Introduction edit
Like most students of my generation, I grew up using Wikipedia. For as long as I can remember, Wikipedia has had a negative connotation: teachers were quick to remind us that it is not a 'reliable source,' and a flyer hung up on the Northeastern campus before this year's Beanpot proclaimed "BU cites Wikipedia" as an allegation of limited intelligence. But what Wikipedia lacked in professional recognition, it made up for in accessibility — it is easy to find and navigate. As a member of COMM 4625 Online Communities, I made a Wikipedia account for the first time, wrote my first article, and learned a great deal about online platforms. While I enjoyed my Wikipedia experience, my primary issue with Wikipedia is its lack of a community feel — while I immediately felt like a member of our Online Communities community, I would only tenuously consider myself a Wikipedian. Therefore, I believe that Wikipedia should take further action to facilitate the community aspect of its platform through the promotion of social features and an improved newcomer experience. Based on Robert Kraut and Paul Resnick's design claims, I will argue that if Wikipedia wants to improve its communal strength and retention, it needs to further facilitate interaction and collaboration.[1]
Prior Experience and Recruitment edit
Before I enrolled in Online Communities, I had only experienced Wikipedia as a reader. Although I was peripherally aware that anyone could join, it was unclear to me that anyone with an account could edit any article. I was never motivated to join Wikipedia simply because I was never quite clear what benefits were conferred upon Wikipedia members, or how easy it was to write articles and make edits. Presumably, I was not alone in my lack of knowledge regarding Wikipedia. According to the Wikimedia Foundation, the English-language Wikipedia received 823 million unique pageviews in February 2019.[2] However, the English-language Wikipedia only has around 420,000 editors.[3] This represents a significant gap between those who solely absorb content and those who create and edit. Granted, not all viewers would be interested in editing. However, due to my experiences and Wikipedia's internal data, I believe that Wikipedia could improve their recruitment efforts to increase editorship.
It is not immediately apparent that you can create an account or edit a page — the links to do so are tucked into the upper right hand corner, where many newcomers would not look. According to Kraut and Resnick, "impersonal advertising can effectively increase the number of people joining an online community" (p. 189).[1] While Wikipedia does not need to advertise to gain new visitors, it needs to advertise to existing viewers about the possibilities and benefits of creating an account. I believe that the simple addition of such features as a larger, more prominent "create an account button" or a pop-up window informing viewers that they can edit an article would increase awareness about the opportunity for any visitor to become a Wikipedia editor. The presence of these features would drive awareness among viewers like me, who may be intrinsically motivated to create a Wikipedia article but do not know why or how.
Article Writing Process edit
The process of writing my article, while relatively simple, was a largely isolated one. I decided on my topic — SquashBusters, a local nonprofit on the Northeastern campus — because of its notability and my familiarity with the organization. I proceeded as I would with any class paper: I conducted online research, wrote a draft, and edited for clarity and comprehension. However, at one point I got stuck on the formatting of the infobox. I found a generic infobox template, but its categories did not have much relevance to SquashBusters. My old infobox, available here, only contained the founding date and location. Thankfully, I had two peer reviewers I could ask for assistance — I posted a request for help on my talk page, and Will provided some extremely useful examples of infoboxes for similar organizations.
As Kraut and Resnick noted, "sandboxes both speed up the learning process for newcomers and reduce the harm to the community that newcomers might otherwise cause".[1] My infobox experience demonstrates this principle well. Over the course of my article writing process, I edited and changed the infobox constantly, and accidentally deleted it on a number of occasions. If I were to have made these edits in the mainspace, they would have overwhelmed the revision history and confused or frustrated other editors who were reviewing my article. Thanks to the sandbox, my confusion and multiple edits were confined to my sandbox, so my article was in acceptable shape by the time I moved it to the mainspace.
However, moving my article to the mainspace was something of an anticlimactic experience. I expected fiery arguments with Wikipedians, specifically in regards to my potential lack of a neutral point of view since SquashBusters is on the Northeastern campus. However, I only received minor edits once the article went live. MB changed the number of pixels in my photo, Wgolf added an orphan tag, and Katharinearmy added categories. After I linked my article to other articles, I removed the orphan tag from the top of my page, and received no pushback.
