User:Novey.n/Clear Labs Wiki Debrief

Debrief on first article writing experience with Wikipedia
Being the new kid in any community can be daunting because we are unaware of the first steps to take, and how we should act. In his book Building Successful Online Communities, Robert Kraut points out that, “new members of a community may often act nonnormatively simply because they do not know the rules of the community.” Luckily, it is somewhat easier to assimilate in online communities, as there are multiple functions and member socialization tactics that platforms employ to help newcomers.

Kraut explains that there are three ways that members can learn the norms of a community :

1)     Observing other people and the consequences of their behavior

2)     Seeing instructive generalizations or codes of conduct

3)     Behaving and directly receiving feedback

The following essay is an analysis of my learning experience as a newcomer in the Wikipedia community. I will use Robert Kraut’s ideas on learning group norms and design claims for successful member socialization, to deconstruct the interactions that I had during my first contribution, an article which I created as part of a student project. While one can experience learning about Wikipedia norms through all three of the ways mentioned above, in my personal experience, I have learned through seeing instructive codes of conduct, as well as by behaving and directly receiving feedback. I will give examples of how I learned through each of these methods as well as explain what it was like for me as a newcomer during the publishing stage, and with using Wikipedia in general.

Learning through instructive generalizations or codes of conduct
Before I began using the platform, our course required us to go through Wikipedia educational training (Wiki Ed) to understand the fundamentals of writing an article. While not everyone is required to go through this tutorial, I would strongly recommend that all newcomers take it, as it helped me understand the requirements for encyclopedic writing, as well as more specific norms to using Wikipedia. When I started writing my Clear Labs article, I had many questions on formatting, wording, templates, which were quickly answered through a quick search on the site’s search engine. Due to the encyclopedic nature of Wikipedia, and the many rules that stem from this, there is no shortage of help pages. Even for the most specific situations such as template messages, there exist detailed instruction pages. Kraut argues that, “Explicit rules and guidelines increase the ability for community members to know the norms, especially when it is less clear what others think is acceptable.” As this design claim explains, I was able to easily understand the sites rules and functions due to the readily available information on Wiki Ed, as well as Wikipedia how to pages.

Another feature that helped instruct me on Wikipedia norms was the Sandbox page. The Wiki Ed tutorial I took suggested using this as a practice area to learn how the edit source and visual editor work, before editing in the main space. Kraut explains that, “Sandboxes speed up the learning process for newcomers and reduce the harm to the community that newcomers might otherwise cause.” Writing in the Sandbox took away the fear of making mistakes while learning how to writing in code language, as well as how to create citations. When I tried publishing my article the first time, I was suggested by a fellow Wikipedian to take it down and improve it in order to avoid deletion. While I wasn’t initially sure where to move it, a quick chat to a Wikipedia help forum informed me that there was a stage between your Sandbox and the article main-space called a ‘Draft Page’. Changing my article to a draft page (which isn’t public), instead of deleting it, saved me a lot of unnecessary work that I would have had to do in order to re-write the article on the platform once it was fixed. Kraut describes that these, “face-saving ways to correct norm violations increases compliance.” This is exactly what occurred, as I was able to make any necessary trial and error edits to the article on without actually violating any norms.

Behaving and directly receiving feedback
While I was able to learn quite a bit through written norms on Wikipedia guide pages, I feel like I learned most from writing the article and receiving feedback. Likewise, I learned a lot more when fellow Wikipedians wrote descriptive feedback, than when they directly made the edits. Kraut argues that once members have been recruited and convinced to remain part of the community, they need to be “socialized and taught how to behave in ways appropriate to the group.” During this project I had this sort of feedback from Wikipedians that I knew, as well as those that I didn’t.

