User:Ryan Phang/Report

Over the past 20 years, Wikipedia has fostered a large and productive online community of editors, all contributing to the singular goal of creating the most comprehensive free encyclopedia. The Wikimedia Foundation has undoubtedly succeeded in this goal, but the encyclopedia still has shortcomings. The number of active editors has fallen from its peak in the late 2000s and has largely plateaued since the early 2010s, while page views have increased around 25% since 2016. There are many factors responsible for the editor shortfall. As a new Wikipedia editor, certain hurdles became apparent in contributing to the need for new editors.

Throughout the past month, as I familiarized myself with Wikipedia and began writing and editing articles, I found a variety of obstacles that hindered what seemed to be a trivial objective. Even before I started writing my article, I found selecting a topic to be difficult. While Wikipedia does have a list of requested articles and “stub” articles that need improvement, the vast quantity of articles, even when organized by topic and alphabetical order, were difficult to sift through. I spent more time searching for articles than writing briefings for each of the three articles required in an article critique assignment. My first proposition to improve Wikipedia is to create a streamlined system for finding articles that need work or are most requested. In essence, this proposition centers on design claim two for fostering participation in Kruat and Resnick’s “Building Successful Online Communities,” which states, “Providing easy-to-use tools for finding and tracking work that needs to be done increases the amount that gets done.” I envision a system wherein Wikipedia readers would be prompted with a brief questionnaire at the bottom of each article or as a pop-up. A few questions along the lines of, “Does the article need more information?” or “Did you find this article helpful?” or “Give feedback on this article” would be asked, and the information aggregated. Based on both the volume of responses, the positivity or negativity of these responses, and the page visits of the article, an algorithm could sort articles by category and urgency of editing need. This would vastly streamline the process of finding articles to edit. A similar system for requested articles could be implemented based on the amount of links from other articles and searches for the article within Wikipedia. In conjunction with an algorithmic system of articles in need, Wikipedia editors could have the option to “subscribe” to topics of interest, which would display an individualized list of articles in need of work only in topics they were subscribed to. This secondary system would help fulfill design claims three and four of Kruat and Resnick stating that, “Compared to asking people at random, asking people to perform tasks that interest them and that they can perform increases contributions.” and “Compared to broadcasting requirements for contribution to all community members, asking specific people to make contributions increases the likelihood that they will do so.” respectively. Streamlining the process of article discovery will undoubtedly bolster the amount of contribution and participation to Wikipedia.

Once I found an article I wanted to write, the next hurdle I had to overcome was learning to edit and write a Wikipedia-acceptable format. While I had the luxury of having a course on how to edit Wikipedia and an experienced editor to ask if I had questions, those are not luxuries many new editors have. Wikipedia does have a short tutorial on how to edit the site, but in the time I spent browsing, I found it difficult to navigate as it spread amongst many different pages and areas. I also did not feel a sense of community when I began editing; experienced Wikipedia editors may have a community aspect, but new editors would need to edit a significant amount before gaining access to the community. Therefore, a new system to train and welcome new Wikipedia editors is needed, especially one that fosters a sense of community. To start, having a dedicated space that is easy to find for new editors is key. This section of the site could host tutorials similar to those on Wikiedu, as well as videos demonstrating how to edit Wikipedia. This section would strongly mimic the Wikiedu dashboard, breaking up creating or editing an article into small simple steps. This fulfills design claim five, “Simple requests lead to more compliance than do lengthy and complex ones for decisions about which members do not care strongly.” This “dashboard” would also host the list of articles that need improvement and an area to choose topics of interest. Even more importantly, this area could be a hub to foster community engagement amongst editors. A simple question-and-answer system could help new editors learn how to edit through connections with established and experienced editors. The implementation can be broad, whether a Yelp-styled question and answer board or a discord-styled chatroom, the goal is to facilitate positive interaction and fulfill design claim 18, “When newcomers have friendly interactions with existing community members soon after joining a community, they are more likely to stay longer and contribute more.” In combination with this, editors could volunteer to be a part of this, training committee to fulfill design claim 20, “Design Claim 20 Assigning the responsibilities of having friendly interactions with newcomers to particular community members increases the frequency of these interactions.” Opening up a version of the Wikiedu classroom dashboard would help foster a strong sense of community and engage newcomers.

After writing my article, a system for feedback through peer editing proved immensely helpful in further understanding the norms of the website. It allowed me to understand the conventions of Wikipedia, and improve my article as a whole. A peer review system for new editors could speed up the learning curve for new editors and incentivize them to participate more. Therefore I propose a peer review system within the “Editor dashboard” that would voluntarily allow editors to post their articles in sandbox form to other editors to peer review and edit. This would give new editors feedback for their work which fulfills design claims 15 and 18; “Goals have greater effects when people receive frequent feedback about their performance concerning the goals.”; “Performance feedback — especially positive feedback — can enhance motivation to perform tasks.” In conjunction with reader-generated feedback through the above-mentioned article questionnaire, the total output of feedback would drastically increase leading to more participation.

To facilitate increased participation requirements, a simple incentive structure could be implemented. In essence, this would be a gamification of Wikipedia. The issues with gamification largely arise when users subvert the system by performing counterfeit actions to gain incentive rewards without actually putting in quality contributions (design claim 25). Therefore the incentive system must function similarly to or be an extension of the Barnstar system where the reward is only significant within the context of Wikipedia and is a performance rather than quantity-based incentive. Design claim 26 claims, “Rewards that are task-contingent but not performance-contingent lead to members gaming the system by performing the tasks with low effort,” thus quality-based rewards are critical. A Barnstar that can only be given to editors who peer review new editor’s articles, or one only able to be given out by new editors, could introduce new editors to the Barnstar system while rewarding established editors for helping new editors. This would foster community growth and connection while incentivizing new and old editors to contribute more.

As a new editor of Wikipedia, I found the experience intrinsically rewarding. It was rewarding in and of itself to contribute to an encyclopedia of human knowledge and give back to a website I’ve long frequented. While the experience was enjoyable, some obstacles hindered my participation and made community connection difficult. However, a system similar to Wikiedu’s dashboard for all new editors could help facilitate communication between new and old editors. Further integrating a data-based algorithmic article suggestion system could streamline the process of new users finding articles to edit. These changes could result in attracting a vast amount of new editors and foster a sense of community for each editor, improving Wikipedia as a whole in the process.