User:Mwestmillennial/report

In joining any community, it's important that it feels like a community. Online communities aren’t that much different than the "in real life" varieties. Yet we treat them as so. If you want someone to participate, you have to engage them early. Help them feel included and excited about participating. Membership organizations understand this. They put an emphasis on the newest members and take actions to integrate them into the organization.

After spending several weeks in Wikipedia, it doesn’t feel like a community. Which may be why it's struggled to retain new editors. During my time with Wikipedia, I have made several edits to pages and written my own article. Despite that, I’ve only received 1 personal communication, and it was initial feedback on my article. All other communications have been of a broadcast nature. Not exactly an effort to engage someone.

Member-based organizations have to consider 5 major areas in recruiting members but also retaining those members. Those 5 are Human Bond, Demographics, Reputation, Providing a Direct Benefit, and Creating a Shared Meaning. For Wikipedia to truly create a community that retains members, it should focus on improving the human bond and creating a shared meaning.

Joining a community is an exercise of fulfilling a need. There is a process of socialization that occurs with that. Community members that stay due so because of their relationships. Spending some time, even virtually, helps a new member put a human face to an organization. It’s a lot harder for someone to walk away from a relationship.

Creating shared meaning is much harder than connecting people, but it can change the dynamic of a community. It’s a central part of the socialization process. Suddenly the organization takes on new life and purpose becoming a “community of like minded and supportive individuals”.

Because of the vast size of the editor ‘community’ within Wikipedia, there would need to be a way to break the editors into small manageable sizes. By taking this action is makes it easier for people to not get lost in the system and find ways of connecting to others. Here are actionable items:

1: Create new member cohorts that allow and encourages them to connect with other new members.

By providing them with a way to come together and bring sense to what they are trying to do in Wikipedia, they’ll find help and community within their similar ‘new editor’ status. This could be done by adding cohort sections to the Teahouse or connecting new editors who have completed parts of the tutorial. The ways to segment them are endless, but the important part is providing the opportunity to connect with other users who are also new.

2: Create chapters or smaller groups that new members can get matched to

Wikiprojects have already proven helpful for engaging editors while simultaneously reaching goals and improving specific articles or topics. By creating smaller chapters or groups this would be another way to engage members in a way similar to wikiprojects. I’ve listed a few ways in which the editors could be matched. For example, based on my IP address Wikipedia could automatically invite me to a Washington group, or because I filled out my page, could invite me to a Communication topic group. Here are potential ways for editors to be matched to groups: 3: Creator mentor programs that have more experienced editors reach out to new editors
 * Location
 * Subject
 * Industry
 * Commonalities

By creating a program that connects newbies with more experienced editors it creates a foundation for these interactions to happen organically. Attending an event or starting something new is often intimidating for the individual. If they don’t know anyone and are not sure of what actions they should take, by connecting them with a seasoned veteran they can feel more confident in their actions. “Assigning the responsibilities of having friendly interactions with newcomers to particular community members increases the frequency of these interactions.” Kraut also found that “when old-timers provide newcomers formal mentorship, the newcomers become more committed to the community, learn how to behave in it, and contribute more.”

4: Create a program that focuses engaging new editors by commenting or interacting around their activities

“When newcomers have friendly interactions with existing community members soon after joining a community, they are more likely to stay longer and contribute more” Researches look at Facebook member and found that they were more likely to post more photographs if others commented on the initial ones they added. There’s even research that’s been done on Wikipedia already that has shown that personalized messages result in more engagement. Yet for some reason, a systematic approach providing a better experience around that has not occurred.

Any of these tactics may have helped engage someone like myself. Ultimately, after having completed this assignment I feel no more affinity for Wikipedia. It is simply a tool for me to gather information. And while I appreciate the efforts of others, I have felt no community. Without any connection to a community, it’s easy for me to walk away.

However, because of the robust training I received on how to use Wikipedia, I feel confident that in the future when there is an article worth editing, I will have the ability and confidence to make those changes.

Between the adventure, teahouse, and the tutorial I learned a lot of how Wikipedia works. It’s given me a newfound appreciation for the hardwork that goes into each article. It was an enlightening experience to explore the different groups and what they are focused on - all of which makes Wikipedia a better encyclopedia.