User:Satorymae/Report

Prior to this class, I had absolutely no experience editing or contributing to Wikipedia. I did not know how the site worked, or how to navigate it as a contributor. Most of my interactions with Wikipedia were to collect quick information about something I knew little about. It was my go-to source for knowledge. For this assignment, I chose to make contributions to the existing Wikipedia page “Rap opera,” a hybrid genre of hip-hop/rap and classical opera. My experience with contributing to Wikipedia was neither negative nor positive. I found the experience rather neutral, as it felt a lot like writing a research paper. This was mainly because of all the rules, guidelines, and research needed to be done. On the other hand, I found the Wiki tasks were very helpful for navigation and technical purposes. Since Wikipedia has a lot of rules and guidelines about what should and should not be included in your article, it is helpful to have them clearly laid out for newcomers. For example, Wikipedia says that articles should be notable and have enough reliable and verifiable sources to create content. It should not be based off one or two journal articles and it should not be opinionated or biased.

The Wiki tasks were helpful but also had their flaws. The most helpful thing about it was the way it exemplified how to navigate Wikipedia in terms of editing and contributing, it gives you step by step instructions on where to go. It made the technical aspects of contributing less intimidating because it gave clear directions. On the other hand, there were more assigned Wiki tasks that went over rules and guidelines, as well as how to construct an article and assess whether the article is notable. I felt that the way these assignments were designed made the act of creating an article or editing an article really intimidating for a newcomer. This is one of the reasons I chose not to create a new article because I feared it would not be notable enough to others’ standards. Instead, I found a stub article and chose to contribute to it.

One assigned Wiki task briefly showed how to find an article that needs to be worked on, but I didn’t find it that helpful as I was still confused and overwhelmed with the massive archive of articles. There were so many stub articles that I didn’t know where to start or how to find categories I was interested in. The categories are organized alphabetically, so I scrolled through the list until I found a category that stuck out to me. I eventually landed on the music category, which then had a bunch of other specific categories that then withheld specific articles that needed work. I decided to choose “Rap opera,” a stub article, to contribute to because it had very little information on it. Initially, I was worried about sources because the article topic is generally new and didn’t have a lot of the recommended source types that Wikipedia urges you to use. Although I feel satisfied with the contributions I made to the article, I feel like I could have done a lot more had I not been so intimidated or in fear of deletion from other Wikipedia users.

The first recommendation I would give to Wikipedia is to make their website layout easier to navigate, as well as provide clear descriptions for all the different uses. For example, I initially found talk pages, sandboxes, and user talk pages hard to use because I wasn’t sure how to use each of them differently. I also felt this way about source editing and visual editing. In class, we talked a lot about how to encourage people to contribute to online communities like Wikipedia. A lot of claims talk about simplifying tasks and minimizing effort so users, especially newcomers, are more motivated to participate. I felt that the design and layout was out of date and I would have been able to do more if I understood the layout more. The lack of clarification on the actual Wikipedia website may be getting in the way of people trying to contribute. I recommend updating the design as well as providing explanations that could be helpful for newcomers.

The second recommendation I have for Wikipedia is to create a system that makes it easier to find articles to work on or articles that need to be created. In class and in the textbook, we discussed how to encourage contribution. In the book “Encouraging Contribution to Online Communities,” one of the design claims states that “providing easy-to-use tools for finding and tracking work that needs to be done increases the amount that gets done.” (pg. 27) I had a hard time finding an article to work on because the layout of Wikipedia is very dense with lots of information and links. It would be really cool if Wikipedia had a system that could take your interests and generate article ideas or existing articles that you could contribute to. If there was less effort required to find articles, people would be more likely to contribute to Wikipedia.