User:Thib.renou

Hi ! my name is Thibaud, currently enrolled in the Online Communities courses at NEU

Wikipedia Experience

Introduction

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, created in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Though available in many languages, the English version of Wikipedia still is the largest one, offering in 2014 more than 4.5 million articles. This growing success has only been made possible by the complete involvement of an active community, known as Wikipedians. This community participates on a totally voluntary basis, and is essential to the growth and veracity of the encyclopedia. During my Fall 2014 semester at Northeastern University, I had the opportunity to become a part of this community by taking the Online Communities course taught by Joseph Reagle and start writing an article about the Triangle Theater Company. Following a step-by–step participation to this community as well as generally studying what the needs of a successful online community are, I am able to identify the reasons why Wikipedia has been such a success. In this essay, I will firstly highlight how the possibilities offered by the community encourages contribution, then I will focus on why most of the users are fully committed to it, to finally share my personal insights about my experience as a Wikipedian.

Enhancing contribution

The first element that motivates Wikipedians to contribute to the community is the possibility offered to anyone to write a missing article on the encyclopedia, or to edit any article already started by another member of the community. Non-existing articles are easily identified by users thanks to the use of red links, and edits can be made by anyone on any article at any time. This easiness of identifying needed contribution highly motivates users to participate to the community; as part of my Online Communities class experience, I had to start a complete new article from scratch, with the important help of other Wikipedians, both my classmates and complete strangers. This opportunity allows users to choose the articles they want to write about or develop; this element increases the global contribution to the encyclopedia, as allowing users to perform a task that interest them directly increases their contribution to an online community. The second element I noticed while using and learling about Wikipedia which certainly encourages contributions is the high importance given to users’ interaction. The possibility of giving feedback and of generally combining contribution with social contact are elements that make an online community successful, and Wikipedia offers tools highly used by its contributors to constantly be able to interact with each other. I personally felt this when users were making edits on my article, while always explaining what they did and why they did it. Users also are given the possibility to directly interact with each other using their user pages and to thank others who helped them with the use of Wikilove.

Wikipedians' commitment

During my Wikipedia experience or when studying this community in class, I was able to notice and reflect about the opportunity given to certain users of getting even more committed to their participation when allowing them to access a special status and groups inside the Wikipedian community. This is known on Wikipedia as the user access levels, where users become an even more important part of the community, increasing their commitment to these subgroups and consequently to the community in general. The Wikipedians user profile pages also are an element increasing the commitment to the community. Users have the possibility to write about themselves and about their participation to the community (a direct example of this is this essay right now!). This element increases commitment, but I personally think it could be highly improved. The user’s page are in my opinion not easily accessible, modifiable and do not allow users to efficiently enough communicate with each other. Ii might only be personal, but I had a hard time communicating with my classmates or Wikipedia tutors directly on Wikipedia, and this difficulty highlighted to me the improvements that might be needed in this area to commit users even more to the community.

Personal insights

Training

Wikipedia offers the possibility to newcomers to train on how to navigate, create and edit articles on the online encyclopedia. As part of my class Wikipedia experience, I had to complete the Wikipedia Student Training before starting working on my article about the Triangle Theater Company. Offering training is a great idea especially considering how special it can get when writing or editing an article for this online community; however, I personally think that the training could be much more detailed and extensive, and should go along with clear and easy links on how to properly write on Wikipedia (considering citing, linking to other articles, categorizing your article…). I would never have been able to properly write my article without the help of my classmates or Wikipedia tutors. Writing this article made me particularly proud because of my contribution to Wikipedia after years of using it, but to be honest if it were not for a class assignment and if I were on my own I certainly would have given up much earlier and not try again.

Corrections

I was particularly amazed about the corrections and edits made on my article by both my classmates and strangers Wikipedia users. I knew my English writing skills would be a problem when writing my article, and I was particularly surprised about the rapid and efficient corrections made by Wikipedia bots or active members of the community. It was not about criticizing what had been done but just helping me to make it much better. That way, Wikipedia offers a collaborative experience that is to me the most motivating part of being a Wikipedian.

Reputation

As a student, I got repeated by several teachers years after years that Wikipedia is not a proper source of information. Its openness makes it modifiable by everyone, and people seem to highly doubt the veracity of Wikipedia information. During my Wikipedian experience, I had the opportunity to discover how much the community emphasizes the importance of using proper sources when writing or editing an article; it might only be at a personal level, but my opinion of Wikipedia was highly modified thanks to my experience, I now give more credit to information available on this online encyclopedia and am able to pay attention and focus on the sources listed on every article.

Conclusion

My experience on Wikipedia linked to my parallel learning during my Online Communities course at Northeastern University helped me to identify and understand the success of this online community, as well as the improvements I would personally recommend. Wikipedia manages to motivate its users to contribute thanks to the easiness of noticing missing articles and to the social interaction created among users. The tools available to the users when participating to the community such as personalization, communication and groups reinforce the commitment of the community. The main disadvantage I noticed while participating is the hardness of getting used to Wikipedia way of functioning, and I am sure that with a few modifications and easiness of use this community will be able to grow even more rapidly while offering quality and well-sourced articles needed by every internet-user.