less” newcomer I lacked incentive to the commitment to excellence needed to enjoy the editing process. In order to be more social, Wikipedia must be more welcoming and user friendly. First, the Teahouse platform is underdeveloped. Replicating its format for different levels of editors would create a space for conversation. One possible way to achieve this would be to have a points system for contributions that unlock graduating levels of access to Teahouses for more seasoned users. In this way contributors are rewarded for content with increasing privileges. Similarly, it would solve problems of under socialization without compromising the integrity of the platform for the seasoned editors. By compartmentalizing groups by skill level, people are more likely to have similar questions which makes a Teahouse more useful. This idea would also prevent overcrowding which would help provide new users with a more useful and extended sandboxing period. Though Wikipedia is most certainly a dynamic community I think the lack of socialization is a flaw which limits its draw and also potentially its sustainability. The strong attachment to roles as motivation is not effective with newcomers who are still in the process of assimilating do not yet have.