User:Jcmitrano/Wikipedia Reflection

Introduction

Wikipedia has always been one of my favorite sites on the web. It is an incredibly valuable resource for finding base knowledge on topics for class or even for finding information on different industries for professional benefit. I also often find myself reading articles in my spare time, whether it’s on a new artist I’ve started to listen to or to find out more about the Stanley Cup Finals in the years before I was born. In high school, my friends and I used to have “Wikiraces” when we were bored. The idea is to start with an article, for example bass clarinet, and get to something completely unrelated, like the Geneva Conventions, without searching and only using the links provided in the articles. Whoever gets to the unrelated article the fastest wins. Even right now, I am currently watching The Sopranos, and I have a tab open with the Wikipedia article of the current episode to learn more about the actors and the locations where it was filmed.

Considering all of this, it is entirely possible that Wikipedia is one of my most visited sites of all-time. I visit it at least once a day to look up random things and learn about whatever is on my mind that day. I always knew that it was an open community in which anyone could write or make edits to an article. Even with how much I visited Wikipedia, I never considered that I would contribute an article to the site.

There are a few reasons why this is the case. To begin, I have always been taught in school that Wikipedia is not a reliable source and it should never be used for research. While I have learned now that this is far from the case, it made sense to me when I was younger, and I would steer clear of Wikipedia when researching a topic for class. Another issue is that Wikipedia has a steep learning curve and does not make it easy for newcomers to get involved with the community. From reliable sources to gauging the degree of notability, the extensive rules of the community could deter new users looking for a place to start. Tutorials can be hard to find if you do not know where to look, and while other users are willing to help, it can be difficult for a newcomer to reach out. This speaks to minor flaws of governance, possibly due to the inherent openness of the community. Our class’s original definition of community emphasized the importance of shared goals. In this reflection, I will further argue that Wikipedia could be improved with more guidance and communication of its principles to newcomers, with potential design claims to help users set more concrete goals to improve the community.

Wikipedia Misconceptions

Over the years, Wikipedia has always been somewhat demonized by my grade school teachers and college professors. I have been conditioned to the idea that because anyone can edit the site, it couldn’t possibly be reliable. Eventually, I rejected this idea and began to see it as a quintessential place to start for baseline research and finding reliable sources on almost any topic. Early in my college career, I began to notice the intense vetting process of sources and commitment to accuracy, debunking the common misconception of unreliability. This realization drew my attention to a main goal of the community and increased my appreciation for it, but still was not enough to draw me in to editing.

When I began to plan out my first article a few months ago, I was still unclear on the specifics of the community. I was ecstatic when I was able to choose Sister Cities as my topic, as I appreciated the opportunity to write about something that means a lot to me. I created a goal for myself with this decision. I had the ability to provide further information for others interested in The Wonder Years and their latest album while helping fill a gap in the other articles about their discography. However, the process of writing this article was a sort of micromanaged newcomer integration, an experience that many other new users would not be able to share. I had many resources available, specifically the ability to discuss and plan my integration with experienced members of Wikipedia as well as my classmates who were learning about the community at a similar pace. This process is unique, but aspects of it could potentially be applied to improve Wikipedia’s newcomer integration as a whole.

Commitment and Newcomer Integration

Wikipedia is a massive community, and there is so much to learn before one can even begin to become a part of it. From choosing an article to learning how to use the editing interface, it can be difficult to become a casual member of the community without seriously delving into it early on. Using our shared experience as a class, it could be possible to facilitate this process on a larger scale. Essentially, our class began as a group of inexperienced newcomers being mentored by a few veteran members of the Wikipedia community. We have access to a sort of sub-community within the site, allowing us to start with smaller, more concrete goals before becoming involved with the entire scope of the project. Because of this, we were subjected to established concepts outlined by Kraut and Resnick in Building Successful Online Communities: specifically identity-based and bonds-based commitment, norm compliance, and solving the basic problems of newcomer integration. Establishing sub-communities with experienced members willing to lend a hand could be beneficial to newcomer integration and retention, allowing for a comfortable, low-pressure environment for new members to learn the ropes.

Bonds-based commitment is fostered by facilitating interpersonal communication between users, allowing for continued interaction with the same members. Identity-based commitment comes from grouping similar users together to establish shared goals, often in subgroups of a larger community. Combining these approaches on Wikipedia could result in sub-communities with emphasis on assimilation, norm compliance, and user retention. This approach would allow users to communicate with both new and experienced members, learn the rules, norms, and technical basics of the community through this communication, and eventually find topics they are interested in or that fall into their area of expertise. While WikiProjects do exist to fill this gap, it can be intimidating for a new user to find one and dive in with a group of experienced editors.

These newcomer subgroups could provide a similar newcomer experience with the beneficial aspects of this class, allowing experienced members to answer questions, make new users feel more welcome, and even point them in the right direction for a place to start. They can even be integrated into the WikiProjects, set aside for new users to learn the basics while helping the experienced users in the WikiProjects to grow their editor base and achieve their goals more efficiently in the long run. Providing the opportunity for users to assimilate and grow alongside the larger community will help newcomers establish themselves and increase their commitment to the goals provided.

This could also help diminish the steep learning curve when it comes to editing articles. The sub-communities could contain abridged versions of the most essential Wikipedia tutorials such as those on editing and citing, with links to more information on the topics. Wikipedia has many detailed and useful tutorials, but many are hard to find, and some more specific problems are hardly represented. Furthermore, experienced users would be available to help with these specifics if necessary, as Shalor stepped in to help move my article to the mainspace. Interactions with experienced users will increase newcomer motivation and their affinity to experienced members and to Wikipedia as a whole. The processes outlined here could help others like myself who have seen the inherent value and merit of Wikipedia but have not quite been convinced to become involved in the community.

Conclusion

It still feels strange to have contributed an article to the mainspace of Wikipedia. I never thought during my “Wikiraces” in high school that one of the links I clicked could bring me to an article I wrote. It was very fulfilling to write about something I was interested in, and hopefully the article will be helpful for people looking to learn about the topic or further build on it. Getting accustomed to Wikipedia took much time and effort, but with the resources provided and help from experienced users, the outcome has been very rewarding. Using this class as a model, structured subgroups for Wikipedia newcomers could be beneficial for new users to partake in a similar guided experience towards finding topics they are interested in contributing to and committing to shared goals with other users. This model helps users decide their own identity on the site, communicate more effectively with veteran users, and learn the basics of the community and its interface at a comfortable pace. The creation of a smaller-scale integration structure could inspire some of the millions of casual Wikipedia readers to begin editing and help the community grow and thrive.