User:LiangShuang97/Reflections

Before I took this class and got involved in Wikipedia, what I had heard the most about Wikipedia from my previous instructors was students could not use

Wikipedia as a place to do the research because everyone could edit the articles in Wikipedia. Therefore, I only used Wikipedia as a website to get basic

information rather than a reliable resource. However, when I participated in Wikipedia, I learned publishing and editing articles in Wikipedia was complicated

and strict.

What I Did and What I learned
What I did in Wikipedia is crate my own article as well as peer review others’ articles. Writing articles in Wikipedia is different with writing an essay. For

instance, when I write an essay, it is acceptable to include my personal opinions in my essay, but I have to write Wikipedia articles from a neutral point of

view.My topic is Shinkankakuha. Therefore, I can only introduce what Shinkankakuha is and other related information, but I cannot judge if it is important for

Japanese literature or not by myself, because how I think is not important for Wikipedia articles. The purpose of Wikipedia articles is introducing the truth,

not developing an argument. Even though everyone can edit the articles, it does not mean they can edit randomly. All contents have to base on published and

authoritative materials. It requires people who want to edit the articles need to have certain knowledge and sufficient research. The policy about copyright is very strict too. Writers cannot just copy and paste; they have to cite their sources according to formatting requirements. These are normative behaviors in

Wikipedia. After I learned these Wikipedia policies, I can trust more about the articles from Wikipedia.

Class Materials and My Experience
We talked about normative behaviors and norms in online communities, and from my experience contributing to Wikipedia, I think it is important and necessary to

follow the normative behaviors. For example, “Be Bold” is one of the explicit norms in Wikipedia. The name of an article’s subject needed to be written in

bold. When the first time I worked on my article, I did not write the name of subject in bold in my article, so I had to change it. Besides the formatting, cite the resources correctly is another rule in Wikipedia. When I worked on my article at the first time, I wrote a bibliography at the end of the article rather

than a list of reference. If I do not follow these rules while I am creating my article, I need to make change afterward. Therefore, normative behaviors are

important. Also, attracting the right people is also important. It is one way to let more people get involved in a certain online community. I think our class

is recruitment.Basically, participating in Wikipedia is one of the requirement of the class, but we although learn about Wikipedia. Not only more people get

involved in Wikipedia, as students, we also gain knowledge about how Wikipedia works and how it different with other online communities.

Theories We Covered and My Experience
From our lecture, we discovered people will do something if the benefits outweigh the costs. Before I took this class, I did not think about make contribution

in because of laziness and lack of knowledge. Now, I am participating in Wikipedia because this is one of the assignments for this class. Even though I need to spend time for participating, the credits I will earn from this class are outweighs the time I will spend. In addition, create external rewards or motivators is one way to motive participation in online communities. Personal rewarding is useful for increasing participation. For example, I think sending “thanks” is a

motivator. After someone edited my article, I always send “thanks” to them. In addition, protection prevents newcomers from harmful behaviors. For instance, I could use sandbox as a space for drafting my article and do not need to worry about harmful behaviors from others. Wikipedia is a successful online community.

We covered what should online communities do in order to achieve success, one way is good design. Not only the large number of people who participate in this

community, also the design of Wikipedia. I can leave message to other writers as well as receive messages from others by “talk page”. Moreover, I do not need to pay in order to join this online community, so the barriers for entry and contribution are low. The lower barriers could let more people get involved in the community. Therefore, I learned more about online communities as well as made contributions to online communities. LiangShuang97 (talk) 05:31, 9 November 2015 (UTC)