User:Salmanbinsultan/reflection

Wikipedia reflection paper
I really enjoyed the Wikipedia editing and writing my article was a lot of fun, it gave me an opportunity to research a topic that I am truly interested in. It was fairly challenging to write without analysis; instead, I had to simply talk about the facts and leave any opinions out of the article, and this was hard because we are always taught to be analytical and argumentative. For some reason however, I really enjoyed this style of writing, it was different in a good way, I enjoyed having to check and make sure that I did not give any personal opinions. I also think that Wikipedia does a really good job in creating a community that has specific rules such as leaving stamps or citing in a specific way, this made me feel like I am apart of a community, and I think this is a very good way to motivate people to stay on the community.

Wikipedia has established itself as one of the most exciting projects in the field of expanding human knowledge and revolutionizing communication. It prides itself on its open and its collaborative nature that invites people from all parts of the world to contribute to the accumulation of knowledge. However, the phenomenon of trolls who abuse Wikipedia’s norms is becoming a threat to the entire project and causing the introduction of some highly elitist measures on the part of some administrators, and that to me was the only negative from my experience in Wikipedia.

In this reflection, I will first explain some the norms of interaction among Wikipedia contributors and administrators and then explain, based on my personal experience, how frustration with trolls is beginning to undermine Wikipedia’s stated mission. At the end, I will talk briefly about the potential impact of cultural differences on this phenomenon, again based on a personal interaction on Wikipedia.

As a collaborative project, Wikipedia depends on a range of communicative principles embodied in its policies. In his article "'Be Nice': Wikipedia norms for supportive communication" Professor Reagle identified six basic norms, from Jack Gibb’s theory of Defensive Communication, that could be used to understand Wikipedia policies and norms. One of these basic norms is that Wikipedia supports empathy as opposed to neutrality. They invite different points of view to be included in the debate rather than trying to shut them down based on some supposedly neutral principle. This contradicts my Wikipedia experience, because I got my article deleted twice, without any talk or debate in the talk page of the article, I was not allowed to defend my point, nor was someone else allowed to come and in and give a third judgment or opinion on the matter. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ferris_Rafauli&action=edit&redlink=1 You can see through the link that the article's talk page is empty with no previous history at all.

Another basic norm that Professor Reagle talked about in his article is the principle of equality. This principle denies administrators any kind of additional power that they might use to stifle different voices, however again, this was not my experience, not only was my article taken down twice, but after the second time the article was flagged as protected meaning only open to be created by auto confirmed users. This to me removes the equality elements and adds a Wikipedia hierarchy. - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ferris_Rafauli&action=edit&redlink=1 In the article you can see that it was protected until October 3 2017.

The last norm from Professor Reagle’s article that I would like to talk about is the norm of provisionality. Every article is considered provisional and work-in-progress, even the most methodically written ones. This makes me wish that a more experienced user had edited my article to help guide me into the direction that they thought I should have gone. By moving my article to public space I not only make available for people to read, I actually call onto other users and people interested in the topic to come help me write it and make it as good as it can be. - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ferris_Rafauli&action=edit&redlink=1 Again we can see that no editing at all took place on my article when it was available in public space.

Also all contributors to Wikipedia are expected to embrace is the “Assume Good Faith” or (AGF) principle under which all contributions are considered to be works done with the best intentions. However my article was thought to be an advertisement and was flagged as unambiguous advertising, even though there is no reason for me to advertise this particular architectural designer. Had this administrator assumed good faith on my part, I have no doubt that he could have helped me improve my writing and produce a satisfactory piece.

However it is important to look at why the Wikipedia community reacts this way, and while these principles sound very compelling when considered in their abstract form, they run against some real difficulties when applied to a massive project like Wikipedia, which is open to everyone. As seen in Professor Reagle's article on Wikipedia norms the phenomenon of trolls or vandals is a great challenge to the Wikipedia community. Trolls and vandals are those contributors to Wikipedia whose main goal is to subvert this collaborative project by destroying the content generated by other users. There are various ways of doing this, but the most common ones include inserting false claims, which are often deliberately preposterous and obviously disingenuous. Many of them derive a certain pleasure from the frustration that they cause to other contributors and administrators as they struggle to handle these disingenuous moves while following the AGF principle. These frustrating debates have led to the rise of a certain kind of elitism among Wikipedia administrators that is comparable to the “Read the Fucking Manual” (RTFM) phenomenon present in many virtual communities. RTFM refers to a common response of by more experienced members to elementary questions asked by newcomers. Wikipedia administrators frustrated by the phenomenon of trolls and vandals are often all too quick to dismiss the efforts of newcomers by using similar response. This however helps me and new comers understand why certain users react to us in certain way. It is important to note that user (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Brookie) who deleted my article the second time left me a very welcoming message on my talk page, this administrator's page was much more welcoming to Wikipedia than previous pages I have seen.

Finally, I would like to point out that cultural differences within the Wikipedia community appear to be quite real especially when it comes to this phenomenon of elitism. Scholars have observed differences in attitudes expressed in Wikipedia contributions by authors who belong to different cultures. More specifically, it has been argued that these differences correlate with Hofstede’s dimensions of cultural influence, which include power distance, collectivism vs. individualism, femininity vs. masculinity and uncertainty avoidance. As an Arabic speaker, I viewed Arabic article on Wikipedia and just by doing that I received a message to welcome me to the community. I am not sure how this Arabic user found me, but I might have accidentally made an edit on one of the articles. The message I received was very welcoming and offered a lot of help on Wikipedia and how to go about the community. Interestingly, Arabic countries score very high on the power distance dimension, which would lead one to expect a higher level of elitism from the one found in English-speaking countries. But I think a major factor in this situation is the size of the community and the growth of it. The Arabic Wikipedia community is very small so its members are motivated to keep all the newcomers, which is why they are more patient. Also, it might be the case that the phenomenon of trolls and vandals is less common in Arabic Wikipedia which makes it easier for the more experienced users to welcome newcomers.

In conclusion, I would like to say that overall my experience on Wikipedia was great, and after looking at the discussion in this reflection, I now have a better understanding of why it may be frustrating to deal with trolls and how hard it is to not react in a very defensive matter. However Wikipedia must not surrender to the pressures posed by trolls and vandals whose goal it is to undermine it. It should try to be as patient and civil to its new comers because that they do not want to start losing their growth and become an isolated community. Salmanbinsultan (talk) 16:59, 6 April 2017 (UTC)