User:Zzzzzyfffff/Report

From my personal experience with Wikipedia as a newcomer in the last six weeks, I have come up with several reflections and two propositional recommendations for the Wikipedia community. First,  effectively reduce the number of stubs  by directly informing specific groups of editors of the kind of stubs that are waiting for elaboration and providing incentives to those who contribute to the stubs. Second,  attract and reserve new editors  by making the introductory guide shorter, offering tutorial videos, and cooperating with teachers at schools or universities.

Advice 1: Effectively Reduce the number of Stubs
One of the recommendations to improve the quality of articles on Wikipedia is to reduce the number of stubs. Stubs are articles that are too short and have little meaningful content. The article I was working on was marked as a stub and only had two short sentences. It is understandable that Wikipedia has numerous stub articles because sometimes it is hard to find information from reliable sources. And most editors are unaware of the existence of such articles awaiting further editing and refinement. Especially those articles that are culturally specific and relevant, such as a type of dish, food, celebrities, schools, and even mythologies. However, since Wikipedia editors are from diverse cultural backgrounds, a lot of stubs could be improved based on the uniqueness of the Wikipedia community.

Directly Contact the Editors with the list of Stubs
This leads to one action that Wikipedia could take, which is to directly contact and inform the group of editors who share similar kinds of cultural backgrounds with the list of stubs that are related to their background knowledge. Setting up Wikipedia notifications (such as the “watchlist” function) and contacting editors by email are concrete ways to achieve this change. The more efficient and automatic the system could be, the easier it would be to use and apply for this change. My personal experience with Wikipedia could be a persuasive example that supports my claim. I worked on an article called “The Gate of the Ghosts,” which is a well-known Chinese mythology among those who have Chinese backgrounds, such as myself. Because I have the knowledge and cultural reserve for this topic, I was more skilled than others in finding resources and articles that could be used. “The Gate of the Ghosts” has appeared in many renowned Chinese classical literature, and these can be used as trustworthy sources and have appeared on the Wikipedia reference list. But, if editors do not have the same kind of cultural background knowledge as I do, it will be extremely arduous for them to find such reliable sources as quickly and efficiently as I do.

And this could be one of the reasons why Wikipedia has so many stubs. Although some editors want to work on stubs, they might spend a long time and fail to find the proper references. Promoting editors’ intrinsic motivations for these types of tasks will greatly increase their activities and commitments to the community. Intrinsic motivation comes from inside of the person when one intrinsically finds doing something fun and engaging. This concept applies to this method of change because people tend to have more interest in the topics that they are familiar with and have enough knowledge to support this claim. Moreover, the persuasive technique “ask and ye shall receive” is involved in this action. Technically, people will be more likely to engage and exert an influence when the list of needed contributions is easily visible and trackable. It will be difficult for people to contribute when they are unaware of the needs of the community, even though they are skilled and resourceful. Therefore, expeditiously reaching out to specific groups of people who are more likely to contribute to appropriate tasks will sufficiently help with the amplification of stubs.

Provide Rewards
In addition, external rewards are recommended to be provided to those editors who contribute to the stubs. Extrinsic rewards, such as giving credits or status to people, are one of the best ways to promote people’s actions and contributions. Extrinsic motivation comes from outside of a person when rewards such as money or prizes are presented. Wikipedia could provide incentives such as higher status or $10 rewards to editors as positive feedback on their performance of enriching the stubs. Giving positive performance feedback has a powerful influence in enhancing motivation to perform tasks. If editors receive the reward of contributing to stubs once, it will be more likely for them to keep this interest and continue contributing.

Advice 2: Efficiently Attract New Blood
The second piece of advice to the Wikipedia community is to efficiently attract new blood. While the old editors of Wikipedia are committed to this community, new blood is always needed and essential to a community's growth and prosperity.

