User:Nick5carr/Report

Wikipedia is a complex online community that provides people with the opportunity to add and explore new things in the world that you might have lacked understanding of before. The opportunities that Wikipedia provides by allowing its users to interact with each other by adding and critiquing information creates a culture of only information its users can trust. A normative-based commitment within the community of people who feel obligated to add more information. Learning the core expectations of Wikipedia before adding information to improve articles is very important and one thing that I underestimated at the start of this assignment. The reason that Wikipedia makes it so hard to add information to its site is because the moderators of articles don’t want there to be information that doesn’t belong or isn’t true. My experience with Wikipedia was very challenging at first. Navigating the Wikipedia site and the modules themselves at the beginning of the assignment was definitely the most difficult part of understanding this online community. For example, differentiating between where you add information, where you see others have added information, and how to add the information itself whether it be source editing in your sandbox or the actual article. Another difficult part of this assignment was finding the information to add to the article. After learning the preferences of Wikipedia in the first week and my understanding of the editing process improving, finding which article to pick and if there were enough sources to add the right information became my next challenge I had to face. I picked an article about the Volcán Chingo, a stratovolcano on the border between Guatemala and El Salvador. Not only was it very difficult to find information to add to the article, it was extremely difficult to find reliable information that I could trust and that others could be able to trust as well. I had an extremely tough time going from library source to the next looking up scholarly sources to try to find anything about the Volcán Chingo. I found information from scholarly sources and began to add the information into the Wikipedia page. After learning the preferences in the first couple of weeks and learning about how to navigate the page through Kayleas help, I was confident in my ability to source edit and add in the information in an organized manner without breaking any of the Wikipedia plagiarism rules. My motivation for properly completing these different tasks were extrinsic. Extrinsic motivation played a big role in my drive to complete this assignment. Grueling hours of research to try to find the right information and sources to go along with them were all driven by my motivation to receive a good grade on the assignment and a good grade in the class.

My advice to Wikipedia is to add more motivation elements for people to add to the site. If I wasn’t taking this class and wanted to add information to Wikipedia, I would only have intrinsic motivation to go through hours of research and organizing to learn about Wikipedia and its preferences to correctly add information. Wikipedia has the opportunity to accomplish something that most other online communities haven’t and that is implementing a reward system that extrinsically motivates users to keep adding to the page. While trying to find the right article to edit and add to, it was very easy to notice that there are many stub pages that have almost no information on them in Wikipedia. This is a huge opportunity for Wikipedia to implement a reward system that encourages its users to properly add the information that can be found on the internet to the articles in its community. Designing incentives might reduce intrinsic motivations but the extrinsic motivators will bring new users and expertise to the Wikipedia dashboard. We have seen in communities like Reddit that adding a reward system makes users want to add more information but for Wikipedia the goal isn’t for people to add information itself, it is for people to add reliable information. In order to generate revenue, Reddit has added advertisements to their page. Adding advertisements not only generates revenue for the site but establishes credibility that brands want to be showcased on a well-trusted site. Revenue for the ads could be used to reward Wikipedia moderators and editors of the page. For example as a Wikipedia editor I would be able to go find stub pages, add reliable information to them, and receive compensation for doing so based on the amount of information that was added. This will not only elevate Wikipedia into a trusted brand and community but reward its users for propelling them to an internationally trusted stature. Although including more incentives could encourage “gaming” the steps Wikipedia has put into place to protect its site from misinformation would protect Wikipedia.

One thing that I would change or add to the Wikipedia site is a place for people to interact and ask questions without scrutiny. If I wasn’t taking this class I would be very confused with the Wikipedia guidelines and how to navigate the site. Without Kayleas help I would be hopeless and unable to properly add to the Wikipedia site. An interactive space where contributors can ask questions, something that Wikipedia should take attention to and change. This interactive space will bring an identity based commitment level to the Wikipedia site, something it is lacking so far. People want to feel like part of a community where there is support, so making this new platform should be the next step of Wikipedia. Although there is the Wikipedia teahouse where users can communicate in a question and answer format, the platform should be revamped in order to attract more users. Changing and updating this platform to allow for new users to learn the guidelines and not receive scrutiny about edits is the next step for Wikipedia to improve their online community and how they can reach new users.