User:MOIN2022/report

In the past six weeks, we have been introduced to the Wiki community, one of our most frequently used platforms to start our academic or daily information collecting. But this time, we are joining Wikipedia as a contributor instead of a viewer. With such a fresh perspective, we got in touch with the complicated operating principles and the reasons behind the Wiki's overall contribution decline. This report will evaluate the current status of the Wiki community, its pros, and cons that influence potential contributors, and how it may be changed positively based on my experience.

The first impression as a new contributor is critical to the future path of becoming a committed and activated member. And it's an area worth more improvement. For most newcomers to Wikipedia, engaging in the community means contributing their own knowledge by simply clicking the "edit" button. However, such a simple move can be hesitant. Because as a globally well-known community, Wikipedia serves audiences from the whole world. Newcomers like me are concerned about the disapproval and penalty that may come to us for unconsciously violating community norms. And I do have a hard time finding the norms and templates that apply specifically to the project worked on from the pages-long lists. They offer a good amount of detailed guidelines that are professional but time-consuming and hard to locate.

Therefore, instead of requiring every newcomer to do those pre-researches by themselves, Wikipedia can develop personalized notifications that offer related information about specific projects in advance by sending the users a featured welcoming message. "Here is a list of latest templates/norms/ outstanding articles for your information ." (Chapter 6, Claim6), giving them a concise idea about where to start and the behaviors community encouraged and avoided. Also, depending on users growing activity levels, the bot may update and resend new messages with higher-level resources, for instance, how to polish your articles, how to reach out to professional feedback, extending the tutorial along with members' growth, avoid overloading information when they first join in. By progressively educating the members, norms and knowledge will be more acceptable.

On the other hand, Wikipedia could also improve its navigating functions to improve information pages that are filled with internal links and endless redirection. With various articles and guidelines embedded, such user interaction can be frustrating and confusing. Navigating members to active projects where interaction happens more frequently will also benefit members' overall experience and socialization. (Chapter 6, Claim 8) A more explicit organization will encourage users to discover the diversity and enriched contents hind behind redirections.

Then I started to contribute. However, my experience overall was "lonely." Despite reviews from my peers and instructors, I rarely interact with any other members. Disconnecting from live communication and feedback can also be concerning to the contributors. In the long run, the sense of uncertainty and lack of two-way interactions with members can be demotivated and remove identity-based commitment. As mentioned above, projects like the Tea house try to aid new editors by asking and answering questions freely. However, many of the new editors including myself weren't aware of it in the beginning weeks.

Wikipedia should make the interactive and reviewing process more visible and active, encourage experienced members to take their first step to guide the new ones rather than leave all the explorations to newbies. Because there are numerous articles, it's hard for members to notice when a new contributor joins the editing. So, It's efficient if once newcomers start to edit, the former contributors will receive notifications automatically. Besides, Wikipedia can also invite contributive and expert Wikipedians to this project. Such actions can aid the Wikipedia community by solidifying memberships as every newcomer will receive enough attention and help in time without consuming their energy on looking for help, while the norms and context of the community will be more practical and straightforward. (Chapter 2, Claim 16). Communicating with prominent community members can be an incentive to engagement as well. Another straightforward approach to enrich interaction is to promote these new-editors-friendly projects initially.

As Slashshot does (Slashdot, n.d.), Wikipedia can also distribute power by assigning leveled moderators to focus on productivity based on projects and categories instead of just assigning general administrators. However, these moderators will still be regulated by the administrators. Moderators can announce various contributors simultaneously, organize community events (e.g., pin or highlight outstanding articles or those that need more refinement), or start a discussion on norms. But at the same time, they need to maintain active and helpful, be professional enough in the projects they are responsible for, answer questions and guarantee the newcomers' experience. The distributed power will increase the motivation for general members who are after this privilege and solidify the commitment of existing moderators since their voices will be more recognizable and influential.

Finally, we need to talk about the drawbacks that members, especially newcomers, may bring to the community. Wikipedia gives full access to edit articles, including those already well polished and verified. However, inconsiderate edits can still be unprofessional and upsetting to old contributors even inappropriate change can be restored. Therefore, I think progressive access control (Chapter 5, Claim 25) will be necessary to control overall quality in the community. Newcomers who have applied less than a certain amount of edits ( which also need to last a certain period) will be considered as "beginners." They can only edit articles below level C; after reaching the level of a full member, all features will open for access.

In short, as a new contributor, I think Wikipedia does successfully build a community full of diversity and details. Still, they need to remove some newcomers' barriers and add more visible and sustainable interaction, encouraging old members to build newcomer commitment. It is also critical to maintain the overall quality of articles by avoiding inconsiderable contributions.

Bibliography

Slashdot. (n.d.). Moderation and metamoderation - FAQ - Slashdot. Retrieved February 14, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20170505192310/https://beta.slashdot.org/faq/mod-metamod.shtml

Kraut, R. E., Resnick, P., Kiesler, S., Burke, M., Chen, Y., & Kittur, N. (2011). Building successful online communities: Evidence-Based social design [E-book].

Wikipedia contributors. (2012). Wikipedia:Teahouse/About - Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Retrieved February 14, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse/About