User:Shannclark/Reflection

Wikipedia has been a part of my life for longer than I can remember, helping me with projects throughout high school and college. Truth be told, I never thought much about where the content on Wikipedia came from, I just knew that it held pages upon pages of information about almost anything I needed to know. When I first found out that we were going to be working on the site and creating a Wikipedia article over the course of the semester, I was confused and worried. How could I create a factually correct page that anyone on the Internet has access to? It seemed like an intimidating project at the time. In addition, I didn’t understand how Wikipedia served as an online community. Sure, people go to Wikipedia to get information, but I did not envision the site to have any sort of community beyond the creation and maintaining of its content. But, over the past months, I have slowly grown to love the Wikipedia community and enjoy being an active participant. My love for Wikipedia has been fostered by relational commitment, collaboration, and gratitude. In this reflection, I will discuss my experience with Wikipedia, including my opinion of the site’s strengths and shortcomings in terms of an online community.

Community and Collaboration
Professor Reagle provided us with a steady and structured transition to the Wikipedia world. We started off completing a tutorial, which was helpful. Once we completed the tutorial, we began writing Questions, Insights, and Connections (QICs) for class. The QICs allowed me to apply some of the stylistic and formatting tricks I learned in the tutorial in a safe and closed community. We began creating our articles in our sandboxes, and developed them for a few weeks before moving them to the main space. Kraut and Resnick (2011) state in one of their design claims that “Sandboxes both speed up the learning process for newcomers and reduce the harm to the community that newcomers might otherwise cause” (p. 219). Working in the sandbox allowed me to avoid getting tagged for a lot of problems and make sure my article was up to Wikipedia’s standards before pushing it public and potentially having it deleted.

Overall, I was happy with the way I was able to develop my article (Gay and Lesbian Labor Activists Network) within the sandbox. But, once my article was live in Wikipedia’s main space, I was nervous about what my fellow Wikipedians would think of my page and the content. After I pushed the article public, I got two tags on my page: an orphan tag and a “relies too heavily on primary sources” tag. At first, the tags were overwhelming, but as I read through the requirements, I realized that adding in more links and secondary sources was very doable. Wikipedians and bots made smaller edits to my page, which I appreciated a lot. One of the reasons I have grown so fond of Wikipedia is because of the collaborative culture and open community. Although there are always exceptions, Wikipedians really respect the site’s “Don’t Bite the Newcomers” policy. In his book Good Faith Collaboration, Joseph Reagle (2010) discusses collaboration within the Wikipedia community, saying "In the case of the English Wikipedia, there is a collaborative culture that asks its participants to assume two postures: a stance of neutral point of view on matters of knowledge, and a stance of good faith toward one's fellow contributors." I found that myself, as well as my classmates, had pleasant and constructive interactions with more seasoned Wikipedia users, who were respectful and knowledgeable in their changes. Wikipedians do not generally mean to offend, they just want to work towards Wikipedia’s goals and five pillars.

In their chapter about regulating online behavior, Kraut and Resnick (2011) discuss moderation decisions, stating “Consistently applied moderation criteria, a chance to argue one’s case, and appeal procedures increase the legitimacy and thus the effectiveness of moderation decisions” (p. 133). Even if a user’s page is up for deletion, they have the chance to prove why the page deserves to stay on Wikipedia. Wikipedians have proved to be extremely consistent and respectful in their moderation, and in return, I have had more respect for their edits. Bots also help keep Wikipedia pages consistent, and are very effective editors – Yobot made some changes to my page [1 ], as well as BG19bot [2 ]. Both were able to edit small formatting and citation problems that I wouldn’t have picked up as a new Wiki user.

My commitment as well as other members’ commitment to Wikipedia goes hand-in-hand with their collaboration model. In my opinion, Wikipedia fosters both identity-based affective commitment, as well as bond-based identity commitment. Kraut and Resnick (2011) discuss both commitments, saying “Identity-based affective commitment is a feeling of being part of the community and helping to fulfill its mission. In contrast, bond-based affective commitment is feeling close to individual members of the group” (p. 79). During my time on Wikipedia, I have felt like I have helped fulfill Wikipedia’s mission by following the site’s pillars and instructions, and I also feel like I have interacted with individual members. The sharing of Wikilove and barnstars allow you to form close relationships with individual members, as well as share gratitude. This level of collaboration and gratitude for both identity-based commitments and bonds-based commitments has strengthened my overall commitment to Wikipedia. Overall, the Wikipedia community has been the most exciting aspect throughout this project for me. I love signing on and checking my page, as well as scrolling through others' pages.

The Occasional Downfall
In their chapter about newcomers in an online community, Kraut and Resnick (2011) discuss the five basic problems that online communities face when dealing with newcomers, which are recruitment, selection, retention, socialization, and protection (p. 180). My experience was different because I was required to be a part of Wikipedia for my class, but I think that the site struggles with recruitment, selection, and retention. Before taking Online Communities, I never once saw anything about joining Wikipedia while I was on the site. In addition, I never see any talk outside of Wikipedia from users or advertisers about creating an account and contributing to the site. I think recruiting and selecting are very important to growing an online community, and although Wikipedia may not have much ability to select users, they can do a lot more in terms of recruitment. As far as retention goes, Wikipedia engages new users by the standard patrolling, as well as interactions on any of their content, but it might be helpful to assign a mentor to new users so they can learn about the site and stick to it. Although I may not create any more pages, I will definitely stick around the Wikipedia community.

Wikipedia also has a large collection size, defined by Kraut and Resnick (2011) as the number of new opportunities on an online community since the last visit (p. 234), and high navigation costs, the cost of getting the space and waiting for content to display (p.234). There are millions of articles, and sometimes it's hard to find the exact article you need, or the information you need within the specific article. I often struggled to find user pages or Wikipedia how-to pages. As a newcomer, it is going to take you even longer to navigate a site, so I found the large collection size and high navigation cost very frustrating at times. Wikipedia aids user navigation with the usage of categories in articles, but sometimes those don't help as much as they could. Some disambiguation pages can be tricky to navigate, too (ironically, disambiguation also has a disambiguation page). Wikipedia could benefit from creating a more advanced categorization system with more tags and keywords.

Conclusion
Overall, I really enjoyed my experience on Wikipedia. Although the site has things that it could improve on, I found a lot of enjoyment in Wikipedia's collaboration and community, and those will definitely keep me engaged in the site. I must acknowledge that I was lucky to have a smooth and well-structured Wiki on-boarding process - if I hadn't gotten the same experience, or had come in as a newcomer with no classroom, professor, or librarian and Wikipedian to fall back on, I know I would not have had the same experience. Regardless, I went from a hesitant Wikipedia outsider to a self-proclaimed Wikipedian! And that fact that I can publicly call myself a Wikipedian means that it must have been a good experience. -Shannclark (talk) 04:13, 7 April 2015 (UTC)