User:MariaMamba11/Reflections

I would consider myself being an engaged user when it comes to online communities. I started with AIM messenger and from then on, was a part of all the popular online communities that followed. I will say that Wikipedia has always seemed a little intimidating to me. The ideal of letting whomever edit whatever they wanted seemed a little off too me. To my understanding, an encyclopedia needed credentials with hard facts. I remember in high school when teacher would highly advise not using Wikipedia when it came to researching topics for projects or papers. Wikipedia did make it easy though. Almost any important date, historian, president, policy, place, you name it; you could kind an article giving you information you needed. Instead having to go to the public library, settled down and dive into a Britannica. In the new age, Wiki is a pioneer at the Encyclopedia.

Our first task was to go through the "Wikipedia Adventure", and intergalactic guide to teach a newcomer how to navigate through the site. First, teaching you to sign 4 tides every time you reply in a message. I never noticed until now that that one point was very important. The game encourages the player to always reply to the fake users messages. This relates to a time in class when Professor Mako used my article as an example and saw that I got a message from a fellow Wikipedian. I remember professor Mako distinctly told me to reply when I got the chance. I think he was getting at the idea that replying shows gratefulness, or friendliness, but either way its positive, welcoming behavior in an online community. Wikipedia is place where anyone has an opportunity to help share information for the world to see. If someone has an opposition to something you've written, or thinks it can be improved, a simple reply to a message from another user keeps the community going.

I'm apart of other online communities such as Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram. I enjoy using it but i've noticed that in most cases you will not get replies from people if you decide to comment on their photos, or other content they have posted. That feeling is uneasy at times and I could see why a situation such as that would make a newcomer not want to participate in that community anymore, it's the idea intimidation. Something these past few weeks have taught me is that newcomers are an important factor in the online community spectrum. As a group, they collectively propel the community forward, bringing in a new wave of volunteers/participants.

When I first began my article, I was very self concious about it. I wasn't sure if my format was up to par for Wikipedians, I even feared it would get deleted. At first I wanted to do my project on the Black Jaguar White Tiger foundation, a non profit organization. I thought it followed the standards of notability for Wikipedia, but I kept checking online, hoping to find at least two legit sources, but I couldn't find any. I knew that was going to be an issue, since anyone could see, I felt that no one would take my article seriously. So instead I chose a requested article. I figured since people had requested it before this would be an opportunity to improve the community for at least a few out there that were interested in this info. SO I chose a famous jeweler; Munnu Kasliwal. I truly enjoyed this assignment because we were allowed to choose whomever we wanted. Even though I could do my original idea, i stumbled across Munnu and actually learned something new. I didn't know one single thing, but I lucked out because it happened to be of interest to me. Once I really got going on the article, I noticed people were editing my article at the same time. I wondered if what I had done was wrong, or on the contrary someone could be complimenting me. But I got a little of both. As a newcomer it was refreshing to get concrete feedback on something. "Pine" a long time Wikipedian, took the time to give me some advise and even tell me I was off to a good start. Since then I spent numerous nights updating, rearranging and making my article more attractive. The active feedback from my professor was reassuring too. The willingness to help when we got lost was crucial to making our articles look presentable

We covered the topics of incentives and motivation for a little bit towards the beginning of the quarter. Other cites such as Instagram have incentives that might not be explicit, but instead more subliminal. Having more followers on Instagram shows that you might have more popularity. In the same case, getting more likes on a photo shows more popularity as well. That community environment encourages other followers to try and get more followers because if they have more follower, they will get more likes on photos as well. That in itself can get tiring, the attempt at trying to get more followers is hard unless you do the most to reach your "goal". Wikipedia is a more discrete cite when it comes to incentives and motivation. Wikipedia doesn't have followers, or likes are a superficial way of showing popularity. Instead, the implementation of ''barnstars is given to anyone who is handy helper, editor, or contributor in wikipedia,and anyone can get one. The motivations for most WIkipedia is the opportunity to give society knowledge they want to know, all for free. Wikipedia doesn't have form of incentives and thats is something of value, which play a big role to the success of Wikipedia. People demonstrate intrinsic motivation, doing what they do without the idea of doing it for compensation.We discussed exampled in which implementation incentives can go badly, such as leaderboards. In reality leader boards are suppose to encourage newcomers to see the progress those before them have accomplished, when in fact those accomplishments scares away the newbies. This idea always interested me because that is how I felt about WIkipedia before I began being an active member. But, in contrast to the other online communities we studied Wikipedia did the opposite, they avoid dealing with incentives and superficialness.''

I was never aware of how many different types of commitment there were when speaking on the topic of online communities, but more importantly, the different types of commitment and the way they affect different users in different settings For every online community that I am apart of, I consider to be committed in a different way. I keep using twitter because I have an Identity-Based commitment, I feel as if I need to help the community keep going. For Facebook i have a bonds-based community, especially when it comes to organizing events with friends. At the same time I have a Needs-based commitment with Facebook and that is why I cannot delete it. I feel that if I do disconnect I think it would be costly to leave the group. For a while now, I've been trying to come to terms with why I cant get myself to leave Facebook, because in reality I cannot stand it. But I know that if I do I will experience "FOMO", or otherwise known as "Fear of Missing Out". That paranoia has disabled me from leaving Facebook for good. But I will say that if my friends deleted their facebooks I would be out too.

I won't lie, navigating through WIkipedia can be confusing. It still is a bit confusing to me. I would say that the "Wikipedia Adventure" that a newcomer goes through, is helpful but not the best way of introducing someone to a new community, especially one in which your additions are seen by the world and if its bad, it can be deleted from the database. Something if like to point out is introducing images to an article. I desperately wanted to incorporate an image in my article, but the way to getting permission to use it was very difficult. So I did without. I will say that is something that was frustrating for me.

Wikipedia has 5 ideals on how to behave/act in its community: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, keep a point of neutrality, free content so anyone can edit, add or distribute, treat each other with respect and civility and finally no firm rules. Of those 5, neutrality and no firm rules are what keep people from coming back to contribute. IN order to keep up with the pillars one must know the Norms. It is evident when there isn't a clear direction of norms, the community will suffer, or the newcomer will be overwhelmed and not contribute again. This could be problematic because newcomers may not return. I stand true to this, because I have experienced it myself. My first couple drafts of my article were awful. I would go to the homepage for Wikipedia articles and look for random articles and learn from the structure in which the write had set it up. I had to teach myself how to use Wikipedia properly. No one wants to look like a newbie. But as time went on, and I kept updating my article I noticed that it got progressively easier.

Im very content with al that I have learned so far.Before the course started, I had disconnected from certain online communities, but now I am engaging more often. My perception fo Wikipedia has changed entirely, something that seemed intimidating, something I thought Id never be apart of, has shown me how to maneuver through an online community. Not just WIkipedia, but all.