User:Rose Northeastern/reflection

When I began updating the Active Minds page, I felt overwhelmed and daunted by the prospect of publicly changing an article on a website that reaches so many people. Now that I have successfully revised the article, and had it up on the mainspace for over a month without getting any negative feedback or being reverted, I can look back at the experience of being a new Wikipedia user. Overall, as someone who’s motivations for joining the community were entirely extrinsic, the experience was bland and there were not interactions with more experienced users which encouraged further participation or a commitment to the community as a whole.

Before a newcomer can become a full member of the community, they must be properly socialized to the culture that already exists. Kraut and Resnick put socialization as stage four of how to solve the problems that are posed by newcomers. Wikipedia uses guidelines, and social norms that function as guidelines, to teach newcomers, similar to a FAQ. However, the new user must be motivated to learn them, it is not a seamless transition into knowledge. Kraut and Resnick give strategies on how to teach newcomers the appropriate ways to behave within the community, such as making a technique “formal, sequential, and collective." Wikipedia’s technique of educating through essays on these guidelines is formal, and supposedly a collective agreement among experienced users, but not sequential. It is hard, as a new user, to understand where the next place you should go to is. There is a policy page, but it simply lists every guideline, which can overwhelm a newcomer. If there were a clear introduction that took the new user through each guideline, in order of how important they were to know, that would be a better process for socialization.

In addition to being a socialization technique, there is an expectation that if you are editing in the mainspace, you have RTFM (Read The Fucking Manual). Although Wikipedia doesn’t frame it that way, editors will often refer to the behavioral guidelines, specifically Assume Good Faith and Neutral Point of View. If a newcomer is not aware of these expectations, they will likely have their edits reverted or redone. Experienced editors expect the newcomers to know the information and to understand the terms that go along with it. Although humorous in nature, this Wikipedia page outlines how different the knowledge and contributions can be between brand new users and those who have been editing for a long time. A newcomer, or WikiInfant, might not understand if an experienced editor reverted their edits and just posted “NPOV” on their page. There is a significant learning curve to be up-to-date on the “cyberlanguage” of Wikipedia.

However, Wikipedia does use a tactic that is meant to help newcomers in their understanding of the community — these expectations and guidelines are public for prospective members to look at and develop a more accurate picture. Because I only joined this community as a class requirement, I did not check out the guidelines before making an account and therefore felt behind when I did begin to edit. If my motivations for joining Wikipedia had been intrinsic, then I probably would have checked into these expectations and felt more prepared to contribute.

If a newcomer is going to experience this learning curve, and be unprepared for editing until they become more experienced, should they have the ability to begin editing immediately? Part of the problem with handling newcomers is that they can have a negative impact on the community. One way to manage this challenge is to have new editors practice in their sandbox before they make any changes in the mainspace. Not only does this minimize the damage that they can do to already published articles, but it also speeds up the learning process because they get to practice multiple times without any consequences. This is one of the things that Wikipedia does right, I was able to practice my editing in a safe place without fear of being reverted.

Despite all of the previously mentioned aspects of how Wikipedia handles newcomers, both positive and negative, the thing that felt most important was the interaction with other users outside of the class. Although this was an assignment, and that was the most important thing to me, it still felt discouraging to not have any experienced editors interact with me. I had a total of three “interactions” with users outside of our class. I put interactions in quotes because not one of them felt like a useful contribution. In an attempt to get more feedback on my article, I commented on the talk pages of three users who had previously edited the Active Minds article, we’ll call them User A, User B, and User C. User A made a small grammatical change to my article, but never responded to me in any way. This was not really engaging, and the impact of the small edit would have been magnified if they had simply responded “Done!” on the comment posted on their talk page. User B took about a week to respond to my request for feedback and then responded “Looks great Rose! Love how it looks.” User B did not make any changes or suggest anything for the article.

Lastly, User C responded to my request for feedback with “Thank you.” They did not make any changes to the article or even acknowledge that I had asked for feedback. This is the response that frustrated me the most, as User C had previously done a lot of work on the Active Minds page. I was hoping that they might be interested in giving feedback on the updated version since it appeared that they cared about its accuracy at one point. Their dismissal of my request felt like a dismissal of me as a Wikipedia editor, which was the biggest hit to both my sense of community and my motivation.

None of these responses are motivational, either for edits to the specific article or to my commitment to the community overall. Research done on peer feedback given on Wikipedia found that it does have an effect on the contribution of the feedback recipient. However, only specific types of feedback actually increase edits. Negative and directive feedback, comments that point out things that are not done well or those that recommend specific changes, increase editing, but only within the article that the feedback was given for. This explains why some of my classmate’s feedback did not inspire many changes, it was positive and social feedback that does not require a change. However, these types of feedback were found to increase overall motivation to edit other things on Wikipedia. The comments from classmates didn’t increase my overall commitment, because they are at the same level as me, and because they had to give that feedback as a class assignment. However, if a well-respected editor had given me similar feedback, it may have affected my overall feelings toward the community.

Perhaps if I had been an enthusiastic prospective member to Wikipedia, and had taken the time to research all of their guidelines and policies, I would have felt more at home editing in the community. However, I think that even if I were editing of my own volition, the lack of peer interaction and feedback would have made me reconsider how rewarding the experience was. If Wikipedia worked on its "onboarding" of newcomers, and helped them to become experienced editors, it would be a great improvement. It would also be helpful if there was a notification sent to an experienced editor or an administrator when a user edits more than 25 words for the first time. Then they would be able to reach out, and potentially make that user feel a stronger connection to the community.