User:Xqchen9/WikiReport

When the class had just started working on the Wikipedia assignments, I noticed that finished assignments were labeled “continue” instead of “completed”. Being a person whose OCD liked to jump out in various of wrong places, I was a bit disturbed by this feature, as I had to re-check the tasks multiple times to make sure that I indeed had completed them. So I brought this up to Salt, and he said he would talk with the creator of WikiEdu about it. Weeks later, Salt announced in class that the when we completed a task, the note shown on the right side would change to “view” with a check mark. He seemed quite happy about it, so was I. Though the change was small, it had made me closely feel what it was like to witness the happening of something that would benefit not only me but many others from now on. I guessed, for frequent Wikipedia contributors, a stronger version of this kind of feeling was one of the reasons motivating them to write, which would be a part of intrinsic motivations as discussed in lectures.

It was a whole new experience for me to write in Wikipedia. Though the learning and writing process was interesting, it was as well more difficult than I thought. For academic writings, I didn’t need to consider in what positions my readers were, as the instructors and TAs who would be reviewing my papers certainly had more knowledge than I did. But for Wikipedia articles, I had to make the assumption that the readers only knew a little, or knew nothing about the topic at all.

Most of the stuff I had ever written was either academic papers that required citations from scholarly literature, or articles that didn't require any citations at all. So drawing upon from other sources, like magazines and webpages, was rather new to me. This meant that, instead of solely checking whether they were scholarly or not, I need to do more considerations based on the accountabilities of the source from more aspects. The issue of copyright was a challenge for me, too. I used to naturally think that, as Wikipedia was not a commercial community, I could use most of the images I found online because I would not be using them to make profits. Though the Wikipedia part in the class was over, I had feeling that there were still lots of things that I needed to learn for and from Wikipedia.

It was truly impressive that an enormous community like Wikipedia could thrive, as it undoubtedly faced many more difficulties than many of the other online communities did. For instance, the textbook stated that people are more willing to contribute in smaller groups than in bigger groups (Kraut et al., 63). According to the definition, the benefits that Wikipedia had been producing were public goods that could benefit society as a whole. And the theories of public goods had made predictions that when "the outcome benefited everyone equally, voluntary contributions will be at suboptimal levels. (Kraut et al., 10)" Needless to say that online participations were always lower than we wanted them to be (Lecture Slides).

Clearly, the moderators of Wikipedia had taken the possible low-participation into consideration, and several theories from class could be found in Wikipedia's case. For me, Wikipedia was probably the only community that didn't require users to create an account in order to edit an article. Thus, as stated in the Utility Model of Motivation, costs would be greatly reduced and the benefits were easier to outweigh the costs (Kraut et al., 26), making it easy for people to make contributions. Meanwhile, the publicity of the IP addresses could help to reduce the appearance of trolls and other harms in the Wikipedia community. On the community portal of Wikipedia, there was a "Help out" section showing articles that needed contributions. Within the "Help out", there were detailed sub-sections telling people whether an article needed its spelling fixed or its citation checked. The list of needed contributions was easily visible here, which could increase the possibility of people actually making these contributions (Kraut et al., 26). The sub-sections below divided complex tasks into small, simple ones, which would lead to a higher level of compliance (Kraut et al., 30).

There were surely many more strategies used by moderators to attract contributions. However, from my perspective as a newbie contributor, there were still a few things that Wikipedia could improve, among which included the under-statement of purposes and goals. Wikipedia could make its goal, or its potential contributions to the public more visible to viewers, enhancing people's intrinsic motivations (Kraut et al., 41). I had realized that I could see Wikipedia on the top of the result page for most of the searches I done before taking this class, but it had hardly crossed my mind that what influence had and would Wikipedia bring. In my opinion, Wikipedia was being maybe a little too modesty. It could certainly list its contributions to the public knowledge on the website, that the contributors had been dedicating to teach people neutral knowledge in all kinds of area, to encourage more contributions (Kraut et al., 5). On the left side of each of the article pages, there were the icon of Wikipedia and words read that "The Free Encyclopedia". It was a nice slogan, but it didn't quite stress the benefits of Wikipedia. Maybe the moderators could create a few sentences emphasizing the good that Wikipedia had done and put them under the logo of Wikipedia. Or maybe wrote something telling viewers that Wikipedia could not exist without volunteer contributions. Moderators could also put a graph of total view counts of Wikipedia per day in a notable place in the Wiki community, letting people know that they would be able to be part of a great community like this one once they contribute.

Similarly, moderators could put a graph of the trend total contributions on a notable webpage in the Wikipedia community, like on the user page or in the corner of article pages. And users, once they logged in, got to choose whether they wanted to see the graphs or not. The dropping rate of contributions might work as a persuasive appear of a fear campaign, leading people to participate in contributing (Kraut et al., 31). I knew that there were live monitors of edits and view counts existed, but they were kind of hard to locate unless someone was aiming at finding them.

While working on the article, I changed the skin of Wikipedia several times. (I liked the one called Timeless the most.) Also, I noticed that on the talk page, Professor Hill's username was shown in multiple colors. I didn't know how did he do it, but this feature, along with skins, could be turned into rewards coming from editing. If one contributed a certain amount of words, they could change the color or skin of their Wikipedia pages. They could also show their user name in different styles from others. As the textbook stated, "rewards - whether in the form of status, privileges, or material benefits - motivate contributions (Kraut et al., 53)."

I really liked the design of T-shirts in the Wikipedia store, especially the "I edit Wikipedia" one. From my point of view, it could help to create a sense of identity, instilling identity-based attachment. Wikipedia could also try to create and maintain a shared identity in its online communities, which would lead to a rise in contributions (Kraut et al., 81). Wikipedia could emphasize the concept of "contributors", or give a new name to people who made edits.

Last but least, Wikipedia could make its rules and guidelines easier to spot for users. As a student, I had learned not to plagiarize and to make use of the sandbox. But for those who just want to make contributions on impulse, they might not know well about the community norms or rules. When one wanted to make edits, the toolbar in the edit box could show them a link to a directory or an outline of Wikipedia guidelines (Kraut et al., 148). Moderators could also make a page contained both appropriate behaviors and inappropriate behaviors (like the Batman one) for editors to see what they should and should not do (Kraut et al., 145).