User:Ririying/Report

Rae (Yingqi) Zhang

Benjamin Mako Hill

COM 482

17th Feb 2020

Reflection on my contribution to Wikipedia
Critiquing articles

I briefly evaluated three Wikipedia articles and they are Taiwanese rock, Song Gao, and CCTV-10. Song Gao is a type of Chinese cake and CCTV-10 is a TV channel focusing on science. Also, I made a deeper evaluation of Wikipedia: WikiProject Breakfast. The evaluation process helped me build a sense of proper tone, reliable sources and organized content of a good Wikipedia article, which kept reminding me to avoid biased sentences or inefficient content while I was contributing my article.

Contribution to Wikipedia

My contribution to Wikipedia is refining a stub article called semi-structured interview. With the knowledge of Wikipedia policy and comprehension of finding sources and editing articles, I looked up four journal articles and several online articles about the semi-structured interview. I added five sections to the original article. They are – Similarities and differences between other interviews, Pros and cons, Guidelines, Ethical considerations, and Prepare your semi-structured interview. I tried to help viewers generate an overall idea of semi-structured interviews. In Similarities and differences between the other interviews section, I provided several bullet points of the similarities and differences in order to assist people to better distinguish semi-structured interview from the other types of interviews. After helping the users develop a clear concept, I made Pros and cons section and it facilitates a deeper understanding of semi-structured interviews. For example, one bullet point is “Semi-structured interviews also allow informants the freedom to express their views in their terms.” With the knowledge in mind, future interviewers would create some open-ended questions to let their interviewees express their opinions more creatively. Furthermore, in the Guidelines section, I added the general principles and tips for conducting semi-structured questions. For people who might want to conduct a semi-structured interview, I think it is necessary for them to know the basic rules. While they are creating interview questions, they may or may not have the consciousness of ethical competence. Therefore, I provided an Ethical considerations section and it comes with two parts – cultural competence and cultural dimensions. I provided an explanation of both terms as well as the implications in interviews. It is important to have a mindset of ethical competence when creating and conducting interviews because failure to recognize the variations in interactions can lead to crucial miscommunications and unpleasant results. Last but not least, in the Prepare your semi-structured interview section, I listed five general steps to start a semi-structured interview, which, I hope, can give future interviewers practical instructions on interview preparations.

I added an image of two people doing interview into my stub article to help users visualize the concept. I did not find a satisfying image in the searching tool, so I used Commons Upload Wizard to release the copyright of the image and inserted it into my article.

Peer review

I chose two classmates’ Wikipedia articles for peer review. One is called Bianyifang, a Beijing-based chain restaurant. The editor Daifawei provided the cultural background and the unique cooking technique to make Beijing roast duck. The tone and structure of his article are neutral and organized. In my peer review, I suggested that he could insert more images of the outlook and the interior of the restaurant and pictures of Beijing roast duck to help viewers visualize. The other article is French Bulldog edited by NatasaEleftheriou. Her article is well-structured and up-to-date, and she used lots of images to help viewers distinguish different colors of French bulldogs. My advice is that she could provide more information on breeding bulldogs and the relation between its color and temperament.

Recommendations and experience

I have several pieces of advice for Wikipedia to encourage and motivate people to contribute more to its community:


 * According to class and the textbook, Wikipedia could arrange a yearly conference to enhance interactions among contributors because “combining contribution with social contact with other contributors causes members to contribute more (Robert & Paul, 2011, p.43).” People could work on editing articles simultaneously while talking, dining, and drinking sections. Contributors would develop a stronger bond-based commitment to Wikipedia.
 * Robert and Paul (2011) also wrote in their book that displaying photos and information about individual members and their recent activities promotes bonds-based commitment (p.91). They also claimed personalizing profile pages increases bonds-based commitment as well. Therefore, I suggest that Wikipedia could allow contributors to have more choices personalize their profile pages, such as allowing them to change the background color or font of their user pages. Wiki could let contributors add each other as friends and trace friends’ recent activities, which promotes stronger bonds.
 * In the textbook, emphasizing the number of people who are participating can motivate more people to join (p.192). Based on this design claim, even Wikipedia has a project page of Wikipedia: Who writes Wikipedia?, it’s hardly known by the public. I suggest it emphasize the number of contributors via other social platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. For example, Wikipedia has 163k followers on Instagram, but its latest post is on January 15th. Even though it did a good job posting collaborations with celebrities, like Billie Eilish, and posting intriguing quotes and videos, a clip of Michael Scott from the office, I think Wiki needs to pay more attention to the influence of Instagram. It can post daily quotes or funny memes or contributors’ personal stories to its Instagram stories, which attracts more people and motivates them to join the Wikipedia community.

This is such a unique and applicable workshop I’ve ever done in college. Even though few people would look up my stub, I still feel honored and proud to make an attribution to the Wikipedia community. Before contributing to Wikipedia, I took everything from Wikipedia for granted and never thought of becoming the contributor. It is not easy to become a great contributor and the data shows 300,000 editors have edited Wikipedia more than 10 times (Wikipedia), which made me fully respect those who have contributed to the community. As a newcomer, I would like to contribute more to Wiki community in the near future.

Reference

''Kraut, Robert E., and Paul Resnick. Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design. The MIT Press, 2012.''