User:Meganjoss/Report

Introduction
After creating a new Wikipedia article, there are many things I have learned and advice that I could give to a new Wikipedia editor. Before writing a Wikipedia article, I was unaware of the guidelines and rules about creating a new page. As a frequent Wikipedia visitor, I knew that Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and I usually assume that all of the information included is accurate. Even knowing that anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, I believed that the information was accurate, and after creating a page I am even more confident that this holds true.

Advice
I would consider myself a tech-savvy person, I am able to navigate the internet successfully and discover new websites. Making a wikipedia account was fairly simple with the help of bots and pop ups to explore around. What really helped me was using WikiEdu, with WikiEdu I learned how to start my sandbox, add citations, add links, and do many other things. Without WikiEdu the process would've been a lot more difficult. I think the most confusing part about Wikipedia to me was figuring out the format of a Wikipedia page and not knowing if it was correct or not. For my article, I wrote about a clothing company called Hello Molly. I decided to look at Wikipedia pages that were already made about clothing companies to help me. With writing a new article, it is hard to guess what subsections you should have and what should be in them. It would be nice if Wikipedia could somehow add a feature that would help you develop subsections for your topic depending on what it is. Even giving recommendations about similar articles would help to developing a new one. I think something that would be beneficial to increase the number of editors was somehow making the articles that needed help in a more accessible place, where even readers would see. People would be more intrinsically motivated to join a community, rather write an article about a topic they are interested in. If a person knew an article needed work, where they had knowledge of that topic they would want to edit it.

Experience
I enjoyed my experience writing a Wikipedia article on a clothing store. I wanted to write a new article on something that I was interested in, not just a random topic that was missing from Wikipedia. I enjoy reading articles about fashion and I was familiar with Hello Molly. Something that I didn't think I would enjoy was finding the sources for my article, but I liked learning more information about the company and its presence in popular culture. Overall I learned more about the company. I also learned how to take information about a brand and turn it into encyclopedic information that is unbiased. Writing for wikipedia did give me rewards, I felt a sense of accomplishment and felt like I was contributing to a greater good.

Connecting to course material
While writing my Wikipedia article I had to have a very unbiased way of thinking and writing. Because my article was a clothing brand it could be seen as promotional and I did not want editors to flag or take down my article. Many online communities that we have talked about in class have policies that are very strict and Wikipedia has one based off of promotional content.

Something that we also talked about in class were several different Wikiprojects such as one about military history, women's collaborative, South Africa, and copy editors. While reviewing my published essay I noticed that my article was added within the Wikiproject Australia which aims to have more articles on topics about Australia. I thought this was cool because it is nice to feel like you wrote something and gained a simple reward, in this case recognition and feeling like I contributed to an important cause.

We have also talked a lot about commitment within an online community. In terms of commitment to Wikipedia we definitely see that it is difficult to find editors that will stick around and make various edits. In class on Thursday the feedback of our class was that the majority of our class would not edit an article on Wikipedia again. I think it is tricky to compare an editor that creates an article through a college course and someone who goes onto Wikipedia wanting to edit with a more intrinsic motivation. I would assume that a lot of editors begin to edit Wikipedia with normative or needs-based feelings. Under normative participation people want to contribute to a greater good which is what an encyclopedia entails, people want to give people access to knowledge. After contributing to Wikipedia through a college course I think the motivation to contribute is almost lost in this case because it is required. Therefore, the recommendations that I have given about finding similar articles to ones people are searching for, recommending articles that need editing based on search items of a certain viewer to increase the likelihood of editing with intrinsic motivation.

Conclusion
Overall I am glad that I had the opportunity to be introduced to editing Wikipedia, am satisfied that I created a new article, and would not be opposed to editing more. Based on my experience writing an article, there isn't much I would change, perhaps I would suggest types of articles people have created and give more suggestions as to what one should write about. Wikipedia is a unique place where you have the freedom to add as much content as you would like which I think is super cool and more people should be aware of how easy it is to edit on Wikipedia.