User:Shy63/Report

COM 482

Wikipedia Reflection Essay, Takikomi Gohan

Wikipedia is well known as an internet encyclopedia which anyone can contribute to. However, there are a lot of policies and a process that editors need to follow in order to make successful articles. Even though Wikipedia has a wide range subjects that are informational, there are still lots of subjects that are not developed by wikipedians yet. Based on my experiences through the Wiki education courses and my attempts to improve a stub article taught me that there are reasons why wikipedia has a lot of undeveloped articles. I believe that if wikipedia changes the narrative of editing articles and focuses more on targeting wikipedians and advertising more to gather newcomers that are willing to contribute to and improve the articles, wikipedia will have more informational articles.

Becoming a new wikipedian was not as easy as I anticipated it to be. When I started learning the wikipedia community, I was surprised to find out that there are so many policies and rules to follow in order to become a successful wikipedian. I was trying to follow their rules, in order to not distract the community. The most difficult thing about following their policy was that I was not able to copy sentences with citations or translate word by word. I basically needed to search resources and understand the content of the resources to create a whole different sentence with the same meaning. I needed to use mostly Japanese sources due to my topic, Toakikomi Gohan, thus it was difficult for me to see if I was following their rules which prohibit translating sentences. During the editing phases, I used my intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to improve a stub article. My intrinsic motivation was to represent my culture to the U.S wikipedia users by improving the article. Readers will have a better understanding of Japanese food, Takikomi Gohan, and the people who use the U.S. wikipedia can learn what Takikomi gohan is. On the other hand, my extrinsic motivation was to get a good grade from my class. During the process of editing my assigned article, I learned that being able to contribute to this community once I had an understanding of the basic protocols of wikipedia was easy to do. It is because there is no restriction towards resources. They suggested that I use textbooks or any trustworthy articles, however, it was not required. I realized that due to the easier contribution processes, it results in an increased number of stub articles.

Having a lot of undeveloped articles and no restrictions of resources makes wikipedia look like an untrustable website. Wikipedia is not trusted by higher educators such as college professors and teachers because any wikipedian can create new articles with no cost and there is no required length or depth of content. Wikipedia is picking broader niches to expand their community. It is working for them to grow their platform, however, their content for the most part is at various levels of developments. In order to prevent having a lot of undeveloped articles, and create a stronger community within Wikipedia, I suggest they create group projects with at least one expert of the subjects towards undeveloped articles or elite wikipedians. First, wikipedia needs to find experts who are willing to devote their time into developing articles on wikipedia. It could be hard to find them since there won’t be any compensation. However, they can reach out to accomplished wikipedians who have elite status in the wikipedia community such as having barnstars, certified wikipedia editors or Wiki education workers. They might not have knowledge of the topics like the experts have, however, they know how to develop articles into quality and informational content.

Second, they should assign a group based on identities. They should advertise a project proposal through emails and social media to recruit newcomers and wikipedians who are interested in the topic that the group is trying to work on. I suggest having no more than 50 members in the group because having a lot of people in the group discourages people from participating, having too many different opinions towards the subjects and it makes it difficult for them to bond with each other. Forming a smaller community to work on specific projects makes participants contribute with intrinsic motivation for the long run. However, they might need to start with extrinsic motivations to encourage members to contribute until they feel comfortable and identified as one of members in the group. Until they are fully committed to the group, Wikipedia should create a special barnstar which is to represent their contributions to the group projects as extrinsic motivation. Earning the barnstar should be based on how much effort these members put in and measured by the quality of the content. I also suggest having a talk page beside the talk page they already have. They should create a posting page like reddit or stack exchange for the group to communicate easier, and upvote and downvote their ideas to put into their articles. Having better communication between members makes a stronger connection and bond. Therefore, it is not only beneficial for the project that they are working on, but also it is a higher chance for them to work on different articles as a group in the future.

All in all, taking the wiki education courses and having any experience of editing and improving wikipedia articles makes my opinion more credible than other newcomers. Following Wikipedia policies was not familiar to work with, however, my experience with Wikipedia made me think how Wikipedia should take action in order to improve and a way to have more credibility by creating group projects for undeveloped topics. Using knowledge from the course materials and examples from existing successful online communities to support my suggestions make my points stronger. Wikipedia is an open source online platform, but if they adapt my idea, it is possible to gain more newcomers and increase developed articles.