Wikipedia, a public and free online encyclopedia, has been created and edited by volunteers from all over the world. Its founders, Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales, created the new platform in January 2001 initially to complement Nupedia, which was also an online encyclopedia project edited only by experts. However, Wikipedia quickly overtook Nupedia, becoming a global project in multiple languages. [1] As a newcomer in editing Wikipedia, I have had a fresh experience while doing my project. I argue Wikipedia provided positive and friendly interactions with me, as a newbie, through three different perspectives of Wikipedia: the management of newcomers, moderation, and community governance.
First, in order to survive the inevitable turnover of members, online communities must incorporate successive generations of newcomers.[2] Namely, it is a common phenomenon for a community to always have newcomers to join in.[needs copy edit] However, newcomers often have less motivation to contribute to the community since they are not familiar with the group yet (Organ & Ryan, 1995). This applied to me; when I first registered an account on Wikipedia, I felt confused and lost. For example, I did not know what kinds of contents were available to publish on Wikiepdia.[needs copy edit] I remembered when Prof. Reagle left an assignment to us correcting grammar or content for other Wikipedians, I was worried a lot. I read several pages in the assigned list but I only changed just a few words. From my perspective, I was not confident about the group norms. Moreover, I did not think I had the ability to help those older contributors change their work. Connecting with Kraut, they also mentioned about newcomers did not yet knowing the norms guiding behavior so well in the group, so that their ignorance might act in ways to offend other members.[2] I felt this statement was so true that I was really afraid my changes would harm their works.
However, after a few interactions with an old Wikipedia, Shalor who left a welcome message in my talk page Special:PermanentLink/878710480, I felt this positive interaction made me feel more likely to stay at Wikipedia. As Kraut said in his book that assigning the responsibilities of having friendly interactions with newcomers to a particular community members increases the frequency of these interactions.[2] Shalor's welcome comment made me feel happy to stay here and contribute more. In addition, the amicable interactions between us also increased the rate I asked people for help online, especially when Prof. Reagle required us to ask at least one Wikipedian to view our sandbox. Shalor became my first choice due to our previous friendly interactions. From his corrections, I started to realize the issues of my drafts and got more familiar with Wikipedia writing styles. Neutral point of view played an important role for each Wikipedia editor while illustrating. Shalor helped me deal with some content which were seen non-neutral and promotional. For instance, in the early version of my draft, I included lots of subjective words like amazing and wonderful, which might mislead readers. Also, she Special:Diff/889562383 helped me rewrite a few sentences in the background to improve my tones. Overall, through the friendly interactions with Shalor, I was more familiar with Wikipedia. Also, as a newbie, I was more willingly to stay longer at Wikipedia and contribute more since the older Wikipedians were nice to help me when I was lost.
The second part of the reflection[needs copy edit], I state the moderation of Wikipedia offers me a sense of preciseness, which increases my trust of the site. Before I asked for help to Shalor and Elysia to view my entire draft, I tried the function called 'Live help' on Wikipedia. I was asking them to help me recover my 'Get Help' button since my sandbox did not have it. After those workers viewed my sandbox, one of the staff told me I could not use the 'Get Help' button right now since my article had lots of issues, such as notable sources and tones. He remarked my sandbox as not ready and told me to correct the content. I felt confused about the experiment first, then I asked my peer who had the similar issue as me. Both of our sandbox were declined to be helped. An ex ante moderation model was used here since those staffs applied the same rules consistently to all content [3]. Nonetheless, as the numerous requirements out here to ask help, Wikipedia gradually shifted to ex post when people asked for reviewing. The draft needed to wait more than two months to publish for reviewing by the community moderators. At this time, moderators only paid attentions to where it was needed. Moreover, the free encyclopedia was not free since most participants created content by spending a great expense of time and effort. However, not all effort went to research and writing.[4] When I heard my draft had a lot of problems, I felt sad and bad. However, when I put myself as a reader, I started to understand their strict requirements. Through the whole process of viewing and preparing to publish, the moderation of Wikipedia provided positive feelings to me since I knew the information here were reliable. As Grimmelamnn said in his book that Wikipedia's second commitment was to have positive social norms which were summed up in neutral point of view and good faith.[4] Connecting with my previous mentioned interactions with Shalor, each moderator was working so hard to achieve those goals. The moderation model existed to make sure readers get the most indifferent but essential information towards each topic. Therefore, the moderation of Wikipedia made me feel more positive to keep using and staying at the site.
