User:SyNick/Report

Wikipedia Reflection Report
Wikipedia has proven itself to be one of the world’s largest and most successful online communities, yet in recent years it has seen a decrease in participation. During my experience as a newcomer to Wikipedia I have had the opportunity to learn and engage within its community and understand the ways in which it can improve. From my experience with Wikipedia’s online community, I believe it can improve by addressing the weaknesses of community motivation and commitment. Currently, there are 38,342,499 Wikipedia users, which can make it difficult for users to feel as though they can develop bond-based commitments or start contributing as a significant editor and or writer within the community. However, by collecting more information from users and using that information to help bring people and topics together, I believe Wikipedia can further expand and enhance its online community.

My experience with Wikipedia began with our online class modules and training sessions. These learning opportunities provided the class with crucial information regarding how to approach editing and writing an article appropriately on Wikipedia. Although not every user of Wikipedia experiences this process, the training provided a version of formal mentorship which could benefit users’ commitment to Wikipedia overall. The Wikipedia Stub I had selected to edit was Eisenhower High School (Yakima, WA). This article discussed a high school from my hometown, but only with limited information at the time. I chose this article because I saw this as an opportunity to engage with members of my hometown community online. After I had made my edits, and made my article live user: ShelfShewed had also contributed to the article - even with the article being silent for several months. From here, there were no discussions on the talk page, and there has not been any further activity since. The size of the community and the amount of topics on the online encyclopedia can make it difficult for users to feel significant as a member of Wikipedia. The largest takeaway from my personal experience relates to the themes of motivation and commitment from the course textbook, “Building Successful Online Communities.” Questions arise such as: How can Wikipedia motivate newcomers and keep them around? How can Wikipedia develop bond-based affective commitment? And how can Wikipedia make all of these things convenient for community members to engage with?

Starting with the last question, I believe it is important for Wikipedia to obtain information from its online community members. Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation would significantly benefit from providing its community with a survey to develop an understanding of what topics members would be interested in contributing with. The survey would comprise of questions about the user and their interests so that Wikipedia could make recommendations on where these users could become most involved. For example, users interested in NFL Football may be recommended to assist relevant NFL Football Wikipedia stubs or to engage in a particular talk page to provide appropriate information on a heavily debated topic. The online community Facebook has a similar process upon searching for FaceBook Groups to join. By clicking the discovery tab, Facebook is able to use your prior information to make recommendations to several communities you may want to participate in.

By creating a more interactive space through recommendations, Wikipedia would also be catering to the motivation of its users. “Ask and Ye Shall Receive,” in Building Successful Online Communities, it is stated that listing potential contributions, making it easy to find things to do, and reaching out to specific people with appropriate tasks all contribute towards users’ motivation and results in community participation. Through this user survey, Wikipedia could achieve in executing all three of these concepts through a monthly email or even basic notifications on the site itself. This could then eliminate the process of filtering through Wikipedia stubs, or the endlessly amount of researching for a topic to address as a users’ next community contribution. Instead, Wikipedia recommendations could motivate users to further contribute in areas they are most interested in. Additionally, through this process, Wikipedia would be asking for user contributions more effectively. Notifications to users would state recommended articles to contribute to and what the goal of the contributions are, whether that entails adding to a stub article, finding citations for a lower quality article, or even proof reading a recently edited article. In turn, the survey could increase the quality of articles by increasing the motivation of its users.

Creating a survey also has the potential to increase commitment amongst Wikipedia users, new and old. Recommendations from the survey could help outline and provide an experience that meets the motivations of users. Ideally, as users continue to engage with their motivations, they will begin to develop an identity-based relationship with the community and will continue to participate and strengthen the community from multiple perspectives such normative and need-based standpoints.

There are several trade-offs that come with asking Wikipedia users for information. Technological integration of the survey will need to be implemented by administrators who may not be willing to maintain such a service. This will include the problem-solving to appropriately filter specific articles. Also, implications about how existing members will respond to the change is important to consider so that they also will benefit from the change and not leave during the transition.

Despite existing trade-offs, implementing a survey for Wikipedia users has great potential to increase their motivations and commitment to the community as a whole. Wikipedia’s survey would provide users the opportunity to engage in the topics that they are most interested in while knowingly accomplishing the set goals by the online community. Overall the experience will capitalize on catering to user motivations to create user commitment and thus results in a quality and ever-improving online encyclopedia.