User:Mjohn55/Report

Madeline Johnson

COM 482

Report/Wikipedia Reflection Essay

My Wikipedia experience was a mix of things: informative, interesting, and challenging. The informative aspect is learning so much about how Wikipedia operates, because it is far more complicated and stricter than I previously thought. But it was also informative because I was taught a lot about how to be as objective and researched as possible, and that’s always a useful skill. My experience was also interesting because I hadn’t expected to feel the way I felt about my article. At first, I approached this assignment as part of any other classroom experience, which means doing the assignments and learning the material. But I felt after I’d contributed to my article’s main page and had it go live that I was very attached to my article and what happens to it. Not to say that I wasn’t open to criticism of my contribution but more in the sense that I felt very responsible for the article and what gets read by people and what direction that article goes in.

Thirdly, I felt that this experience was challenging, because not only did I have to learn about and get involved in a community that was entirely new to me, but because I will admit that criticism is hard to take when it’s put very bluntly. I saw some very direct comments on my article contributions, which, while I’m sure they were correct, was still a little off putting.

This leads me to my first thought on what Wikipedia community and/or the Wikimedia Foundation might want to address going forward—how people in the community interact with one another. As Wikipedia is not a work place, I don’t know that there are the same expectations for how to talk to other people, and even though every group interaction/collective process is different, it might be helpful to have guidelines that are not just encouraged but enforced, especially when it comes to new editors. I know from my experience that having harsh criticism, even if correct, on your first article worked on is a bit of a downer and dissuades me from wanting to contribute more. I imagine that might be the case for other new editors in the world who put their work out there and instead of receiving constructive criticism that makes them better editors, they receive quite blunt comments that also don’t provide any kind of teachable lesson.

Granted, criticism is a part of creating content, however, if one of Wikipedia’s concerns is that new editors aren’t continuing to stick around, this may be one area that could be improved. With immediate harsh feedback, not only do the new editors get intimidated, they don’t learn what they did wrong, therefore they probably either quit contributing, or continue to make the same mistakes.

Based on what we have covered in class and all of the different online communities we’ve looked into, new users are an important part of a lot of online communities, and definitely to Wikipedia. However, based on the rates of usership in Wikipedia, new editors don’t stick around as often as they used to. This is perhaps due to the increased strictness in Wikipedia policies and guidelines for contributing. While these rules are necessary, they also may be steering new editors away or non-editors from even trying. I think that emphasizing constructive feedback and fostering a teaching environment amongst everyone in the community would be very helpful in making new editors feel more comfortable, and might even make people who don’t edit at all consider trying.

My article is about a famous show called “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo,” that’s also quite new, so it was the perfect choice for me. The feedback I have received so far seems to be on some incorrect citations (and some minor edits), although the wording was something I don’t understand, so I’m not entirely sure how to fix the issue that the editor saw. I am happy that the majority of what I added has been kept so far, although this may change as more editors see it. Overall, it’s a positive experience to pick something of interest, do research, contribute to general knowledge, and feel that others may benefit from that information.

Wikipedia is a lot different than other online communities in that participators and contributors don’t profit off anything they contribute (except some recognition). We’ve seen a lot of sites related to selling an idea, selling content, receiving internet points (like Reddit “gold” or “silver” or “karma”), and selling coding projects. But Wikipedia’s not selling anything, it’s just giving knowledge. That’s what makes it wonderful and unique. But it’s also what creates obstacles—because information is powerful and needs to be accurate, so there are strict rules and guidelines for what can be contributed and how it gets contributed; this also means that people are perhaps too intimidated to contribute, therefore lessening the very purpose of the community.

My suggestion for this problem—emphasize in community guidelines that not only do contributions have to meet strict criteria, but also feedback should have to meet certain community standards. Perhaps having certain people as moderators that check the type of feedback other editors are giving would be helpful, or perhaps having constructive criticism as a higher value within the community guidelines would improve this. I understand for every edit this would be unreasonable, especially for minor grammar or punctuation issues, however for the bigger edits and mistakes, Wikipedia editors might want to take it upon themselves to teach each other, especially newcomers, the right way. Contributing to Wikipedia was overall, an enjoyable and worthwhile experience, and I think that to encourage people like me to continue to edit and contribute, there has to be a better support system for newcomers. We’ve seen from other communities that there has to be a balance between personal challenge and feelings of being welcome, and I think the Wikipedia Community can achieve this if it places more emphasis on constructive feedback for new editors.