The last perspective I wanted to share is on governance, including consensus and banning. In this process, I argue both of them were suffered towards a newbie since governance required a newcomer put on more efforts on their page.The biggest challenge of a community was to make group decisions. As Prof. Reagle explained there were tons of ways to make a group decision such as coin flip, dictator and consensus. [5]As Wikipedia's "Consensus" policy notes that achieving consensus requires serious treatment of every group member's considered opinion.[5] Referring back to my live chat experiment, that was a multiple people chatting room. People came from each field working for Wikipedia. When I post my sandbox and asked to be reviewed, one of them viewed it first and then left a comment in the chat room to ask others' opinions. I did not count, but it seemed there were 5-7 people in a chat room. They would exchange opinions from different perspectives and also required me to explain some questions. For instance, they asked me where I got the material that "Fleur du mal" only had beautiful fabrics including the French leavers lace and lustrous skills. I answered from their office site, which violated their norm of neutral point of view. I explained to them that I did not cooperate with the company to promote their products. The consensus of their decision started to vary. Some people believed what I illustrated, but others still felt uncomfortable to read subjective content. Therefore, they found a third party, who was also a Wikipedia to review my article. He Special:Permalink/889465939 left his comment at the top of my page saying my sources did not fit the requirement of notable sources. Therefore, they were kind of getting a consensus by changing my sandbox title into not ready and required me to work harder. In addition, the other old Wikipedia, Elysia Special:Permalink/889581768 also helped me review my article after different opinions came out. She improved my tones issues a lot. For instance, I cited from a Playboy report saying Fleur du Mael worked with the 62-year-old magazine to create lacy underpinnings and sexy loungewear, with a cheeky nod to all things Playboy stood for.
Elysia helped me change the sentence into 'Fleur du Mal collaborated with Playboy in 2015', without any extra subjective words. Also, she suggested I remove price range from my article because it made the article promotional. Even though those old Wikipedians had different consensus towards my article before, they were getting in the same track now. Consensus was not immutable.[5] However, those staffs figured out a way to improve the consensus. For banning, which might be imposed by community consensus, normally had a site ban, a page ban, a topic ban or an interaction ban. [6] I could not say I experienced banning process since my articles had not been published yet. But, both Prof. Reagle and Shalor Special:Permalink/886668744 suggested I remove Fleur du mal pictures since I did not have the copyright. Those strict governance policies of Wikipedia also increased the reliability of Wikipedia for me. Although the preparing process was a little bit hard for a newcomer to complete, it's convenient for each community member to ask old Wikipedians and staffs for help. Also, members had clear manuals to follow while working on Wikipedia.
In general, the Wikipedia editing project was a positive experience for me. As a newcomer, I got friendly interactions with old members at first making me more likely to stay here and contribute more. Then, as my project progressed, the strict and sincere moderation process increased my reliability to the Wikipedia since each staff treated the prepared content seriously. In the end, even though my content was pointed out as having some issues, each older member helped me patiently. Therefore, I encourage people, who can put enough time and efforts, can create an account and edit their favorite topics.
- ^ "History of Wikipedia", Wikipedia, 2019-03-29, retrieved 2019-03-30
- ^ a b c Kraut, Robert. E (2012). Building successful online communities. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
- ^ Grimmelmann, James (2015). The virtues of moderation. OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY. p. 67.
- ^ a b Grimmelmann, James (2015). The virtues of moderation. OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY. p. 87.
- ^ a b c "5 The Challenges of Consensus". reagle.org. Retrieved 2019-03-30.
- ^ "Wikipedia:Banning policy", Wikipedia, 2019-03-24, retrieved 2019-03-30