User:SammiMaloney/report

The Wikipedia community is a tight-knit community of users who are passionate about contributing to Wikipedia for the greater good. However, this community can be extremely intimidating to join. Without this class, I don’t know if I would have ever been confident enough to join this community and contribute to it. As a newcomer, I really did not understand what my role would be or how I would fit into this community. This is an obstacle many newcomers to online communities have as they are entering a new community that has its own set of norms and standards (Kraut and Resnick, 179). Luckily I had this class to show me the ropes and help me get comfortable, but a piece of advice I have for the Wikimedia Foundation is to make the process of joining the community less intimidating. I personally love taking online skills courses, so whether it be creating a course someone can take or a mentorship program that walks them through the steps, I think people would be more inclined to give it a try. Without taking a class about it, I do not think I would have even ever known about all of the opportunities to create and edit on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is much more than simply adding information, and I don’t believe many people understand it beyond it being a platform where people add information for others to consume. However, one important aspect of Wikipedia that sets it apart from its competitors is its easy access for all users. Unlike many online communities, there is no set of requirements the user must fulfill in order to be accepted into the community (Hill and Shaw). Because it is easy to access, there is a lot of traffic of newcomers, but there needs to be an incentive for them to stay. There are many steps that go into the Wikipedia editing process, including extensive research using verified sources. In my experience, it takes a lot of time to properly research the content and write about it, meaning the user must have the motivation to put in the proper work. Because people do not make money off of Wikipedia, people must be motivated by the pride in assisting the community in a way that often goes unrecognized. There are some service awards that can be earned, but most of the motivation must come intrinsically through a user’s desire to learn new information and share it with the world (Kraut and Resnick, 23). Without the motivation of wanting to be a part of the community, it is hard to ensure that newcomers will stick around in the future.

Before taking this course, I had very little experience in Wikipedia. Throughout my K-12 academic career, my teachers were very vocal about their distrust for the information on Wikipedia, so I had been trained not to rely on Wikipedia. When wanting to learn a quick piece of information or an answer to a question, I would use Wikipedia, but I had always had doubt in the back of my mind. The argument they had always used was anyone can edit Wikipedia and therefore there is no way to determine whether the information is correct. While, in a sense that is true, there is much more to Wikipedia than just adding information. There is a community of people ready to hold users accountable and ensure that all of the information being submitted is accurate (Hill and Shaw). Wikipedia is nothing like other social platforms where people can write whatever they want without being corrected, as people are constantly checking and editing each other’s work to ensure that the information is correct and they have the power to change what is wrong. Now I understand that the information on Wikipedia is thoroughly researched and thought out by people who are committed to sharing information with the rest of the world.

However, it also taught me one of the most difficult aspects of being a part of a collaborative online community. Once I made my article go live, I was excited about others being able to benefit from all of the work I put into it. I had received feedback from my peers and was able to implement some suggestions they had. However, within two days of posting my article, it was substantially changed by another member of the Wikipedia community. At first, this was a shock and I was pretty upset about most of my work getting eliminated. It was tough to see that many of the articles I spent a lot of time researching were gone and that a good amount of what I had written was gone. While the ideas I presented are still there, it was hard for me to accept that this editing process is a part of the overall process. It gives me a better understanding of how the articles are polished and how the community works together to build on and critique each other’s work.

As someone who has gotten to experience a course on how to be a successful Wikipedian, I think that is something that can benefit anyone who is thinking about trying out Wikipedia. It can be hard to learn the norms of the community, but having a guide is a great asset for someone who needs help getting comfortable. Getting comfortable with Wikipedia comes from experience, but having some help could get people comfortable faster, and encourage them to stay committed to Wikipedia in the long run. I was lucky enough to have a group of people all learning at the same time and instructors to answer any questions, and while there does not need to be a live class, any form of instruction could be a powerful tool. Wikipedia is a great opportunity for people to collaborate and help out the greater good, so making ways to help people learn how to be a positive Wikipedian without disturbing the norms in place would be a great addition to the platform.

Works Cited

Building Successful Online Communities : Evidence-Based Social Design, MIT Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=3339407.

Hill, Benjamin Mako, and Aaron Shaw. “The Hidden Costs of Requiring Accounts: Quasi-Experimental Evidence From Peer Production.” Communication Research, vol. 48, no. 6, Aug. 2021, pp. 771–795, doi:10.1177/0093650220910345.