User:Olivia.bakken/Report

For my Wikipedia experience, I chose to expand on a stub article I found titled Homelessness in Germany. At first, I struggled trying to find an article. I knew that I wanted to find a stub article, but I was unaware of just how many stub articles there were. I wanted to find one that not only was I interested in, but I also wanted to chose one that I felt I could make good additions to. I chose this stub because homelessness is a pretty complex issue here in Seattle; However, there is plenty of information in regards to it already on Wikipedia. In contrast, the wiki article on German Homelessness was bare. With a swift google search, I was able to find  a plethora of information in regards to this topic that was not on the Wikipedia page. In addition, the information that was listed on the page had a failed verification. This is when I knew I could be of benefit to the page and chose to take it on as my ticket into the Wikipedia community.

Prior to this project, I always wondered how Wikipedia enforced their pages in order to prevent trolls from ruining them. Also, I always figured that adding to a Wikipedia page was complex. However, once I learned how to contribute to Wikipedia, I realized just how simple it can be, with the proper teaching. Despite it being a fairly straightforward process, the community does enforce explicit norms on how one should contribute. This was one of my biggest concerns because I did not want to make a mistake and tarnish the community or have people be upset with my article revisions. I think that despite their guidelines being so strict, it is a necessary precaution to ensure that people are taking their role on the website seriously.

I believe that Wikipedia uses injunctive norms by offering people reminders of the norms when they have been clearly violated. This is important because we learned that good faith newcomers can do real damage. Our class had a first-hand experience of this when a large majority of us used photos on our pages that weren’t viable. Professor had received a message from a Wikipedian regarding this who called us out on our mistake. To this man, we were seen as norm violating threats to the community. Through this however, many students learned from their mistake and hence, the norms are preserved. We learned that a way to prevent good faith newcomers from doing damage is encouraging Sandboxes for safe learning and experimentation. For me personally, I did feel much safer in the Sandbox. Professor had make comments that some Wikipedia veterans could be nasty towards newbies and I felt uneasy about potentially encountering this type of confrontation. Even now that my article is live, I will admit I still am a little nervous that someone may come after my article despite going over it multiple times and completing all the Wikipedia tasks.

In class, we learned that Wikipedia has many types of explicit norms: Good faith assumption, neutrality, being bold, signing messages, and notability. These norms are enforced in order to regulate good behavior. I like the ‘good faith assumption’ norm because a lot of people that come into contact with Wikipedia may not be seasoned professionals but still are intrinsically motivated to build on an article. With Wikipedia allowing public accessibility to editing articles, there is bound to be mistakes at times, but we should still assume that the user in question had good intentions.

Through my time learning the in-and-outs of Wikipedia for the past month or so, I feel that this has granted me some level of legitimacy with my recommendations. A random new user mostly likely doesn’t have access to tailored tutorials and walkthroughs like we were granted. In addition, they also probably wouldn’t have two well-informed mentors to walk them through it like our class did. Previously to making live edits on Wikipedia, we have been informed of the explicit norms of this community as well as the consequences for violating them. Some of these consequences include losing your credibility in the community or even tearing the community apart.

When I first started the tutorials and navigating the Wikipedia site, it was incredibly intimidating. For someone who isn’t tech savvy, I felt lost at times, even with the provided instructions and in depth tutorials. For someone who doesn’t have access to tutorials like we did and isn’t tech savvy, I have a feeling they would really struggle with how to be a good contributor. Not only because there are very explicit norms but also the act of navigating the site may deter a lot of people away from contributing, even if they have useful information to share. I think that future Wikipedians could benefit from having more of a coherent template of how articles are expected to be structured in addition to having tutorials and walkthroughs similar to the ones that we were provided in class. I wouldn’t have even known where to begin if I didn’t have access to those. In addition to giving newbies more resources for contributing, I think a method for retaining newcomers is upping the number of initial friendly interactions that they encounter. Someone who recently joined could be scared away from ever contributing to the site again if a long standing member in the community comes after them. This is why creating greater enforced norms against unfriendly interactions would be of benefit to the community.