User:Mikin83/Report

Wikipedia Reflection Essay
I have been using Wikipedia on many different occasions: when I was curious about the celebrities’ nationalities or birthdays, when I needed basic information for an essay, etc. I never thought I would actually edit the article on Wikipedia, so this whole experience was new, adventurous, and challenging for me. I edited my favorite Japanese boy band, Johnny’s WEST article, and it was way more complex than I thought. What made me struggle the most was translating from Japanese to English. Johnny's West is a Japanese group formed in Japan, so all the articles I used were written in Japanese. In addition, sadly, they are a little-known group globally, so I could not find informative articles written in English. I was helped a lot by Google Translate, but it was not 100% accurate all the time. Therefore, I managed to create an article using as much translation as I could, took advantage of dictionaries, and succeeded in moving to live. In this adventurous experience, I have realized the cultural difference, the great features of Wikipedia and came up with several recommendations to the Wikipedia Foundation.

What I learned from this experience was the cultural difference between Japanese and English articles on Wikipedia. Since I am bilingual, speaking English and Japanese, I have been using Wikipedia in both languages. Many Japanese articles tend to use bullet points and tables to organize and make it visually understandable, whereas English articles tend to be written into paragraphs and tables instead of using bullet points. I believed that writing information into paragraphs made it tough to find the specific information that readers needed. Still, I respected the culture and tried to write it into the paragraph, though it was challenging for me. One of the excellent features of editing an article was that soon after I moved the article live, other editors corrected my grammatical error and links. It was strange to contribute and collaborate with other people I had never met to make the article better, but it is indeed a good feature of Wikipedia that people from all over the world work together to improve the accuracy of articles.

While the community is a great place to contribute to the same material with others, there are some recommendations based on my experience of editing and using Wikipedia. I acknowledged that Wikipedia is a community used by many countries, as I realized that there were many language options. What I was concerned about during the editing was that some articles needed a translator or native speaker. As in my case, the articles of the fact from a particular country are that the people in that country are more knowledgeable and have a lot of references in that country’s language. I believe Wikipedia is both a treasure trove of information and culture because we are available to know and learn about various countries’ cultures, such as food, architecture, or even celebrities. Therefore, I would recommend creating a frame in the user setting to enter their first, second, or third language and create a system to display articles that require more information or editing in a particular language to the user based on it.

Furthermore, it would take a lot of time to check whether the references of the existing article are working correctly. Many of the existed articles include past information and history. Thus, websites and links would inevitably be closed or be updated. If the foundation introduces a system that can scan all the references and check them all at once in a short time, users would be able to contribute smoothly to the creation of more accurate articles. During the editing, I felt that the community was very formal, as I hesitated to talk to other editors on the talk page. It would be more effective to improve the article’s accuracy by preparing a platform where they can speak more frankly.

My editing experience was based on needs and intrinsic motivation. The initial article of Johnny’s WEST contained misinformation and a lack of descriptions. I wanted other readers and editors to know about them with accurate and detailed information, and I believe it is needs-based. My motivation to complete this article was intrinsic. I did not beg for any praise or bonus in order to make the article better, but just interest and accomplishment. The original article was rated as Start-class, and after I updated it in my sandbox, the estimated class became B-class. I was very satisfied that my work has been evaluated as a better class. One of my recommendations, making a platform for editors where they can talk frankly, is related to the bonds-based. Wikipedia’s articles are diverse, and some people may be very fond of editing certain ones. If the editors find someone with the same taste, it would be more fun to edit and contribute to it together.

Intrinsic motivations were applied in order to edit the article, but not extrinsic. Even if we updated the Wikipedia article to improve it, we did not get any money or awards, so I believe editing an article on Wikipedia is based on intrinsic motivation. On the other hand, I felt that Wikipedia lacked community bonds. It only has a formal talk page to communicate with other editors. As I mentioned earlier, making an informal platform would enhance its community better. What unique about Wikipedia is that anyone can see and edit an article. In other words, anyone from anywhere in the world with the internet and device can contribute. It is both a strength and a weakness of Wikipedia. It can sometimes be unstable and disrupt accuracy because anyone can edit it.

Overall, Wikipedia is a great community to gain information and contribute with each other to make the article better. My recommendations are needed to be heard to be a better community because I am a newcomer as an editor and have a fresh eye to evaluate the community.