User:UWCLStudentSpring2021/Report

The mission of Wiki Education is simple. It “engages students and academics to improve Wikipedia, enrich student learning, and build a more informed public.” Their goal is to train people during a seven-week course designed to teach them the rules, mechanics and tools used to update and create Wikipedia articles. Wiki Education’s influence on creating content for Wikipedia is huge. Students enrolled in this program have contributed 76 million words in over 102,000 articles.

The organization has three strategic goals that are focused on improving Wikipedia and Wikidata’s equity, quality and reach. Wiki Education has clear success measures for the strategic objectives that make up each of these goals. They want to recruit more diverse volunteers to contribute their time and effort to make the content better and more complete. As they state, “we’re the only organization that can improve Wikipedia and Wikidata at scale.” Their focus is on training more people so they can produce more content.

Nowhere in their strategy do they state that they want to retain these new contributors after they have completed the course. There is not a single success metric around retaining Wiki Education students. The organization is focused on training, but not retaining its students. Therefore, their curriculum is solely designed around teaching the mechanics with zero regard to trying to uncover a passion any of these students may have in continuing to contribute to Wikipedia. As long as they update content through the program, Wiki Education views this as a success. And even if they never return to volunteer, Wiki Education is no worse off.

If Wiki Education was focused on retaining these volunteers over a longer term, they would need to have a very different approach in how they socialized them into the larger Wikipedia community. I hypothesize if more emphasis was given in guiding these students to find their place in the larger whole, a greater number of Wiki Education graduates would continue to utilize their newfound skills to improve the content in even more Wikipedia articles in the future.

I recently completed my Wiki Education course and am confident in the skills I acquired as I updated the Online deliberation article on Wikipedia. From a measure of success, Wiki Education arguably gained in their “Quality” and “Reach” goals as I improved the article’s content in an underdeveloped area. According to these metrics, they achieved their intent, and can claim my contribution as a win.

But now that I have these skills, would I ever come back to Wikipedia and update another article? Most likely not. And part of this reason is because I was only taught the mechanics of how to update an article. I never got even the slightest glimpse into the community that lives behind and within Wikipedia.

During my course experience, besides a couple of bots, I had no interaction from Wikipedia beyond the briefest exchange with my Wiki Education support person, Ian. I walk away from my first (and probably last) Wikipedia editing experience without any insight into how this community interacts with each other and collaboratively creates content. And this was through no lack of attempt on my part.

After meeting with my graduate school instructor about my article, I diligently published my article from my Sandbox to the live article page. After all eight of my edits I commented on each of them before publishing. I updated the Talk page with a lengthy description of the logic behind the changes I made. When I moved some of the content out from Online deliberation into Deliberation, I even commented about those changes on that Talk page. My changes were substantial and I excitedly waited to hear feedback from other Wikipedians who would either agree with what I did, or provide meaningful suggestions on how to improve. But I heard nothing.

Ever determined, I decided to proactively reach out to others in hopes of soliciting feedback. Online deliberation was originally classified as a Start-Class article, and I was confident that more experienced Wikipedians would agree that I helped the article move up the scale of classes. The article is part of three different Wiki Projects: WikiProject Internet, WikiProject Politics, and WikiProject Internet culture. I visited those Talk pages and boldly announced that I made major restructuring changes to Online deliberation, and I asked the folks in these communities if they also agreed that the article should move past a Start-Class. And again, I heard nothing.

Lastly, as a final resort. I remembered when I first created my Wikipedia account, UWCLStudentSpring2021, there was a message from Ian, the person dedicated to supporting me and other students in Wiki Education courses. I didn’t know anything about him other than it sounded like he may possibly be a person who could help provide the feedback I was craving. I visited his Talk page to ask him whether he agreed that Online deliberation could now finally move up the class ranking and get past being a Start-Class.

In my seven weeks of working through Wiki Education, Ian was the only interaction I had with anyone in the Wikipedia community. But his response was underwhelming to say the least.

"UWCLStudentSpring2021, it's hard for me to say for sure, because I don't know that much about the topic, but I'd guess it's likely to be C class by now, if not better. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:44, 12 May 2021 (UTC)"

Thus, besides this brief interaction, I completed this course without any communication or socialization from the Wikipedia Community. Overall my experience was pretty abysmal. I learned how to update an article and can perform those mechanics. But I have no understanding of the collaborative spirit that occurs behind the scenes in article creation.

