User:Sarahnals


 * Hello my name is Sarah the Stark and I'm a student in Professor Reagle's Fall 2014 Online Communities class.--Sarahnals (talk) 17:25, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia Reflection
What exactly enables Wikipedia to work in social computing and computer-supported cooperative work context? The community’s desire and love of collaboration, the editor’s motivations, peer production affordances, and other social processes interact at multiple levels and in complex ways to enable the online encyclopedia. Joseph M. Reagle Jr. makes it clear in his book Good Faith Collaboration that Wikipedia article editors fulfill diverse and distinct collaboration roles, while different articles use different types of coordination. On joining Wikipedia, I became exposed to the site’s rules, articles, and its group-effort nature, and as I got to work on my article about the U.S. Radio Inspector Arthur Batcheller, I noticed that Wikipedia makes various efforts to promote collaboration. What I found interesting throughout my three-month-long initiation and involvement into Wikipedia's culture is that many Wikipedians will work together to create something incredible, which really make them want to stay and benefit in their community. Member retention, from my experience is not a problem once Wikipedia newcomers grasp the art of editing and contributing. Although these are great strength that Wikipedia has mastered, from my own personal experience I can maintain that the same can't be said about other important aspects that haven't quite made it there yet. These aspects include: New member recruitment, appreciation, and Wikilove throughout the Wikipedia community.

Collaboration
I can say for sure that the best thing Wikipedia has going for it, is its ability to encourage and influence collaboration on so many levels. As Reagle states, Wikipedia is able to facilitate this kind of collaboration through networking technology and its related collaborative techniques, persistent documentation and use of discussion pages and templates. After I posted Arthur Batcheller's page onto the Wikipedia Encyclopedia, I noticed that within weeks, the page had received multiple edits, although most of them minor, from individuals not within our classroom. The edits started off with my classmate Isabellemcelentano as was part of the assignment. Isabelle helped a lot with this project by editing many of the grammatical mistakes and provided me with great feedback and insight on Arthur's talk page. After her initial edits and feedback, I noticed that the page I had been working on was reviewed by our all-knowing Wikipedia whizz AmandaRR123. I've go to say that Amanda's feedback was instrumental in helping me really push my limits and improve my contributions to Wikipedia, which plays into Kraut and Resnick's designer claims in their book Building Successful Online Communities that "performance feedback, especially positive feedback, can enhance motivation to perform tasks." She left me a very helpful and informative note on my talk page and edited a lot of the information that was on Arthur's page, specifically citations. Surprisingly, as I noted before, after these initial edits by Isabelle and Amanda, I received many edits from individuals outside of my classroom. Most notable out of all them was Jvquid16, who made huge contributions on the Arthur Batcheller page I was working on by adding completely new information and posting an assessment note on the talk page. All of this really reaffirmed Wikipedia's collaboration community and how important it is for Wikipedians to keep this kind of mutual support for their society to thrive.

Member Retention
My journey with Wikipedia was rocky at first, but once I got a hang of things I noticed that editing and citing on Wikipedia is actually enjoyable. I know that might not be the same for everyone, but from my experience, I think that once new members have been initiated into the Wikipedia community and have collaborated once or twice, they will come to appreciate the opportunity to write something that thousands all over the world will be able to read and benefit from and this also affirms what Kraut and Resnick have stated in their book that "entry barriers for newcomers may cause those who join to be more committed to the group and contribute more to it." Because Wikipedia enlists a kind of identity-based attachment, Wikipedians will still continue to participate even if the community is faced with member turnover. Wikipedia editors are in it for the long haul, which really suggests that Wikipedia has done quite a good job at retaining their loyal members. I can see this through my experience with Wikipedia and having been through the hard first stage followed by an emergence into this kind of middle ground, where a contribution here and there is carried out. I'm not sure if I'll be able to start another page on a subject, unless I'm very interested in said subject, but I do see myself as maintaining my role as a minor editor in the Wikipedia community.

New Member Recruitment
After all the praise and wonder that I gave Wikipedia on their efforts on collaboration and retention, their efforts, however, on new member recruitment is lacking. Newcomers, newbies, newbs, the ones no one wants to deal with, are actually integral parts for the survival of online communities such as Wikipedia and unfortunately, Wikipedia has seen better days with regards to this. Working with newcomers is challenging to say the least, many don't have the patience and the strength to deal with their stupid questions, but to avoid member turnover, online communities should find ways to recruit them and to keep them. Wikipedia engages in a laissez-faire approach in which prospective members seek out or stumble upon a community. Although, countless of people do stumble upon Wikipedia, not many of them do so to join and that is a big problem that Wikipedia is facing. When learning that part of the class assignments was to create your own Wikipedia page, I was filled with an impending feeling of doom and that I think is what discourages many people to join. Wikipedia, at least to me, used to be this really hard combination of codes and citations that I would never figure out even if I tried. If Wikipedia employs strategic tactics to reverse this kind of thinking, it could really benefit the community. Wikipedia, as far as I know, does not utilize essential advertising techniques to get their membership up such as word-of-mouth and impersonal advertising. Using these advertising approaches combined with emphasizing the number of people already participating which motivates more to join, will definitely help Wikipedia in recruiting new members. It's important to note that introducing the new method of writing articles which is Edit Beta is a really good tactic that Wikipedia has been able to make use of, especially with decreasing the difficulty that newcomers might perceive upon joining Wikipedia. I just wish they would advertise it, so people could actually know about this new feature that I never knew existed.

Wikilove
Wikilove, a simple experiment in appreciation, is a tool that has been developed into a full feature on Wikipedia that enables users to send virtual tokens of thanks and rewards to their fellow Wikipedians. The notion sounds ingenious, but unfortunately the tool doesn't seem to be working for the Wikipedia culture. As part of the assignment, professor Reagleasked us to give out Wikilove to individuals outside of class, so I gave a pie to a random person and a kitten to Jvquid16 thanking him/her for his/her contribution on Arthur's page. I was dismayed to find that none of my efforts were reciprocated. It made me think that cats and pies were probably not that important and maybe not that valued by the members of Wikipedia. I did think about giving barnstars, but seeing as I'm a fairly new member, I wasn't sure how one would qualify for a barnstar. Overall, I found Wikilove to be ineffective for new members, but I do like the notion of barnstars and rewards that compliment people's efforts. Wikipedia could introduce newcomers to ways of identifying members that would be entitled to barnstars and other rewards.

Conclusion
My experience with Wikipedia was for the most part as intriguing as it was complex, but one thing stood out the most, which was that a collaborative community on Wikipedia is what drives the site. Wikipedia is built on collaboration and I could see that throughout my experience. I can also say, with certainty, that Wikipedia has succeeded in retaining me as a member of the community. The biggest problems with Wikipedia, was its strategies for recruiting new members and its role in appreciation and rewards, especially for newcomers. Overall, my experience was one that I never thought I could accomplish, but succeeded in doing so by the help of Professor Joseph Reagle, Amanda, and my peer Isabelle.