User:Tif0409/Win20 COM482 Wiki Report

Ting Yun Cheng

The 7-week Wikipedia project has been a unique and fun experience to support my learning of the online community. By incorporating in-class lectures with online training, it also improved my editing skills of articles. On top of that, I’ve learnt a lot during the quiz sections: the instruction was clear and the tips for polishing the article was particularly helpful. I enjoyed the peer-review and the discussion time with my classmates about our projects. Seeing work from others benefits my learning experience as well. Through the project, I’ve also noticed some of the pros and cons associated with the features of the Wikipedia community. As the class approached mid-quarter, I was able to apply my insights and evaluations to the community due to how the weekly assignments were designed. As a result, I can safely say that these factors greatly improved the Wikipedia experience for me.

The unique part of Wikipedia for me personally, is the fact that it covers so many topics and many people rely on it to learn the basic information and knowledge of a subject, while others use it as a starting point for their research. By having Wikipedia designed in a way that allows its users to easily edit content, it encourages people who come from different backgrounds to comment and share their opinions. These are the things that make it a great platform for people to get informed about the world. One of the features that I liked a lot is the talk page since it creates a space for users to discuss the changes they make and share their ideas. By creating a space for users to collaborate and discuss changes and ideas, I think Wikipedia has done a great job in promoting a free and equal space for everyone.

The article I chose was rated as stub, “Beef Noodles Soup.” There are several important things I applied when I edited and evaluated my article. First, the lead section must be clear and understandable. Second, the resources not only need to relate to the topic but credible. Third, adding images to each highlighted word will help readers understand better. Lastly, I had to make sure that I was neutral and careful with paraphrasing. Although the initial article had great content, there were some flaws: it didn’t have separated topics, lead, or clear organization of images. Therefore, I spent most of my efforts focused on editing these areas, in addition to adding more information to each existing section and providing external links to polish the article. The most important thing that I learned during the process of editing an article was that it required one to go through many trials and errors. Additionally, I’ve learned how to create a template, add images from creative commons, and create info box. After I finished editing the article, I came to an understanding of how editing an article on Wikipedia could be easy but challenging at the same time. It is easy because anyone can click on the edit button and change the content without permission. However, it is challenging in a sense that if the editor wanted to improve the articles, it requires time and effort to find good resources, reorganize, and add quality content to an article.

As I mentioned above, it is very simple to get started editing articles on Wikipedia and I understood why the administrator would design it this way: setting the standards low so that it welcomes people from everywhere to engage in an online community is definitely a smart way to get more people to join. However, I also think because of that, it will be more difficult to manage the quality of articles and possibly create too many articles which need more people to edit. During the lecture, we talked about how to maintain order in online communities. We learned that there are trolls, vandals, spammers who try to spread negativity or destroy the community in many ways. This would possibly discourage the experienced Wikipedia contributors who put in a lot of effort to create, edit, and or polish an article, to quit Wikipedia altogether. Therefore, I would suggest Wikipedia to set restrictions before letting people join the Wikipedia community. This could potentially deter or prevent bad behaviors, limit negative effects and maintain a positive reputation. (Norms and Regulation part II) For example, making the training on the Wiki Edu dashboard mandatory to every person who wants to join. In the training, there are some basic practices such as editing in sandbox, adding citations, and to complete each training there are some quizzes. Another thing that should be implemented is setting a rule for new users to only be able to access one training each day to avoid people who lack patience, don’t have good intentions, or try to rush through the process without learning the norms in the first place. This could possibly prevent bad behaviors and destroyers since they will most likely give up if they saw that it requires time and multiple steps to accomplish their goal. These things are necessary to achieve the goal of inviting more good quality editors that follow the norms and expectations of Wikipedia community.

Based on my experience with Wikipedia, I hope in the future there are more in-depth training for students on the wiki Edu dashboard. There are some functions, such as adding templates, magic words, and info boxes which were not mentioned in the training. It would be great to include a guideline, so students would be able to review on their own and improve better on editing skills. For newcomers it is especially important to help them build friendly interactions with existing community members, so they will be more likely to stay longer. Therefore, I suggest that on top of the welcome committee to greet newcomers, dividing new people in groups and assigning them a mentor to guide them will be encouraging. As for the people who volunteer as a mentor, Wikipedia can create special barn stars to reward them for their hard work. This could be an effective method to promote a healthy and collaborative online community.

To conclude, Wikipedia project was a valuable learning experience to me. Being able to apply my knowledge after class was very meaningful to me. I also found the weekly quiz section supported my completion of the article. Most importantly, the Wiki Edu dashboard was designed to make students feel comfortable learning as beginners, so I especially like that part. I hope my suggestions to Wikipedia would be helpful for the future design and would be glad if I can contribute back to the community where I’ve learned a lot from.