User:Zzzzzjessica/WikiReflection

Introduction
When I was in high school, I remember my thesis teacher saying that we needed a lot of sources to complete the thesis, but Wikipedia could not be used as a source. For this reason, I always thought that the articles on Wikipedia could not be trusted completely. Because everyone can edit, some articles may not be accurate.

This is the first time I have edited a Wikipedia article. I never imagined that editing a Wikipedia article would be such a "cumbersome project" that it takes so much effort and time. Fortunately, there is a newbie tutorial to help me understand how to improve an article.

Even though Wikipedia already has a relatively complete beginner's instruction to help newcomers understand how to edit entries, I think the focus of these orientations is on editors who want to refine and maintain articles. I think Wikipedia needs to make some changes to improve the user experience and broaden its user base, not just by recruiting more editors, but also by recruiting more raters who are interested in rating articles.

New User Orientation
I think Wikipedia's newbie orientation is actually a prescreening system to filter out low-quality users not interested in editing articles. Because this tutorial for beginners is very complex and includes Wikipedia norms and instructions for editing articles, some new users who are not very interested in it may be deterred by it. This is also one of the solutions to the selection problem of new users that we have learned.

Suggestions
I think if Wikipedia wants to maintain its activity and get more users, it could introduce more features to make it more concise.

Like Button
Wikipedia should have a Like Button Feature. An editor of an article cannot be praised for his contribution. Even though each article has a history to view all contributors and their works, most readers would focus on the existing version of the article. Even if the editor's work survives on the current version, he does not have a strong sense of pride. The feature of getting likes would also encourage editors to contribute more to the community.

Why This Works
I believe this suggestion will enable users to build affective commitment, which is a feeling that users want to stay in the community, especially identity-based commitment. Affective commitment can be divided into identity-based commitment and bond-based commitment. Identity-based commitment means having a sense of being part of the community, and bond-based commitment is a feeling of being close to a member of the community.

The interaction with other users will allow Wikipedians to have more emotional connections, even if this connection is not strong, but praise from others will encourage Wikipedians to make more contributions to maintain the community's continued operation. According to the study on affective commitment, users with identity-based attachment are usually more committed to the community than those with bond-based attachment.

Rating System
The rating system for articles in Wikipedia is not perfect enough, even though I thought it did not have a rating system at first. I did some research and found that Wikipedia does have a rating system, which is not mentioned in the new user's tutorial. But I found that Wikipedia's rating system is mostly done by Wikiproject participants, which means that ordinary Wikipedians and readers are not overly involved.

I am the kind of person, who does not like to post things but wants to comment and rate other people's work on social media platforms. And I know a lot of friends who are like me, so I think if Wikipedia could introduce a like feature, it might bring more users to it.

I understand that Wikipedia is rather strict about articles. Still, as long as users complete the orientation for new users, they should have some insight into the quality of the articles. Since Wikipedia does not have a censorship system for editorially published content, everyone's edited content can be published directly, and this rating system can help Wikipedia filter inappropriate articles.

Why This Works
I think this suggestion coincides with the first design of limiting the effect of bad behavior, which states that moderation system can help reduce the damage from inappropriate statements.

The user ratings of articles are used to filter out articles that do not meet Wikipedia's requirements, like Slashdot's rating mechanism. The articles that do not follow the rules are marked with a special flag to warn readers that these articles may contain false or promotional information. This maintains the high quality of Wikipedia articles even without the prescreening step.

Why Mine Works
I believe my suggestion is more worthwhile because I have experience as an editor, and I have some knowledge of how to build and maintain an online community. I am starting as a new user who knows nothing about Wikipedia. I can make helpful and implementable suggestions about Wikipedia as a new user, not as a random new user who might make unreasonable suggestions.

Experience
The article I edited is doubanjiang, a hot and fermented bean paste. It is not a popular article, so not many people edit it, and some of the citation pages have been deleted.

Problem 1
The most difficult problem is that one of the previous editors wrote some "quality assessment standard" content without citing it. I searched for a long time before I found the national standards published by the Chinese government for Pixian doubanjiang on a Chinese search engine. The main reason is that he labeled the time as 2005, while the standard was released in 2006, and it took me some time to make sure I found the right source. I think it is not easy to find the source if it is a person who does not know Chinese.

Problem 2
I also found that a lot of academic articles about doubanjiang are studies of some chemical changes that occur during the fermentation process of doubanjiang. I am not a chemist, so there is a lot of terminology in there that I cannot understand. I am not sure if I should summarize these research results in the article. After all, I think most readers may not be interested in the chemical changes of its fermentation process.

What I Have Learned
I learned about doubanjiang in the process of editing the article, so I think the process of improving the article is also the process of learning. If we are editing a more controversial topic, we need to understand the matter entirely so that we can learn from other people's opinions and learn the valuable parts.

Conclusion
When I became a contributor to the article, I realized that there are many rules in Wikipedia, and everyone has made a lot of effort. We cannot deny the whole Wikipedia and the millions of contributors who have built it with their hearts and minds just because it is not a reliable source of academic paper. And I believe that Wikipedia, as the world's most giant encyclopedia with an objective number of users, has done a lot for us to learn from.