Volunteering to work on an activity such as editing a Wikipedia article is generally performed by people who are intrinsically motivated to do so. They will use their own free time and resources to engage in this work because the work is fun, interesting or challenging.

Like many, I use Wikipedia as a resource when researching or trying to learn more about a topic. However, I’ve never had an inclination toward editing an article myself. While enrolled in a class in graduate school, one of our earliest projects was to complete the Wiki Education course and publish updates to an article.

Thus, I was extrinsically motivated to work on this. My motivation came because I wanted to successfully complete the course requirement for the class, and more importantly, use it as an exercise to enhance and explore the theories and concepts being taught. I was never intrinsically motivated to update an article.

This is not to say that I had a negative attitude toward the work from the outset. I chose an article that I was genuinely interested in, and began the work full of optimism that I would learn a new skill and offer a valuable contribution to Wikipedia.

However, after I edited the article, the sheer lack of feedback provided me no sense of satisfaction. Perhaps if I had received encouragement or feedback, that could have inspired some more passion into the efforts of the work I performed, which in turn would have sparked a dormant motivation that would have ignited some other intrinsic feeling.

As I desperately searched for feedback during the final days of my coursework, I finally stumbled upon an area that seemed to have a sense of community for new editors. The Teahouse is where you can ask questions, find articles to improve, and meet active hosts. This is an extremely valuable resource to new editors who feel lost and alone in Wikipedia such as myself. It’s unfortunate that I learned about it during the final moments of the course and was not introduced to it earlier in my Wikipedia indoctrination.

In general, Wiki Education does not perform a sufficient job in welcoming new members to the Wikipedia community. The organization excels in teaching the rudimentary mechanics of updating articles, citing sources, and other skills needed to update content. But it does so without offering any insight into why this would be an enjoyable activity to engage in after course completion.

Wiki Education should incorporate an exercise early in the curriculum that requires students to create a profile where they reveal more personal information and formally introduce themselves to the community. After the students create their profile, the Wikipedia Expert assigned to them could meet them and they could establish this relationship. Creating that initial bond from new editor to seasoned expert could help form a welcoming relationship into the community. This provides a basis for conversation and has the potential to increase interaction amongst newer and older community members. After students create their user profiles they will feel a sense of belonging to the community.

Another exercise that could be introduced would be to explore other classmates’ user profiles. This could also help to create bonds-based relationships within a smaller group. The Wikipedia community at large, is obviously a massive group of users dispersed around the globe. However, the smaller courses in Wiki Education provide a built-in infrastructure supporting smaller group interaction within a larger group experience.

People are more willing to contribute when the group is smaller than when it is larger. If new students created more of a bond within their individual Wiki Education courses, they could feel more inclined and inspired to make more contributions. There is a task toward the end of the course material to provide peer feedback to another classmate. But by the time that is assigned, the student has already performed the research and done the initial work.

Any bond that could have been created amongst a smaller group of students is coming after the work has been executed. Essentially the students are being asked to provide and receive feedback from people they essentially do not know within the context of Wikipedia. Granted, this is how it will work once students progress to publishing on Wikipedia, and they receive feedback from other Wikipedians. But in this early stage of learning, students could benefit from the encouragement and solidarity of their other classmates. There is a native student support structure that is being underutilized.

Finally, students should be introduced to the Teahouse as part of their formal training. This can be added early into the curriculum so the students are aware there is a place for them to visit if they feel stuck or have a question about something.

I only knew about this because the Wikipedia Expert assigned to me mentioned it in his welcome message to me. However, it was never emphasized how this resource could help me. A part of the curriculum could emphasize this as a sort of ‘life line’ if the new student ever needs feedback on how they are performing. Performance feedback is a motivating factor as people have a desire for self-improvement as they gain competence.

It’s unfortunate Wiki Education does not put a greater emphasis on retaining its new editors and encouraging them to continue their contributions after course completion. Certainly some students will continue to make valuable improvements to Wikipedia after this program. If Wiki Education truly wanted to convert their new editors into retained, and even active members, they need to make this a success metric as part of their “Reach” goal. Only then will a more concerted effort be placed on creating long lasting relationships with these students.

As it stands, many like myself, will most likely never return to editing a Wikipedia article. From my understanding, Wikipedia has an active community that works collaboratively to build a resource I have personally cherished for years. But sadly, in the seven weeks I spent learning how to build Wikipedia from the inside, I was never introduced to this community. And most likely, I will never return.