User:Srosemont/Report

Over the past month or so, I drafted a brand new article for Wikipedia about the Center for Gifted Studies. While we had the option to either edit an existing article, or write a new one, I found that it was hard to pinpoint an article that was already written but had plenty of room for improvement. I noticed that people seem pretty on top of editing articles that were lacking in content. As we learned in class, people who edit Wikipedia articles are most likely motivated by both extrinsic and intrinsic motivators, for they are benefitted personally by feelings of accomplishment, and they are also praised by the greater community and may gain a sense of status on Wikipedia if they edit a lot of articles and make themselves known. As far as my editing was concerned, I was originally motivated by extrinsic motivation; while I do not usually edit articles, I want to do well in this class. However, as time went on and I got more into the article, I realized I was starting to feel more extrinsically motivated; I wanted other people to like and enjoy reading my article, and to learn something from it.

As we also learned in class, the proportion of readers who contribute to Wikipedia has been declining fairly drastically over the past 10 years or so. In fact, only a small proportion of readers are active editors. That is where my first piece of advice to the Wikimedia Foundations comes into play. In my case, I had no idea that it was so easy to edit an article on Wikipedia. I had it in my head that you had to go through a long process of trainings and had to prove your academic credibility and become approved in order to be a Wikipedia editor. Therefore, in my head, the costs of going through that supposed process outweighed the benefits of getting involved in editing articles. I have a feeling that a lot of people who are readers on Wikipedia think the same way I do; they’re doing some research for a school project and see a typo but they don’t think twice about fixing it because they feel that the costs are too high. In light of that, I recommend that the Wikimedia Foundation and those who are already involved in editing in the Wikipedia community make it more obvious that editing a Wikipedia article is a simple and easy process. This could be done through advertising or simple pop-ups when one opens a Wikipedia article. Having more classes in schools, similar to COM 282, where students can learn early on that editing in Wikipedia is easy and accessible to all could also be helpful in accomplishing this goal.

Another piece of advice I have for the Wikimedia foundation is actually to introduce something similar to message walls. I feel that talk pages may scare some people away, seeing as they are in a format unlike most social media messaging sites that people use these days. I know I personally did not know talk pages existed before this class, and when I did look at them, I was overwhelmed by the code and the format used. In class, we looked at a case study done on 275 wikis where message walls were introduced. It was found that on average, people talked more, but they did not edit more content. I feel that the content is an issue of knowledge of how Wikipedia works, specifically of the accessibility, as I mentioned above. Unrelated to the content, I think message walls would help build a stronger community, and may enlist some new users through a more appealing setup. We talked in class about how socialization and bonding can lead to commitment, but what if it leads to bringing new people into the door? That could be a helpful first step. There is a technique talked about in psychology called the “Foot-In-The-Door” strategy. It’s basically what it sounds like; you get someone to agree to something small, just to get their foot in the door, and then you slowly add on more information or more requests to get them to continue on with what you are looking for from them. Message walls could be a solid way to get people’s foot in the door and then, once they are drawn in by the socialization, they may be more motivated to begin editing.

Overall, I enjoyed my experience with writing a Wikipedia article. I wish that we had seen a demonstration in class about making the article live, for that part was confusing to me and seemed very daunting, but otherwise I felt prepared to choose a topic and work on it. In hindsight, I would have chosen a topic with more sources. While I chose a topic that was on the requested articles page and found enough sources to make my article notable for Wikipedia’s standards, I struggled to find enough information outside of the organization’s website to include in my article. If I were to do this project again, I would either edit an existing article, so I knew for a fact that there were many sources on the topic, or I would do a more thorough search for sources before beginning my writing.