The strangest aspect of this experience to me was that I never received a notification that my article had been edited. Since the article is on my watchlist, I was expecting a pop-up or message notifying me that someone had edited my article, but I had to manually go to the history page to see that changes had been made. I believe that a more interactive watchlist, including the use of pop-up notifications when edits are made to pages that a user created, would increase investment in users' contributions to the community and improve the overall experience.
Interactions with Wikipedians edit
While I only had pleasant experiences with Wikipedians, the vast majority of my interactions were among members of our Online Communities class. In response to Wikipedia tasks from Professor Reagle, I interacted with my classmates by posting on their pages, editing their articles, and giving them WikiLove. However, outside of these assignments, my interactions with other Wikipedians were minimal. I received a welcome message on my talk page from Shalor Toncray, an employee of the Wiki Education Foundation. This message was helpful — it contained links to the trainings that we were instructed to complete for class, additional editing guides, and a link to a new editor forum, Wikipedia:Teahouse. However, I only received these messages because I am enrolled in a class affiliated with the Wiki Education Foundation.
My other interactions with Wikipedians were strictly content-focused, with minimal pleasantries and no attempts to foster a relationship. One user, Bookku, reached out to me to ask for help translating an English-language article to other languages. Since I do not speak any other languages fluently, I responded that I was unable to help, and our interaction ended there. Additionally, three users helped appropriately format and categorize my article once it went live. However, they did not comment on my talk page or interact with me. Our interaction focused exclusively on my article. This is fitting based on Wikipedia's content focus — it is a needs-based community, rather than a bonds-based community, and emphasizes efficient, high-quality editorship over interpersonal connections.[1] However, I believe that the integration of more social interaction would improve the editor experience and strengthen the Wikipedia community.
According to Kraut and Resnick, Wikipedia has a "Welcoming Committee" that searches for new users and greets them with a friendly message.[1] However, I never received one of these messages. Moreover, while some of my classmates received an invitation to the Teahouse from a bot, none of them were contacted by an actual community member either. I believe that Wikipedia should actively promote more interaction among its editors, which would make newcomers "more likely to stay longer and contribute more," according to Kraut and Resnick.[1] The idea of a "Welcome Committee" is an excellent one, which I believe would work well if actively implemented. Moreover, a chat feature could help users create bonds with other individuals and ask questions that they may be too embarrassed to publicly admit that they do not know the answer to. In my experience, at least, Wikipedia is collaborative but not interactive — while my article has been edited by multiple other users, I never communicated with any of them. I would be interested to know more about them — why do they care about SquashBusters? How did they find my article? What more would they like to learn about the topic? If Wikipedia promoted increased interaction as a cultural norm, it would foster bonds-based attachments and strengthen the overall community.
Conclusion edit
Although I enjoyed my Wikipedia experience, I doubt I will continue to engage with Wikipedia as an editor after this class. The aspect of Wikipedia that I enjoyed the most was the community of classmates with whom I shared experiences, gave advice, and received help. However, outside of our class, I had minimal contact with other WIkipedians. Since Wikipedia is a needs-based community, not a bonds-based community, it focuses more on content than on social community.[1] While this emphasis on content has led to the development of the largest encyclopedia in the world, Wikipedia is less effective at fostering a social community. Since my only bonds with individuals on Wikipedia are with other students in our class, I have no other connections to maintain once this class is over. Therefore, I doubt I will remain active on Wikipedia - instead, I will devote my time to bonds-based communities such as Instagram and Twitter.
According to Kraut and Resnick, Wikipedia is facing a retention problem.[1] Wikipedia's population is below the replacement rate: according to internal data, the number of newcomer editors is less than the quantity of existing members who leave the community (p. 182).[1] I believe that if Wikipedia wants to improve editor retention and address its demographic population, it needs to enhance its community. Namely, Wikipedia should implement changes to its social communication and newcomer experience. By advertising the opportunity to create and edit articles, Wikipedia can promote its capabilities and turn readers into users. By maintaining the sandbox and implementing a notification system for changes to a user's articles, Wikipedia can drive user investment in improving content and turn users into editors. And by promoting personal connections through the use of user welcoming and a chat feature, Wikipedia can enhance the bonds amongst its users and turn editors into community members.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Kraut, Robert; Resnick, Paul (2011). Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01657-5.
- ^ "Wikistats 2 - Statistics For Wikimedia Projects". stats.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2019-03-24.
- ^ "Wikistats 2 - Statistics For Wikimedia Projects". stats.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2019-03-24.