User:Zarens/Report

Zachary Arenson

COM 482

2/17/2020

Wikipedia Project: Reflective Essay
Communities such as Wikipedia further global online knowledge through community empowerment. However, a community that runs on volunteer labor is a challenging concept. To gain participation by the community, each user must feel the benefits outweigh the costs of investing their time in consuming and producing content. My project focuses on the user experience when producing content within a Wikipedia community.

My process for choosing a Wikipedia article was to first narrow my areas of interest down to three research categories. The initial groups I included were two movies and a religious subject. I decided to address a topic that I felt was culturally significant rather than a hobby that I was somewhat interested in exploring. Second, I examined the topics for notability, or as Wikipedia states, topics that have "gained significant attention by the world" and is verifiable by "reliable third-party sources. " After reading a few stubs, I noticed an article on The Torah Ark. This article was not only lacking in content, but it appeared to contain a few errors. I checked other related sites and books using the keywords Torah Ark to determine if additional material was available and required to explain the concept to the wider community. I felt my previous knowledge on the subject and the available resources would enable me to develop a project that would be meaningful to my peers and me. Before writing my article, I reviewed Wikipedia’s manual of style to ensure my approach was in-line with the community descriptive norms, including the addition of section headers and cites. As I worked through the redevelopment of the article, I retained existing references and incorporated additional references for new content. Finally, the article was a stub labeled as of high importance; thus, by improving the article, I would make a notable contribution to the community.

The most important skill set I gained during the project was a working knowledge of the Wikipedia tools. In retrospect, I do not necessarily consider the editing system complicated. Initially, I felt very overwhelmed by a multitude of editing functions and still, at times, I need to pause to review the editing process. For example, learning the value of source editing over the visual editor and the intricacies of source editing allowed me to become a better Wikipedia editor. Using the source editor, I now understand how to move and format articles properly. Another skill I learned was citing my sources properly in a Wikipedia format. While practicing in the sandbox, I learned that not citing is, as in all research, still an injunctive norm. However, in the Wikipedia community, the exact format is at the discretion of the user. Finally, learning how to publish my work properly was somewhat nerve-wracking but it was a rewarding experience at the end. I feel the step by step approach I used, including proofreading, polishing, and adding chunks at a time to prevent a mass undo, gave me confidence in my work. Therefore, I felt that the contribution I made to Wikipedia through this project provided me the skills that I can continue to utilize in other online community settings.

My edits were targeted at improving the existing content and adding two new sections more focused on customs relating to the Torah Ark and historical architecture. First, I added a new paragraph in the introductory history section that clarified the existing information and corrected factual errors. Second, I shifted my focus to the cultural background describing the use and placement of the Torah Ark. Next, I expanded the article with a historical snapshot of the Ark’s architecture. Completing these three sections, I felt that I was able to improve the article’s base quality. To improve the content depth in these areas, I did some additional research using lesser-known sources from a variety of Jewish community libraries. This allowed me to improve the categorization and timeline that was previously limited to just history. The most interesting aspect that was missing in the original article is that the Torah Ark is a central and essential part of Jewish ritual.

After the initial article development, my focus shifted from a producer to a consumer point of view during the peer-review process. I felt that the process was a mixed experience. The class review forms did not provide thought-provoking insight for the producer. Essentially my peers and I felt that we were only expected to go through the questions as a checklist that didn’t necessarily encourage quality feedback. However, during the quiz section, I had a meaningful discussion with a peer about our respective articles. We asked each other questions on how to use certain editing tools, how we chose our topics, and what items specifically stood out that needed improvement. Therefore, I believe that a more personalized review process, utilizing peer interaction, would be a more efficient and productive review approach.

The phrase from our lecture, “Welcome to Wikipedia, now please go away,” seems to summarize a prevalent atmosphere within the Wikipedia community. The normative behavior within the Wikipedia group that I participated in is to isolate and disassociate from new users. In Building Successful Online Communities, Robert Kraut, notes that participation in online communities is lower than it could be due to passive behaviors prevalent within online communities. I believe that the normative behavior associated with the intrinsic value of improving articles was a process only described through class instruction. For example, I put a comment on the article Talk Page and received no responses through the course of this project. I also noticed sparse edits in the history changelog indicating that the community was somewhat active. As a new participant in the community, I felt a state of isolation, which without this project, might have caused me to leave the community altogether. For an online community to have value, it’s very important to monitor activity. My article was a high importance stub in the group's to-do list. As a new user, shouldn’t they be concerned and attempt to guide me to help contribute to the group’s productivity? Persuasive techniques such as simple welcoming and constant monitoring of content quality are active solutions that can be applied to create a healthier community as a whole.