User:Rikooka/Report

My experience in Wikipedia and recommendations for Wikipedia community
First of all, I never thought that I would be editing Wikipedia for an assignment, or for any occasion. It was such a new experience to say the least. There were some obstacles I had to overcome in this assignment. The first one was choosing an article to edit. It was difficult because there were so many stubs to choose from. I had no idea that there were so many stubs in Wikipedia. The second obstacle was learning the rules of Wikipedia. Not only the content mattered but also the way it is written must be adequate. It was an interesting experience because I had so much freedom regarding what I write but there was a lot of restriction in terms of how I write. Another aspect I had difficulty with was choosing images to add on my article. I thought that if I cite the website I got the image from, there wouldn't be a problem. However, Wikipedia had a strict rule that the image used in their articles must come from the Wikimedia Commons. I think that overall, my experience in Wikipedia was full of discovery, where I was able to learn the way people contribute to online communities. I also learnt the importance of contributors in online communities. Wikipedia has become essential to our daily research and yet there are many articles that lack information. So many people use Wikipedia but not many are willing to take the time to contribute, including myself. I always assume that someone else would do the work for me. However, after this assignment and seeing the amount of stubs, as well as the progress I was able to make to the article by myself, it encouraged me to become a contributor for online communities in the future. From the experience I gained in Wikipedia, I noticed both positive and negative aspects of the community. One of the positive aspects is that the talk page allows the members to communicate with one another. I think having a place where people, mainly the active contributors, can talk to each other will stimulate the contribution and help improve the community. By being in contact with the people that read his article, this member will gain normative commitment. The sense that this member is contributing to a greater good will encourage him to keep contributing. Moreover, if the members are able to connect at a emotional level, the talk page can lead to bonds-based commitment, where the members will return to the community in order to feel close to other members that they had connections with. Now, I would like to focus on the aspects of the Wikipedia community that can be improved. One big problem that I noticed through my own experience is the free-rider problem. It is when an individual benefits from what others have provided, just like when the users of Wikipedia community doesn't contribute but only benefits from the articles that few others have contributed, thus the large amount of stubs. This is a very difficult problem to solve in this particular community since it is so large. Some ways to incentivize people to contribute is by splitting people into smaller subgroups or by providing some assurance that other people will contribute. However, these tactics will not be applicable in the case of Wikipedia because there is no subgroups that can be created and since there are so many users, it is impossible to provide assurance that other users are also contributing. I think that the reason why people are hesitant in contributing is firstly because of the size and how they are all thinking that someone else would contribute, but in addition, they have a prejudice that editing Wikipedia is extremely difficult and time consuming. Since many users have only read a complete, top-graded Wikipedia articles, they immediately tell themselves that they are not capable of writing such a lengthy, detailed, informative article. I think that many users aren't aware that many contributors are involved in order to write such articles. To gain more contributors, I recommend that Wikipedia should convince the users that editing takes less time and effort than it seems. It can use the persuasive technique of reaching out to a specific group of people by reaching out to university students. Since this group of people know how to do research, are aware of plagiarism problems, and have used Wikipedia at least several times during college life, it would not be a big barrier to entry for this group to become a contributor. The Wikipedia community can persuade them by explaining how it is not as complicated as it looks but a great place to give back to the Wikipedia community. I think that any kind of incentives will not work for Wikipedia because it is such a large community and it barely has any restriction for who can edit the articles. I strongly think that it is extremely difficult to convince a user to contribute using social connection as a reason. As it is not an online community like Reddit where social interaction is the main purpose, users will not contribute seeking personal connection with someone from the community. I believe that the technique to boost one's contribution is simply through intrinsic motivation: the appeal of doing good for the community.

Another big issue that surrounds the Wikipedia community is how to ensure people follow the norms of the community and respect the users. Since anyone can be an editor in Wikipedia, it is extremely difficult to limit the spammers and trolls. I have noticed that Wikipedia already uses CAPTCHAS as a prevention of spammers. Being such a large community, it is very difficult to restrict individual's activity online. For example, the social approach for the prevention of "bad" behavior is not appropriate for this community because of the enormous amount of users. It will be impossible for everyone to be cohesive and comply together, nor give feedback to each other to encourage good behavior. Even warnings and sanctions would be difficult if the individual makes many accounts.