User:SterlingAC/Report

During Spring Quarter, my classmates and I that were enrolled in Communication Leadership’s, “Building Successful Online Communities” course signed up for Wikipedia’s Wiki Education project. Throughout the first few weeks of the quarter, my classmates and I participated in various trainings and exercises to get familiarized with the Wikipedia platform. At the end of the few weeks, we were tasked with creating a new Wikipedia article or expanding on an existing one. The goal of the project was to prepare each of us to be contributing members of the Wikipedia online community. After completing my final draft of the Wikipedia article that I expanded on, I feel accomplished, and I am grateful for the Wiki Education project and my course for their preparation and guidance over the past few weeks. After reflecting on my time spent navigating the Wiki Education dashboard and trainings, there are a few things I would recommend that the Wiki Education team should continue doing and a few things to consider revising or adding to best support future students that enroll in a course and participate in the trainings.

When I first began inside the Wiki Education project, I was anxious yet eager to see what this project would entail. We began in week one by initially setting up our account through the dashboard and on the Wikipedia website. Shortly after, I reviewed the Wikipedia policies and learned about sandboxes, talk pages and watchlists. I made sure to play close attention to the policies because I would never want to disrupt or violate any rules within an online community, especially one that has been so successful like Wikipedia. It was very important that we started out reviewing the policies before jumping in and learning about how to contribute to Wikipedia. It set the tone for what the remaining weeks could and would look like as we learn how to navigate the online community.

Week two kicked off by diving in deeper into the final project by learning how to find an article expand on later on, evaluating articles and learning how to edit in the two areas within Wikipedia, wikicode and visual editor. I started to feel overwhelmed because I was not sure what type of article to expand on and what kind of what would be expected of me in terms of expanding an existing article. At this time, I never imagined that I would ever be a contributor to such a well-known website and online community.

When we got to week three, we learned about how to add citations, how to draft an article in the Wikipedia Sandbox and what I would consider one of the most important lessons when contributing to Wikipedia, plagiarism. Because Wikipedia requires you to cite all your sources when you make a new point within a Wikipedia article, it was essential that we were provided when plenty of information on how to avoid plagiarism. I made sure to also pay close attention to this lesson because I did not want to violate any rules within Wikipedia and risk losing access to contribute to the site. By the end of week three, I was expected to have an article on my choice that I would expand on. I decided to choose “Crushed red pepper.” I went with this article because there was not a lot of information on the article so there was a lot of potential in terms of expanding the article. I have also always been interested in food and I wanted to choose a topic that fell underneath a category that I had an interest in. Also, crushed red pepper was listed as a stub article, contributes to my point of wanting to have the greatest potential to expand on an article. Initially, I was a little apprehensive because I was not sure how the research phase for finding information on crushed red pepper was going to go. I feared that I would end up having to find another article to expand on.

At the start of week four, I had my draft of the crushed red pepper article completed in my sandbox and ready for review. The additions I made to the article included a background, history and health benefits section After conducting research, I felt it was important to add more information about how red peppers came to be and the potential health benefits that they have. In order to add organization to the article, I broke up the information that I found into multiple sections and leave the header paragraph brief. This week, we had to peer review two articles. This was an exciting part of the project because it gave us an opportunity to connect with our classmates, learn about a topic that they decided to expand on and provide feedback into to make their article even better. I ended up receiving three peer reviews which was great to see. All three of my classmates provided me with excellent feedback that I was able to apply to my crushed red pepper draft. I appreciate their close eye to my writing and the credibility of my sources for the article. After I applied their suggestions to my article draft, I was ready for a final review from my instructor before I made my changes live. The training that was provided was helpful on how to peer review. It was important to for us to learn what is constructive feedback that did not focus on just the negative aspects of our classmate’s article draft. I also valued how the peer review was broken up into multiple sections, so it was easy to follow. While I was incorporating my classmate’s feedback, it was great to read what they enjoyed about my article.

Week five provided us an opportunity to respond to our classmates that peer reviewed our article draft. As previously mentioned, I was able to apply majority of the suggestions my classmates gave to me in their peer review. After thanking them for their suggestions and implementing their feedback, I completed the training around contributing images and media files. Although I found the training to be helpful, I did not find it necessary for my article. When I began to improve and expand on the article, there was already a sufficient photo attached. I personally did not find the need to add any additional imagery.

At week six, my final article revisions had been published to the main article page. I was very nervous yet excited to see my work published live on Wikipedia. It was something that I never expected that I would do but I am grateful for the opportunity to do so and to share with others the contributions that I made. After moving my changes to the live article, I deleted the maintenance tag that was originally on the article’s page because I felt that I had addressed the initial concerns that the tag mentioned. Then, I reached out to the WikiProject Food and Drink page to have my article reviewed to be upgraded from a stub article. I am hoping that the contributions that I made to the crushed red pepper article were enough to promote the article.

After reflecting on my experience throughout the past several weeks working on expanding an existing article in Wikipedia, there are a number of things I would recommend the Wiki Education team to continue doing and to consider adding or changing. First, I found it very helpful that the project began with reviewing Wikipedia’s policies. It’s important to familiarize a new member of a community with rules and guidelines to ensure that they do not enter the online community and potentially violate any rules. Next, having a Wiki Education staff member assigned to the course in order to ensure that new members of online communities feel supported and have someone they can reach out to for additional support. It can be intimidating joining a new community and immediately having to contribute without feeling oriented to it. In addition, I really enjoyed having to practice various ways of editing via the tutorials. This was a great way to get practice before having to do the real thing around my own article that I chose to expand on. It also takes into consideration how other students learn, which a lot learn by practicing.

In addition to the few things that the Wiki Education team should continue doing, there are a few suggestions to consider changing or adding. Starting off, I think it would be highly beneficial, in addition to the support that is already given, to provide a set of hours where there’s online chat. This will ensure that there is full support provided to students across the platform with immediate support. I believe it will also encourage more students to consider reaching out if they have questions. Next, I would spread out the plagiarism lesson across two or more weeks. After I completed the plagiarism section of the training, I felt intimidated to begin writing in fear that I would be violating rules around citing sources. There is a lot of information to cover, and it is important to make sure that new students feel like they have a good grasp on what is expected of them. To elaborate on this, it would be beneficial if the Wiki Education team provided more examples throughout the trainings to ensure that students understand what they are supposed to be doing. Within the examples, it would be great to see previous student examples to make it more relatable to the new student in the community.

Overall, I am thankful for having the experience to contribute to Wikipedia. I appreciate my instructor and the Wiki Education team for creating a platform for students to learn about Wikipedia and how best to contribute to a successful online community. I look forward to continuing to stay engaged with the platform.