User:Smaxine1/Report

Wikipedia is a platform that utilizes an encyclopedia format to build community between users, especially because of its collaborative nature. In my experience using Wikipedia, I have found that it's one of the most educational online communities. From this course, we have learned extensive amounts of information about the varying depths and strategies of building online communities. It's important to evaluate Wikipedia’s current state to continue improving its community and platform together. During my experience as a Wikipedia contributor, I found it to be beneficial and challenging at the same time. To improve Wikipedia it’s also important to consider and analyze commitment, motivations, and tradeoffs.

I found it to be beneficial when researching a topic of interest and learning more about Wikipedia as I continued to improve my article. However, it was challenging to understand because of its complicated website structure and extensive rules for contributing. To improve the website structure, Wikipedia should consider simplifying its guidelines and rules for contributing. For example, when contributing to talk pages versus sandbox user pages, I found it hard to navigate the website because they required different formats. Talk pages are formatted similarly to "source editing," whereas the article has the option to edit in “visual editing.” If Wikipedia could simplify its talk pages to a “visual editing” format, I believe users would be more inclined to use them. Talk pages are important for building Wikipedia's community because it’s a way for contributors to interact and collaborate.

When analyzing the commitment of Wikipedia users it's important to consider the multiple types of commitment which include affective, normative, and needs-based. Of these three types, I believe that each user commits for different reasons. However, I believe that the majority of Wikipedia users who contribute consistently are more likely to utilize affective identity-based commitment. Wikipedia takes time to learn and adjust, therefore repeat users may have previous knowledge of encyclopedia formats along with specific topics they want to write about. Because of this users can identify with the community by contributing to the larger concept of an encyclopedia. For those who use Wikipedia to simply read information, I believe they are committed to needs-based reasons. They may depend on it for background information for a research paper or to enhance their knowledge of a topic they enjoy reading. For readers, it may be costly to leave Wikipedia because they will lose an important source of information. To increase identity-based commitment, Wikipedia could require readers to fill out a questionnaire about their interests when signing up. Wikipedia can tailor the content of readers so that they continue using their platform to gain information on topics they care about. This could be formatted similarly to Reddit’s default subreddits because it helps involve new users quickly and effectively while increasing commitment.

Motivation is another factor that is important to understanding online communities and how to improve them. Wikipedia contributors are intrinsically motivated because of their desire to expand information and educate others on topics of their interest. To increase extrinsic motivation, Wikipedia could create a system in which contributors are recognized for their work. Their main page could include a short section about new contributions that were substantial to important articles. Since Wikipedia is not fully anonymous, it could be beneficial to include usernames to properly attribute and shout out contributions. Along with posting on their main website, they could take advantage of other social media platforms to increase visibility. By increasing the number of new users, it could encourage more participation, build community, and showcase success rates. However, this could lead to the tradeoff of burnout from moderators needing to regulate more content because of increased visibility.

Wikipedia does a good job of establishing detailed guidelines for its online platform, along with growing a successful community of authors. Understanding commitment is a major factor in online communities because it answers the simple question of why users join and stay, which helps improve strategies for attracting new users and maintaining previous users. Motivation is similarly important because Wikipedia can build on motivation strategies to increase community engagement. However, there are trade-offs between increasing commitment and motivation because experiences vary among participants. Although there are many ways to improve online communities, it is also important to consider potential consequences.