User:Sarahhelennicholson/Report

Sarah Nicholson

Communications 482

Wikipedia Reflection Assignment

Speaking on my experience growing up in the public school system, Wikipedia was always treated as taboo. We have all had it instilled in our brains from an early age to never use Wikipedia as a source in our academic work. Thus, I was quite surprised to learn I would be placing such a heavy focus on it in a college level class. Overall, my biggest takeaway from the work I did within the Wikipedia community was learning how much work truly goes into making an article credible and reliable. Thus, there must be a new narrative written for Wikipedia that allows students to fully take advantage of the mass resources it has available to them.

There are a multitude of factors that resulted in me in transforming my prejudiced opinions on what I believed was an unreliable source. This included the complex system that trains editors into producing the best content through Wiki Education. Wiki Education works to provide higher education students with the resources and knowledge to contribute their learning to the mass web. According to Wiki Education, “new editors recruited through Wiki Education account for 19% of new contributors to the English Wikipedia.” This is an extremely important note to focus on because almost one fifth of the work being distributed through Wikipedia is being produced by educated students who have undergone proper training on how to produce the best article that they can. Thus, a great deal of the content on Wikipedia has been edited and overseen by college professors and TA’s which results in a more dependable resource. This leaves us with the question of why college students cannot use the resources that their own peers and educators are providing. Another major factor that flipped my opinion on Wikipedia occurred when I learned how community based the website is. I believe there is a common misconception that Wikipedia allows for one person to write an entire biased article that will remain unchecked and will proclaim false information. However, this is extremely far from the truth of how the community members of Wikipedia are constantly working together and relying on each other to provide trustworthy and relevant information. Examples of this include the types of norms that are demonstrated in the community such as reciprocity norms and explicit norms. Reciprocity norms are one of the most important factors that keeps Wikipedia running smoothly as this concept of paying it forward and helping those who help you is how new editors are able to learn the ropes of the website without judgement. Explicit norms clearly stated for all contributors to follow include assuming good faith, remaining neutral, being bold, signing one’s message, and keeping the article notable. These five norms keep members in line by making it clear how they should be contributing to the platform.

Considering these factors that work together towards creating a reliable source of knowledge and information, my recommendation is to make it more massly known that Wikipedia is a trustworthy source. The most effective way to do this in my opinion is to rebrand Wikipedia and educate society on its operations. Although Wikipedia is a non-profit organization and might not have the highest level of funds available to them, I believe that advertising their website could be highly beneficial. Doing so on online platforms such as Hulu or Spotify would influence active online users to rethink their opinion of the website. It would also be beneficial to target college and high school students on websites like citationmachine.net or other citation making websites. This would allow for students to reconsider their prejudices of Wikipedia if they are exposed to its true nature.

My idea for Wikipedia’s rebranding through advertisements would incorporate our class concepts of motivating participation, portraying the reality of commitment on the platform, and most importantly showcase the strong regulation of the site through the community that prevents trolls from spreading false information. First of all, Wikipedia must motivate people to use its platform through persuasive techniques. This can be done by expressing how easy it can be to contribute to the wellbeing of the site through simple corrections, and giving examples of the benefits that come from becoming a part of the community that actively supports Wikipedia. Secondly, I think that placing an emphasis on the extremely strong community would influence a potential user to trust Wikipedia. It is through normative commitment that Wiki contributors work towards the common goal of providing the best information possible through the belief that they are working for the community. This class educated me on how there are so many boundaries in place to keep trolls from rampaging successfully on Wikipedia and that there are numerous checkpoints and community members consistently checking one another’s work to keep it accurate and reliable. Therefore, society must be made aware of these factors in order to start viewing Wikipedia as the magnificent source that it is. This can be emphasized through advertising that focuses on portraying the collaborative work that takes place when writing a Wiki page that shows the draft process in the sandbox, the conversations had in the talk page, and the ability for people to flag their articles so they can monitor the changes made to it in case a troll attempts to ruin their work or another editor makes an accidental mistake.

When attempting to research a topic, person, place, etc., the first source that comes up regarding the concept is almost always Wikipedia. However, our eyes have been trained to gloss over the source and find a different one. If I could change one thing about Wikipedia it would simply be to spread the word to society that the work that goes into creating an article is extensive and the narrative that it spreads misinformation is entirely false. There is a world of information at our fingertips, yet we have it ingrained in our brains to never use it.Thus, Wikipedia should make it a mission to flip this mindset in the brains of students, educators, and everyday people. Lastly, I did not think that there were any concepts that I needed to know that weren’t explained. I felt very prepared in working on my article.