User:Peiyu Wan/Report

Peiyu Wan

COM 481

Feb 9 2023

Wikipedia Evaluation Essay

In the past few weeks, I have been doing my work with Wikipedia. Wikipedia has been familiar to me as we probably all have turned to it for a quick information check on the topic we want to know. It covers a wide range of topics and provides explanation and information. In this time’s experience, I feel like I have become more of a user in Wikipedia because I try to contribute and edit it, having a different role than before. In this process, I have found several things that the Wikipedia community can improve on.

My first advice is that Wikipedia should think about motivating more people to contribute to it. From a user point of view, I did not know that I can edit Wikipedia and add information to any topic to make it better. I thought that it would have a lot of restrictions and I would have to go through troublesome processes in order to contribute to the Wikipedia community. If other people also think that contributing to this community is difficult and not convenient, Wikipedia will lose a large number of potential users who can help make it better. For people who already have some degree of intrinsic motivation to contribute to Wikipedia, Wikipedia should let them know that joining and starting editing is highly encouraged and is not that hard. In making everyone know that they can come and contribute, it is easier for users to find a topic that interests them that they want to expand and improve on. Also, thinking about the utility model of motivation, what are the benefits if people contribute to the Wikipedia community? Are the benefits bigger than costs? When editing a stub article to contribute to Wikipedia for my course, it is hard for me to think of any benefits for doing this. One of the benefits I felt was that I learned about the topic myself in the process and gained more knowledge. Yet, I could not feel that my work is highly appreciated or needed. When doing this work, I hardly felt any connection with Wikipedia and felt like I was working on my piece all alone. And even after finishing, I was confused if anyone would find my contribution meaningful. Therefore, I think Wikipedia lacks external motivators and rewards for newcomers that first start to contribute to the community. Based on my experience as a newcomer, I felt lonely and lost. It is hard for me, then, to form an identity-based commitment with the Wikipedia community because I don’t feel like being a part of the community nor I feel the value of my contributions. For actions to motivate participation, Wikipedia should follow up with users more and show concern and interest about their progress. Even a “welcome” and “thank you” pop up note after a user joins and does something useful is a simple improvement. Another way could be setting up a system with point rewards: users who make good edits gain points and level up to become an experienced contributor. When users put in time and effort, they would expect something in return. Making users think their contributions are valuable and appreciated can not only promote participation and motivation, but also help build commitment in the long term.

My second advice is related to protection, socialization and retention of newcomers. Protection is to protect the community from being harmed by newcomers because they are unfamiliar with the rules and operations. Socialization is to teach and help newcomers get on the right track. Retention can strengthen the connection between newcomers and the community. From a newcomer’s perspective, I worked alone for my topic and felt lost in many processes and the functions of features such as sandbox, user page and so on. It could be easy for newcomers to make mistakes and result in harmful behaviors such as deleting an article unintentionally or posting incomplete edits. As more accidents happen, the community will be seen as less professional and reliable. Therefore, the training process needs to be more strictly designed. As I trained, it was easy to skip through all the material and still pass the training process. I could learn nothing about the community and still do things that affect it, which is not wanted and helpful. Thus, I recommend Wikipedia to make their training process more engaging and have a real test in the end. If the questions are mostly answered wrong, then the training has to be done another time. This design can help with protection and socialization. As for retention, I think other users’ involvement is important. Reflecting on my experience, I found that other experienced users can comment on my work, correct it, or delete it. If more communication is happening between us, I can have a better and stronger relationship and bonds with the community. If another user says nothing and deletes all my edits, I as a newcomer will be demotivated and confused. My fragile connection to Wikipedia could be weakened.

Another I see to make the Wikipedia community better is to improve the notification system. Reflecting on my experience, I think it is difficult to see new messages and comments on time. It is not convenient to see new messages and comments on my article. I hope there can be a notification section that reminds me once there is a new message. In this way, users can see right away who edits their articles, what feedback they receive on the edits they make and who leaves a message on their talk page, without having to click several links and get lost.

In all, Wikipedia is very unique in terms of its large numbers of audience and its accessibility to join and edit. It serves so many people and has a great responsibility to make a good impact. Therefore, how the users perform in the community is crucial. Based on my experience, Wikipedia should show more care and encouragement to users and bring in more benefits to increase their motivation and commitment. They should also support newcomers in an effective and constructive way, letting them really learn the norms of the community and know what they are striving for.