User:Vpritchard/Report

The opportunity for anybody to be able to contribute to Wikipedia creates an open environment that encourages people to participate. However, this can pose a risk of misinformation, errors, bias, and even spamming in articles. Wikipedia tries to mitigate this risk by providing training modules and thorough instructions and details of the community rules and norms. Wikipedia allowing anyone to contribute and edit provides a sense of accountability that can further help reduce these risks and issues. This is because once edits are made, nothing is final and other contributors can make edits and updates to the article. Contributors can also discuss with one another edits or ideas, in order to make the articles the best they can be and encourage communication.

Advice Wikipedia can follow is to implement a structure for the different types of contributors based on involvement and contribution. Very involved Wikipedia contributors could be given a specific role rather than being “just another Wikipedia contributor.” Within the past month or so, I became a Wikipedia contributor. I feel like I have an idea for how Wikipedia works, but I know that there are more involved and knowledgeable contributors out there who have made many edits and implemented advanced techniques. I have just scratched the surface in Wikipedia. I feel that some members of the community can be given greater responsibility in the community as I think the community can benefit from these contributors and their efforts. Wikipedia needs contributors to be active and covering all of the bases, but Wikipedia also appreciates work from thoughtful contributors like me, who may not be super involved beyond an assignment like this. Wikipedia needs to have a place for all kinds of contributors in order to achieve its goals. Wikipedia has a feature to notify editors of articles when changes are made which helps encourage engagement. Therefore, it would be positive for very active contributors to be notified with tasks of pages that need contributions, help cleaning up and editing, or even monitoring edit wars or spam. Wikipedia utilizing its active and thorough contributors will create a strong committed connection between the contributor and the community/platform by recognizing their efforts and contributions and providing them with more tasks and challenges.

My experience working in Wikipedia included learning opportunities, challenges, and the chance to do something and contribute in a way I have not done before. I was introduced to Wikipedia and its community guidelines and norms by completing training modules that taught me how to be a contributor to Wikipedia. The training modules taught the steps and instructions of how to navigate through the platform as well as norms for how to research and provide content and information. This was important because to me, Wikipedia always has looked complicated and “messy” but the training walked me through understanding the format better. I chose an article that was considered a stub article as it did not have a lot of content and information on the topic. I did research and edited/contributed to the article page by adding clarification, content, organization, sources and more.

I learned how to interact in this community through user and talk pages. When I moved my content from my sandbox to the live article, I learned the importance of moving it over in portions so that previous editors could see more clearly and precisely what changed and why. I was able to look at similar, but thorough, articles about dogs, such as “Labrador” or “German Shepherd” to try and build my article, “Foxhound” in a way that the others were built. This helped me learn how to create an “infobox.” If it were not for other successful articles and contributions, I would not have been able to include certain important elements in my article.

My experience and ideas about Wikipedia are that if you contribute to Wikipedia and participate in the community, you are probably committed enough, or will become committed, to contribute not just to one article or topic and leave, but instead to become more involved as a contributor. After completing the work on my article, I felt like I did a good thing for Wikipedia and that my contributions were helpful. I feel invested enough that I want to continue to check on the article and see what other people have to say about my contributions. This feels like bonds-based normative commitment because after contributing to the greater good, I recognize how much left there is to help with and I want to continue helping. I enjoyed learning about my topic and helping Wikipedia, and I would not mind helping contribute to other articles. This is how Wikipedia keeps their contributors invested. As identity-based commitment, contributors are invested in helping fulfill the mission of Wikipedia because they feel like they are part of a community that is all working toward the same goal of providing informative and unbiased explanations.

When I completed the training modules and was able to learn about the norms and mission of Wikipedia and what the goals are, I was able to feel a strong attachment and like a part of the community. Before this class, I would have never felt a part of the Wikipedia community as a consumer. I was able to feel community when I was working on my Wikipedia article and my talk page was receiving comments from others on how to improve my work. This includes my classmate’s peer review, but also an unknown user too. What I find unique and helpful about Wikipedia is the feature to create work in a sandbox that looks just like a real Wikipedia article itself. This allows for contributors to visualize and feel as though the edits are live and published, which helps encourage a sense of seriousness yet also inspiration. Vpritchard (talk) 07:33, 9 November 2020 (UTC)