Make the Introductory Guide Shorter to Read
One actionable way to achieve this goal is to make the introductory guide shorter to read. When I was a beginner and followed each training, I found myself less engaged because there were so many things to read and it was hard to remember. Even though the training is divided into different sections with a short quiz at the end, I became bored and found it so complicated to actually follow each step and get used to all those functions that are specific to Wikipedia. It will be less possible for the newcomers to stay when they find themselves having to read and complete about 10 training courses. The structured and useful guidelines and training will be meaningless and helpless when newcomers do not pay serious attention to and actually read through all of them. Highlighting and refining the most essential parts will be supportive. For newcomers, the easier and shorter the guidelines are, the more likely it is that the needed work will actually get done.

Provide Video Tutorials
Another way to successfully attract new editors is to always provide video tutorials. When I was trying to complete my first week's assignment, I was unable to find where Professor Hill’s talk page was. I knew I had read it in the training, but I forgot it as quickly as I finished going through the material. As a visual person, I tend to find videos more appealing than words. Also, I remember the content in the video better and longer compared to the readings. Derived from my experience, I found it more helpful if Wikipedia could provide detailed and perspicuous video tutorials in the training. By providing accessible tools for researching and tracking, the acquisition will be achieved quicker for the newcomers. Wikipedia should take this advice into serious consideration because there are a lot of people who have similar kinds of characteristics and preferred ways of learning like me. My friend and I were both confused about how to find the person’s talk page, how to sign our message, and how to make our articles live from our sandboxes to the original articles. We both followed and completed the training as carefully as we could, but we still got lost when we were actually performing those actions by ourselves. I suggest structuring the training content into two parts: readings and videos. The written guidelines are provided as notes, and the videos play the role of practical step-by-step teaching tutorials. This change will not only maintain the already written documents but also satisfy and fulfill the needs of the group of people who prefer to learn from clear instructions in the video format. By adding video instructions, people can understand and follow the steps more easily.

Cooperate with Teachers at Schools or Universities
Last but not least, cooperating with teachers at schools or universities can considerably achieve the goal of attracting newcomers. Just like what we have done in Com 481, students are asked and required to become new members of the Wikipedia community and contribute to one of the stub articles that they are interested in. To fulfill the extrinsic motivation here, students perform as well as they can according to the teacher’s requirements for the assignment in order to gain credits and a good grade. Not only is it clear that extrinsic motivation plays a powerful role in this situation, but also that students get to truly know and experience the Wikipedia community by following the instructions. People usually find answers to their questions and benefit from Wikipedia articles, but only a small portion of them become community members and actually contribute. Thus, building cooperative relationships with teachers provides chances for those potential editors to get to know and engage in this community. This process is also called selection, which gives people an overall view of the purpose and mission of the Wikipedia community so that the right people will join and stay. Even though students decide to leave the community after the course is done, their contributions continue to exist and benefit the community.

Deeper Reflections
After the personal experience and careful reflections of the Wikipedia community, I concluded that although Wikipedia is an overall mature online community that has applied as many strategies as it can. One good strategy that the Wikipedia community applies is socialization. I experienced institutionalized socialization, specifically collective and sequential socialization, where each newcomer is required to complete the same set of training and guidelines before editing. They also have a good system for retention. They have systematical support for newcomers’ experience. When I created my account, I received three welcoming notifications on my talk page that came from other editors. Their greetings and friendly interactions helped me build a nice first impression of the Wikipedia community. As a newcomer, I felt welcomed and inclusive, and it made me want to stay and increase the likelihood of my commitment to the community.

Furthermore, Wikipedia does an excellent job of safeguarding its content. Everyone has their own sandbox that they can edit and practice writing in. This is a place specially created to help not only protect the newcomer himself, but also the old editors. Sandboxes provide a safe place for people to learn and experiment. As a newcomer, I felt protected and safe to practice editing my assigned article in my sandbox because I knew that all my actions in the sandbox would not change anything in the original article until I made it live. Wikipedia also has mature and detailed norms, rules, and policies. And it is beneficial to arrange that in the first part of the training for every newcomer. By effectively regulating and maintaining order in the online community, bad and harmful behaviors are prevented. Clearly, these are the reasons why Wikipedia is now a well-known and successful online community.

Overall, I had a great experience in the Wikipedia community. And I am glad that I contributed to one stub article that fits my interests. I hope the Wikipedia community will become stronger in the future.