My first piece of feedback was when I went on a Wikipedia chat forum to ask questions on how to move a page back from the main-space. When I sent the admins my article link, they not only moved the page for me, but also began giving me feedback on the sources of my article, even though I did not ask for it. I didn’t understand why the admins were making criticisms when I had not asked for them, and felt somewhat discouraged from continuing with this topic. However, my second piece of feedback, which was written on my talk page by user Velella, started with, “I appreciate that you are new here,” making me feel more at ease. My theory is that because the first admins I spoke to were operating on a third-party website, and were probably not subject to Wikipedia’s ‘Please don’t bite the newcomers’ rules. Kraut expresses that, “Explicitly discouraging hostility toward newcomers who make mistakes can promote friendly initial interactions between newcomers and old-timers,” which Wikipedia does effectively with their instructional pages on how to treat newcomers.

Once I moved my article back into a draft space, I received feedback from Ian (Wiki Ed), an admin at Wikipedia education, and Rroberie, a classmate who was doing the same project. Both Ian (Wiki Ed)'s feedback and Rroberie's feedback were very detailed and helped me correct some big weaknesses in my article. What both these users had in common, was that they both used encouraging language such as, “this is a great start,” “happy editing,” and, “Nice work on your article draft.” Kraut points out that, Performance feedback— especially positive feedback— can enhance motivation to perform tasks.” Because these user’s feedback was extensive, I feel like if I had only seen the critiques without the encouraging words, I would have been discouraged to continue with this topic. Instead I was able to both improve sources, language and expand some sections.

I did however disagree with some of their feedback, such as the suggestion to expand on the technology section, which Rroberie pointed out with an expansion tag. Because the company’s technology is proprietary, they have kept the details of it a secret. I also found it somewhat redundant to explain what DNA barcoding was, as there is already a page for this, which my article linked to. I had a different understanding from Rroberie on the norm of how detailed article content needs to be. I still wasn’t sure of the answer at the time of publishing, so I left the expansion tag on this section in case I was in the wrong. I believe these types of questions on correct behaviors can only be answered through continual trail and feedback, until newcomers become experts on community norms.

Publishing
Though I worked on this article and fixing feedback continuously throughout the semester, I was afraid to publish an article which had errors in it, out of fear that I would be breaking site rules. User Velella had advised that I remove the article from the public domain because it had too many weaknesses in it that could provoke deletion, a situation which is difficult to reverse.

In chapter 2 of his book, Kraut references Reiss’s sixteen intrinsic motivations for task performance. I believe that two of these, tranquility, the desire to avoid anxiety and fear as well as honor, the desire to obey a traditional moral code, can be used to explain my motivation for keeping my article in a draft space for so long. Since I already had to remove the article from the public domain once, having to do so again would have been somewhat humiliating for me. The fear and anxiety that this humiliation might occur, and desire to maintain tranquility stopped me from publishing it until absolutely having to do so. During this course, I learned how strict the editing rules are, and how important it is to fellow Wikipedians that articles follow community norms. As a new community member myself, I felt the need to honor these norms, making sure that my article obeyed the rules before making it public.

Conclusion: My overall experience
I believe a company is a tough topic for a first Wikipedia article because, as Ian (Wiki Ed) mentioned, “Wikipedians tend to take issue with - most notably, promotional language, and are (rightly) concerned about Wikipedia being used by companies to promote themselves.” Keeping this in mind I was constantly nervous about publishing edits and wavered often when making decisions. In hindsight, I should have chosen a less difficult topic, and would recommend students to avoid company pages for their first article.

On a more positive note, I learned a lot about proper sourcing and how to write in a more objective style, two skills that I can apply to other areas in the future. With all the norms to follow and behind the scenes battles to get edits approved, I can see how for granted we take the editors who populate informational wiki sites like this one.

I can’t say for sure if I will try to create another article from scratch, but perhaps I would if it was on a topic that I am passionate about. In the past, I shied away from contributing because I didn’t know how to write an article or make edits. However, it feels good to say that I published an article, and now that I have the tools to do so, I may just venture to write another one.