User:Nishaa19/Report

Wikipedia Reflection Essay

Now that we are halfway through the quarter, this experience of editing Wikipedia has allowed me to learn much more about the community and the platform. I have used Wikipedia as my source of information for as long as I can remember, and never once thought about who's writing the information, who's doing all the research, how credible is this information, and much more. I hear about people editing Wikipedia articles, but always thought that there is a team of people behind Wikipedia who are paid to take down any unreliable information or inappropriate edits. Through this class and experience, the misconceptions and questions I had about the community and Wikipedia platform were all answered.

As someone who has used Wikipedia for so long, as do most people around me, getting the chance to learn about how the platform works, the rules and regulations, and the people behind all the articles, became really interesting and exciting for me. I thought that getting to use WikiEdu was especially helpful in allowing me to slowly ease into the realm of editing Wikipedia. WikiEdu was very helpful for someone like me, who is completely new to the platform. It breaks down all the rules and regulations and also showed step-by-step instructions on how to do all sorts of things on the platform. This was very helpful for a newbie like me who was intimidated by all the rules they had when it came down to editing an article or creating a new one. I never knew about how detailed and strict the regulations they set were until this experience.

The first challenge that I faced getting into editing Wikipedia was choosing an article to edit. I first started looking at stub articles because WikiEdu suggested it. Initially, I thought that finding an article would be a very simple task; however, when I was going through the long list of stub articles for hours, I realised I was very wrong. I wasn't particularly interested in any of the stub articles and I was stuck. After taking a break, I decided to think about things around me that I was interested in and looked to see if they had Wikipedia articles instead. This made the process easier, but still difficult as most of the things I looked at were already very established articles that I didn't know what and how I could possibly add to it. After hours, I finally narrowed down some options that were of interest to me and were not very developed articles.

The second challenge I faced was after I published my article additions to the fashion brand "Everlane" Wikipedia page. I made two new additional sections to the page called "Brand Vision", where I went over the brand's business model and brand strategy, and the "Choose What You Pay" section where I explained their unique sale model that leads into their business model about price transparency. After publishing these additional sections, two Wikipedia editors suggested the removal of my article because it appeared to be "advertising" and had a "promotional" tone. This led to a very long discussion between the two editors and my professor. When I saw these long conversations going on, I felt very intimidated by it and did not know what to do. I wasn't sure how to reply to their comments and how to improve my article. Nate's comments, of course, helped make me feel a lot better. The entire conversation was very long and often went off-topic, which made it all the more confusing. I think the whole experience made me feel more intimidated than before about making any significant edits as I thought it was already peer-reviewed and improved by my professor.

From my experience using Wikipedia so far, there are some suggestions that I think would make the community more welcoming to new users like myself. As a new user who is doing a rather significant edit for the first time, I was already feeling intimidated by all the rules and regulations. It is more difficult than you would think to write in an encyclopaedic tone, and not a promotional one when you're writing about a brand's business model and sale strategy. The suggestion to entirely remove my edits from the article made me feel like I was not good enough for the platform. While this may not be true of all Wikipedia editors, some can be very unwelcoming of new editors like myself and my classmates. For example, in the Talk page where the editors were discussing about my addition to the article, while one editor was very supportive and simply suggested that I look over and edit certain aspects of the article, another editor was not at all constructive and created unnecessary drama that was completely irrelevant. And so, my suggestion is for Wikipedia to have a more constructive criticism guideline for when new users are trying to contribute to the community. There should be some option to maybe hide the new edits until the admins and other editors are satisfied with the article by a new editor and approve of the edits. The hidden edits can then be published to the actual article once it has been approved. This process would've made me feel much better when I published the article, because I could receive much better advice and suggestions from admins than from my classmates alone. I would also feel more confident about my article before it went up for the entire world to see.

Another suggestion that I have for Wikipedia is about the interface. The current interface, while it looks professional as an encyclopaedia should, it is not very welcoming to new users like myself. Even with the help of WikiEdu and it's step-by-step instructions, I found myself still struggling to find certain things on the page and getting intimidated when pinging other users, replying, signing my name, etc., as I was unsure of the codes behind doing so. If Wikipedia were to make the interface more user-friendly, I think that it would definitely encourage more people to start editing and participating more in the Talk pages.

When the speakers visited our class last week and asked if anyone would edit Wikipedia articles in the future, only one person raised their hand. While I do not know about others, but for me, I personally felt that the platform can be quite intimidating for new users and I also couldn't find the motivations that would drive me to become an editor. While I did enjoy researching and writing the article for this particular class as it was something I was interested in, I think it will be highly unlikely for me to do it in my own time. One of the motivations that we learned in class was intrinsic interest, which drives participation. Although it was fun when I was doing it for class, I simply do not think that I have that intrinsic interest in me to become an editor in the future.

Overall, I learned a lot from this experience as a new user of the Wikipedia community, both things that I appreciate and things that I disliked about the platform and community. Although my personal experience with the platform may not be the best as it made me feel left out of the community, other students in class seem to have had a much nicer experience. The experience has made me much more trusting of the information on Wikipedia, as I now know all the regulations behind any edit. The experience has also opened up my eyes about these online communities that I never really thought about. I find myself appreciating and respecting the people who contribute voluntarily to these online communities much more because of the work, research, and efforts that go into it.