User:XiuyeYu/Reflection

Becoming an excellent and eligible Wikipedian is the common desire of every newcomer entering the Wikipedia community. Wikipedia is an online community that promotes “Freedom”, “Harmony" and “Equality”, but it also emphasizes the significance of norms. The principle of Wikipedia is maintaining its core commitment to open participation that “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". In the contemporary diversified online society, the authority and reliability of the Wikipedia community cannot be separated from the contributions of every editor. Therefore, it is an undeniable fact that the development and prosperity of a good community require the addition and contribution of new members. As a wiki editor, everyone will experience the process of constantly learning more skills and having a deeper awareness of community norms as they contribute to the community, then, gradually become WikiAdult from the stage of WikiInfant. In this period, the strict norms of the Wikipedia community play a vital role in facilitating the growth of new members. I am a new member of the Wikipedia community who just joined this semester, I will share my studying process as a Wikipedia novice in this writing, as well as the knowledge and skills learned in the Wikipedia community. In addition, I will focus on the analysis of three main aspects of Wikipedia online community: Management of Newcomers, Moderation, and Community Governance, which combined with my own individual experience to discuss an argument that for Wikipedia members, the Wikipedia community's norms can be characterized as supportive and positive.

Wikipedia is open to anyone who wants to join the Wiki. Unlike the Debian community's newcomer management model, Wikipedia does not require each new member have a track record of their early contributions to Wikipedia before applying for official membership. It can even be said that there is no threshold for newcomer’ entry. The term “Wiki” means “quick”, and this indicates that the community wants members to enable to easily and quickly edit webpages. Users do not need to install special software and require little technical knowledge. I was surprised at this point when I officially signed up for a personal account with the Wikipedia community and started editing my sandbox, I indeed realized that I had become a member of Wikipedia. Before I began to edit, what I did was that briefly read the editing page options and understood how to add content. For example, I just copied the information content I had finished in word document into the sandbox during the first time to edit my wiki page. Special:PermanentLink/883474911.

Although the steps to joining the Wikipedia community are simple, it's worth noting that Wikipedia has very strict norms. The Wikipedia community's management of new members is mainly reflected in the following aspect that every member is required to understand the community norms and obey the regulations as an editor. In the process of editing Wikipedia, both newcomers and senior editors should know three vital norms that Wikipedians adopt a “Neutral Point of View" in editing, use verifiable resources, and do not engage in original research. Members can discuss any topic they are interested in and put forward their own opposing or supporting opinions on any viewpoint. Even if the content of the argument is biased by the editor, as long as the source of information is reliable, this viewpoint can also be used as a reasonable reference. "Must use verifiable and reliable sources" is a primary factor why I kept changing the editing topics in the early stages. In the beginning, the content I wanted to edit was about the personal experience of an excellent Chinese film poster maker. I think he deserves documented because of his impact in China; Professor Reagle supported my choice as well. However, when I did a formal search, I found that I could not gain some verifiable sources of information to support my editing, thus, I eliminated my original idea. Professor Reagle suggested that I could choose from the internal list of unedited valuable topics on Wikipedia that I interested. "Having adequate and reliable sources" became the main basis for my selection of editing topic. In the end, I chose Cassell's Hamburger, a Los Angeles landmark lunch restaurant founded in 1948. In addition, in the later editing period, professor Reagle and another editor, Michelle Liu, both suggested that I add links from sources in the content. In this way, readers can directly look up and browse the information sources, then proving that the content I edited is trustworthy, which more consistent with Wikipedia's editorial norms. The strict requirements of the Wikipedia community on the sources of content edited by editors not only regulate the order of the community, but also indirectly promote the newcomers to shape a more rigorous and responsible editorial attitude. This demonstrates the positive role of the Wikipedia community's norms.

