User:TKUW/report

I was honored to see an article I worked on go live. I told my co-work to search Tyee high school on google and when she did, she saw the photos and sections I edited. The feedback I received from her was amazing. If I wasn’t exposed to Wikipedia through this class, I would have never thought about the community at all. I have heard people say anyone can edit but I didn’t know anyone can actually edit. So many people know anyone can edit but they don’t know what to do to make actual editing. It is truly an amazing experience. I have learned that Wikipedia is a platform that I can go on and make edits to make articles better and the best thing about it is that there are norms I need to follow. Seeing those norms in place made me think that the platform isn’t for anybody to edit but for those who want to make an article better, it’s professional. Those norms are not limitations but instead, they’re guidance to help editors do it correctly. Whenever I hear people say, Wikipedia is not a reliable source since anyone can contribute, I thought it was just a place random people can do whatever they want. I didn’t even know creating an account was necessary. This leads me to something I believe Wikipedia needs to work on, marketing. I know Wikipedia is known all over the world but I believe there is a misunderstanding on the purpose of the community. The majority of people think the community is just existing and you can’t really go there to find information. Speaking from personal experience, I would search for something on Google and most of the time, Wikipedia is the first source that comes up. Honestly speaking, I wouldn’t click on the link to go to Wikipedia and read the article because of what I was taught, it’s untrustworthy. This image about the community needs to change. Wikipedia needs to market, not the site but the purpose of the community and how it is not what others say. Now, I am afraid that people won’t read the article I worked on because it’s on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is beyond an internet platform, it’s a community where people are willing to make articles better and more reliable. Some people could unknowingly or on purpose mess up articles but knowing that there is a team always watching over what has been done and if it has been done correctly makes me feel comfortable. Those people are the public and also the Wikipedia team.

The other feedback or comment I have is, signing up to the community should be more strict. I know this could be a pushing factor but the positive effect of it weighs more. If people use their date of birth, email, birth country, and first and last name, this will make them think the site is serious about what is being done by the users. I believe this will make them take the community seriously because they know how to care when creating new articles or making corrections to existing articles. This might push some users away but those who pass through that process and sign up, they will do a great contribution. This takes us back to the topic we talked about in class, quality over quantity. Instead of having a big number of contributors, it’s better to have fewer but well-equipped and educated contributors. Now, Wiki needs to think about what is something that will motivate them to pass through that process and contribute. There should be an extrinsic motivation for members to start and continue editing. The only reason I went through editing an article is because of my grade. In this case, my grade was my extrinsic motivation but moving forward I don’t know if I would be able to gain anything for investing my time in contributing to the community beside my intrinsic motivation of feeling good. If there are any kind of rewards such as money, credits, or even scholarship opportunities to honor contributors, this would motivate so many people around the world to contribute to the community. Many people are taking loans to go to college and if they can earn scholarships by joining and contributing to the community, this will make the community more trustworthy and reliable.

The one thing I really love about the Wikipedia community is the citation process. When I first heard that we had to cite sources, I thought we had to use MLA or APA citation format and go through the process but having the system where contributors only need to paste the link to sources and generate the citations automatically makes the process very easy. If this part of the process was long, I would have gotten bored or lost interest because of the number of sources I had to add to my article. However, one thing that I really struggled with was uploading an image that wasn’t mine. It is a whole different process to upload a photo that isn’t your own. I wanted to upload a photo of the high schools I was working on but because uploading a photo that isn’t mine was more complicated than uploading my own, I chose to skip that part. I believe I am not the only person who encountered this. So, maybe having a system that is much simpler than the process that is currently in place will help new users get familiar easily.

The one reason why my recommendation should be taken into consideration is that I was able to learn about the community in my Communication class and also make contributions. So, since I have some knowledge about what a community should look like and what participants, mostly newcomers, look for when entering a community. As we learned, it is important to maintain the community's mission throughout the community's life. So, my comments and feedback come from personal experience.