User:M weth/reflection

“Don’t cite Wikipedia in your essays!” Growing up, teachers always told us that information on Wikipedia couldn’t be trusted, since anyone can edit on Wikipedia. On a side note, I recently found out that if someone edits an article without an account, their edits will be credited to an IP address. Despite knowing about Wikipedia’s less than stellar reputation, I still felt really intimidated by the prospect of creating my own Wikipedia article, especially after looking at the debate surrounding Professor Reagle’s Spring 2017 class found in his archives. Based on this one situation, I generalized Wikipedia to be an online community that was unwelcome to newcomers, which I now recognize as problematic. Due to Wikipedia's good faith culture and relying on formal mentors, I realized that newcomers to Wikipedia have no reason to be intimidated, though there are limitations to this online community.

Concepts

After creating a Wikipedia account, I was immensely relieved to receive tutorials and a sandbox. The tutorials helped me understand the community rules, and my sandbox allowed me to write my article in a safe place separate from the main space. The design claim: “Sandboxes both speed up the learning process for newcomers and reduce the harm to the community that newcomers might otherwise cause” resonated with me, as I was terrified of causing damage to the community. While the nature of Wikipedia means that edits can be reverted, I think Kraut makes a good point when referring to the chaos a newcomer can unintentionally cause. The sandbox also allowed me to test out different functions, such as adding templates, without the fear of ruining the format of someone else’s article.

Since this is a class, various aspects of the organizational socialization theory actually came into play quite a bit in this project. Having experienced Wikipedians, or old-timers, to integrate us into the online community was really helpful. Thanks to Professor Reagle and the librarians, we were able to ask questions regarding formatting and sourcing as well as request reviews from these old-timers. This formal mentorship is helpful in mitigating potential consequences of my inexperience to the platform. This ties in well to Kraut’s twenty-third design claim positing that formal mentorship from old-timers can increase a newcomer’s commitment “to the community, learn how to behave in it, and contribute more”. In addition, I sought information as a newcomer by looking at previous interactions on Wikipedia through Professor Reagle’s talk pages. Had I been left alone as a newcomer, I think I would have left Wikipedia fairly quickly.

Feedback

In addition, the small amount of feedback I received on my article was largely positive. There is a study with empirical data that demonstrates positive feedback benefits general work motivation. After receiving positive feedback from my peers and other Wikipedians, I felt more confident in editing my own article and helping my classmates with theirs. Furthermore, while not empirically supported, I have a higher commitment to the community and a better regard towards its users. At the same time, I do believe it’s important to receive negative feedback in order to write a better article, and to assume good faith rather than a personal attack.

I appreciated the different types of WikiLove available on Wikipedia, and find it interesting how all of this bonding occurs “behind the scenes” (away from public eyes, and not as public as article talk pages). As a newcomer, I haven’t made enough edits to warrant any WikiLove of my own yet, but I find that this concept exemplifies Wikipedia’s good faith culture as well as the silliness of the Internet. The idea of the “thank” button as well as WikiLove is a demonstration of a user’s commitment and accolades on their user talk page. The creation of a space separate from an article talk page is interesting as that creates a separation of “work” and “emotional labor”. Regardless, the push to eliminate in-group vs. out-group mentality is commendable.

In regards to specific feedback, I was rather surprised to see that a bot reviewed the picture that I uploaded to Wikipedia. While I’m grateful that it caught my mistake, I’m also perplexed by how experienced Wikipedians work with bots. As someone without a background in tech, I have no clue how these bots work as I only see the result, which leads me to question whether human reviewers add in code to signal a bot to review a specific article or image. I think bots are really useful as a reputation maintenance tool, because code doesn’t pass judgment on a newcomer. In addition, the bot commented on my talk page. While this particular instance had to do with an image, bots allow newcomers to inconspicuously change their actions and maintain face, ultimately increasing commitment as compared to a Wikipedian suggesting changes over a public forum.

Not long after my article entered the main space, I received a notification stating that my article was reviewed. It seems that this user is a new page reviewer, which speaks to the scope of voluntary content moderation conducted by experienced Wikipedians. According to Wikipedia, the article won’t be indexed for search engines until it has been curated by the reviewer. This explains quite a bit as my Wikipedia article didn’t show up on Google after it was published. While extensive documentation can be nice, it was annoying as a newcomer having to look for the information rather than having that explanation pop up as a notification after I moved my article to the main space. I think this ties into “RTFM” and its spinoff acronyms, as newcomers are expected to the educate themselves rather than rely on old-timers. In addition, this user made a minor edit to my article, and while I don't necessarily see the change, I do appreciate having an experienced Wikipedian add markup that I am unaware of, as a newcomer.

Recommendations

I know that some of my classmates were annoyed by Wikipedia’s design, and didn’t find it very user-friendly. Conversely, I relied on clicking on different buttons and figuring out the functionality that way. While I wouldn’t describe the design as intuitive, I think using things like the “cite” button on an article page, or the “heart” button on a user’s talk page are easier to understand than using Wikitext. A recommendation would be for Wikipedia to either simplify the design of the editor, or to have a mandatory tutorial video explaining the function of each button.

In addition, finding documentation about Wikipedia on the website was rather difficult as I would often be redirected to unrelated articles that exist in the main space. So having easily accessible quick links would be helpful. Furthermore, having experienced Wikipedians as mentors was very helpful in creating a supportive experience. The website should consider adding some kind of template to request mentorship or help from an experienced Wikipedian. And of course, creating a list of potential mentors to select from, similar in theory to a category list.

While there is the pervasive idea that anyone can edit on Wikipedia, as I mentioned in the beginning of my reflection, the reality may be different. I believe that Wikipedia could contemplate adding a default sidebar or button to an article page stating that anyone can join and edit Wikipedia. The team could try out A/B testing, and test out various placements and colors to try and increase newcomer initiation. And since anyone can edit on Wikipedia, there are various different writing styles present on Wikipedia. It would be helpful for documentation on a standard style, such as where punctuation goes or how to refer to something specific, as Sean actually mentioned as a potential edit for me to make.