Wikipedia is an authoritative and inclusive encyclopedia community which provide a platform to support people interchange information. For a long time, it was considered the birthplace of "some of the furious arguments". The Wiki criterion of “Openness" shows the free position and unlimited communication behavior of Wikipedians when interacting with each other. Editors are not restricted to their identities and can participate in editing an encyclopedia page, even newcomers like me can edit accomplished encyclopedia pages. For example, I can correct the content or format of another editor's page directly which I think better, or I can leave suggested comments on the sandbox of other editors. In the same way, others can also do the similar operation of improvement marks on my home page. For example, professor Reagle left messages in my talk page to suggest that the content should remove some details such as business hours and phone numbers as that possibly changes over time and isn't appropriate for an encyclopedia. He also directly assisted me to fix typos and mis-spellings in the content I edited, then improved the embarrassing and ungrammatical phrases. Special:PermanentLink/889733078. Based on the feature of "anyone can edit", another question worth considering is how can the Wikipedia community avoid abuse? The comments received by editors are not only positive advice, but also run the risk of malicious negative comments and attacks. The apparent failure of the 'Los Angeles Times' experiment in "Wikipedia-style" reporting on the topic of the Iraq War is a testament to the existence of the abuse phenomenon in the online community. To address this issue, the Wikipedia community's governance rule of “Moderation” effectively enable Wikipedia to establish a community-based governance mechanism that promotes cooperation and prevents abuse. Community moderators have the right to promote excellent posts or to hide and prohibit posts by vandals. Obviously, if my page content is not meet the standards, the moderator has the ability to hide my page or even shield it. In the community, each member plays a different role with different motivation, which can be either the author or the reader. As a writer, people want their edited information content to be read. As a reader, people hope to be able to filter the irrelevant content to obtain interesting topics from the platform. Therefore, the function and importance of the role of moderators in the community is obvious. In the moderate management norms, it drives the dissemination of various content, so that members can obtain a personal sense of achievement from participation. In short, the moderation guidelines facilitate cooperation between members, and when identities change, sincere suggestions and feedback are transmitted. As a Wikipedia newbie, I think I need to show my gratitude to other editors who gave me suggestions and improved my contents to higher the quality of the wiki page. Special:PermanentLink/889904345. For example, the editor Yiwing provided assistance for me to correct better content format. Special:PermanentLink/889903607. Wikipedia's precautionary approach to vandals, based on its support for moderate governance, has increased the confidence of its members to participate in the community's contribution, that shows a positive trend of development of an entire community.

The core principle maintained by the Wikipedia community, "anyone can edit”, is the origin what makes this information platform even more controversial. It serves as a double-edged sword, bringing both great benefits to the Wikipedia community and more hidden pitfalls. While most members adhere strictly to community norms, some current Wikipedia conflicts are trying to induce others to break norms. From my personal experience, I was not exposed to much sharp controversial topics that exist in the community. But the topic of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou's arrest at a Canadian airport, edited by the editor XingranLiu, which impressed me a lot. I think this is a typical controversial topic, which can be classified as a topic related to sensitive politics. But unlike publishing comments, XingranLi only objectively described the process that how the event happened. Here is one of the norms of Wikipedia: editors must be objective and neutral when editing content. The editor Shalor also suggested to me from her feedback that use more objective information to replace some descriptive sentences that reflect the subjective tone, so as to avoid making the content feel like "marketing advertisement".Special:PermanentLink/890478377. My problem is simply that the tone of the editing is not particularly appropriate, but some editors may be involved to “Blocks", if the condition is more serious, it will relate to “Bans”. I have been in the Wikipedia community for only three months, and I'm still in the stage of a novice. I don't have any experiences about the community governance to share. But when I read the Wikipedia community policies, I know that there are strict community governances which mainly divided into bans and blocks. Blocks are technically responsible for preventing users or individual IP addresses from editing Wikipedia, bans need to be agreed by the community through consultation and implemented by the arbitration committee. This usually happens in the case of malicious editing or vandalism by certain users. Besides, there are different types of bans, such as site bans (all edits are prohibited, etc.), page bans or topic bans (blocks of a specific topic are prohibited from editing). I support such community governances, which not only reflects the humanization of management, but also shows a firm punishment attitude towards editors who maliciously destroy the community. A flexible governance model easier to promote members to contribute positively.

In conclusion, during the process of editing Wikipedia, I learned a lot of knowledge and skills, and also have deeper awareness about the Wikipedia norms and community governance. The Wikipedia community respects and supports the contribution of newcomers. The friendly and objective feedback from members promotes community cooperation and positive development. Variously targeted governances have also allowed Wikipedia to grow from an "anyone can edit" site into a tightly managed online community. What impressed me most was the experience of understanding how the Wikipedia community keep the balances between norms and freedom. Although it advocates "openness", it has strict community governance to regulate the behavior of members. I think the Wikipedia community can be considered reliable and trustworthy, and it is worthy of being recommended to more newcomers to join and learn.