User:Maw39/report

Wikipedia community is a large-size and phenomenal online community that provides us great examples of how the online communities might work and fail in some part. Integrating with my knowledge learned so far in this course and my own experience in Wikipedia, I would give some advice to better form the Wikipedia community and Wikimedia foundation if possible.

In operating this online community, Wikipedia should think about what motivates users to participate, what drives them to commit to the continuing contribution, what affects newcomers’ participation, and what newcomers bring to this community. First of all, when I was searching for different levels’ articles in Wikipedia, I noticed that most of the Wikipedia articles are “stubs,” which means the editors do not publish complete or updated information for these articles. According to the material covered in class, participation in online communities is lower than we want it to be and lower than it could be. This also explains another situation that the number of readers is increasing while the ones who read and contribute to Wikipedia is shrinking. Secondly, as I participated in editing the “stub” article, I started to wonder what motivates and demotivates users editing or correcting someone else's work. The motivation is what leads to the active online community. Wikipedia should understand the utility model of motivation- people have more motivation doing something when the benefits weigh more than the costs; Wikipedia needs to think about what intrinsic and extrinsic motivation could increase participation in Wikipedia. For users like me, it is the extrinsic rewards that made me contribute- I get high GPA if I finish an article on Wikipedia.

Other than the existing users, the newcomers should also be part of their concerns. Newcomers do not have enough knowledge about what norms and principles should follow or they purposely disturb the orders of the community. For example, I am one of the newcomers who wanted to improve a “stub” article. But I might have not known where I could find appropriate images to use in Wikipedia if I am not in this class. The “good” newcomers are easy to violate the copyright if there are no clear rules for them to see directly before publishing the works. On top of that, from my experience that I most likely will leave Wikipedia when this class ends, I learned that newcomers are hard to establish connection and commitment to the online community at the beginning and in the long-term. Therefore, Wikipedia should think about how to protect the entire communities from harmful behaviors by newcomers, how to teach them to behave appropriately and normatively by socialization, and how to promote newcomers’ connections to the community effectively.

Moreover, Wikipedia should think about what to change. The first thing is how to motivate people to participate more since Wikipedia has user-generated content. There are three ways covered in class- persuasive techniques, appealing to intrinsic interests, and creating extrinsic rewards. For the persuasive technique principle, Wikipedia can think about listing potential contributions users can do. I recommend this because in the past, every time I opened a Wikipedia article, I do not know if the article needed to be edited or not and what else I could do in the community. The unclear tasks drove me away. However, based on my experience, I do not recommend reaching out to specific people with certain tasks. The Wikipedia community is fairly large, and it is impossible to know the particular skills each member has. The appealing to intrinsic motivation is also hard for Wikipedia to practice because the scope in Wikipedia is extremely broad. Lastly, the extrinsic rewards would work perfectly in Wikipedia. Wikipedia should reward users through money, privilege within the community, and higher internal status.

The second thing Wikipedia should think about to change is to enhance users with identity-based commitment and normative commitment. In my experience in Wikipedia, the reason why most Wikipedia articles are “stub” is the lack of commitment from users. For people who feel like they are part of Wikipedia and want to help it fulfill its mission, Wikipedia should emphasize their identities by adding specific tags on their username and assigning roles according to their degree of participation. Wikipedia should think about setting a clear goal for people who have normative commitment. For example, Wikipedia can post a countdown timer on the main page of how many “Stub” articles are left for editing in a certain amount of time. Wikipedia can also post a slogan of “helping people who have helped you” to highlight reciprocity and make people more willing to contribute.

The third thing Wikipedia should think about to change is to highlight the good and bad behaviors of users to create descriptive norms and involve participants when writing the injunctive norms. I know that Wikipedia has some explicit norms to regulate behaviors, such as “Assume Good Faith,” “Neutrality,” “Be Bold,” “Sign messages with four tildes,” and “Notability.” The change I advise is to state these rules more clearly and send reminders of norms at some point before they might be violated. The uniqueness of Wikipedia is the low barriers for contribution, which causes the increasing amount of “Stub” articles and no one takes responsibility for articles’ low quality. When I searched for the low-level articles on Wikipedia, some of them only has a few words of content, but they are still published. Thus, another of my advice is to build barriers to participation by technical approaches and policy decisions to maintain orders. For example, prohibit the user’s action in Wikipedia if he/she violates the norms or publishes inappropriate information. Furthermore, to attract newcomers, I think the selection is a better fit for Wikipedia than recruitment. Instead of establishing separation tasks for different groups of people, Wikipedia should ask all users to complete “screening tasks” to effectively deter the “bad” people. However, it might also deter a positive contribution from the “good” users. The uniqueness of Wikipedia’s protection of newcomers is the “sandbox” and “talk” page that successfully create spaces for newcomers to practice and learn safely and reduced potential harms for the community.