User talk:Toria20/report

Wikipedia Reflection Essay

When considering online communities, there is an enormous chance that we have all passively participated in Wikipedia. The word “participate” may be a loose term but the act of clicking on a Wikipedia link and exploring a page, is technically the first step before directly joining and contributing to the community. Wikipedia has almost mastered the way to keep basic but valuable and accurate information all in one page, with a quick search on Google.

Throughout my experience in Wikipedia, I’ve come to realize that I was quite ignorant to not have realize the massive community within Wikipedia and the specific guidelines or norms Wikipedia required when editing a page. With the Wikimedia Foundation and training modules, it made the learning curve to contributing to a Wikipedia page much more comfortable but it didn’t erase parts that were still unclear and the navigation towards certain edits, made trials and errors almost inevitable. Nevertheless, I learned that Wikipedia generally welcomed newcomer’s trials and errors. For instance, source editing for any Wikipedia page may look intimidating at first, mainly because it seems like an immense amount of coding, but it was fairly straight-forward after you were actively editing and hitting “show preview”. The choice of “show preview” for source editing was relieving because it gave room to make personal mistakes that could quickly be fixed before other editors could fix them, which in comparison to visual editing, made source editing the most comfortable option to edit with. With consideration of injunctive norms and newcomers’ motivation, the seemingly endless number of injunctive norms that Wikipedia has for editors is simply intimidating or overwhelming and may turn away newcomers. If I didn’t go forward after learning the norms, I wouldn’t have realized that the norms are easier to follow once attempting to participate within the community. More often than not, newcomers may be nervous about making injunctive norm violations, but Wikipedia encourages most norm mistakes to be taken lightly. Thus, this helped ease the nervousness of joining the Wikipedia community and opened up space for safe learning.

Wikipedia should think about creating an improved system of regulation for norms surrounding the comments made when another user makes an edit to an already existing Wikipedia page. With that being said, it’s apparent that Wikipedia does discourage bias or inappropriate language within any page and has recommendations of the type of comments that should be made. However, it has few consequences or doesn’t necessarily monitor this language entirely within the comments. Simply put, any harsh language can be disheartening to other users and may take away their possible intrinsic motivation to be a part of the Wikipedia community. Wikipedia should think about allocating a system that notifies administrators of any inappropriate language or unfavorable language in the comments made when a user makes an edit and consider consequences for the degree of the bad faith, even with the consideration of the good faith norm. For example, the previous user of my article made a simple mistake and another user made an edit with a comment of “how has this been here for so long?”, which could be taken as slightly discouraging (even if the intention is made with good faith) and not helpful for the long-term commitment of Wikipedia users. In this sense, Wikipedia has a lack of a bond-based commitment. The level of bond-based commitment between users are merely through user’s edits and comments, with no personal connection or conversations. The comments with edits holds a higher stake because there is a lack of a platform to continuously interact with other users. Wikipedia assumes good faith until it’s evidently bad faith, but even minor comments that allude to an offensive/disheartening tone may not receive any effective response, which then can be costly for the other Wikipedia user. If there are no level of consequences or immediate major red flags for seemingly bad faith among the community, it becomes questionable how to maintain the good faith norm across the entire platform as well as to how to retain user’s commitment if faced with apparently bad faith. On another note, Wikipedia should also consider the idea of a benefit-award based system to possibly have higher chances of maintaining their members over a long period of time. To be quite honest, after around six weeks of being a part of the Wikipedia community, I quickly question whether I would’ve joined this community as an editor or continued participating after learning the norms if it wasn’t for this class. Wikipedia should reflect on the benefits of being a part of the community and question the position of participates in the community. In other words, there are no tangible rewards for being a part of the Wikipedia community and there is a repetitive nature to this community. It’s important to note that Wikipedia does have a system for barnstars, a visual reward system for users. However, I would recommend an improved system of rewards and benefits for users. Many online communities are continuously successful because it’s a profitable community to be involved in (Twitch, Yelp, Facebook, etc.). An improved system of rewards and benefits could include implementing a position of power among users. For instance, a user that has made a certain number of edits and they have actively participated in Wikipedia for an extensive time-period could have a symbol next to their name for every comment they make or is eligible to receive a tangible benefit- gifts from Wikipedia or create a Wikipedia event that “expert” users of Wikipedia can attend. With the idea of utility model of motivation, if there are clearly more benefits than cost that users can obtain, then there is a higher likelihood that users will be participating long-term. Benefits and online social status can increasingly help with those who are more incline to have extrinsic motivation. Therefore, could invite other newcomers and maintain member retention.