Wikipedia Reflection Paper
Mackenzie Oliver
COM 481
Through my experience with the Wikipedia platform and learning about online communities, I can confirm that although Wikipedia does a good job assisting newcomers, there is room for improvement with motivations and creating a sense of belonging. Throughout the course of this quarter thus far, we have not only studied the things that allow online communities to thrive and fail, but have completed Wikipedia training sessions on WikiEdu that permitted us to edit and upload a Wikipedia article of our choice. Because of this expert experience that was gained through training and exposure, in addition to the information we’ve studied in affiliated readings and textbook chapters, I am confident that through this paper I can provide the Wikipedia platform with helpful advice on how problems can be remedied.
One thing that Wikipedia does well is the way it interacts with newcomers and allows them to understand the inner workings of the application. With clear timelines, modules, assignments, and due dates on WikiEdu, students interacting with the interface get clearly defined expectations as they continue through training modules. These explicit expectations prevent the recurring problem in online communities: because “they lack experience, when newcomers try to participate, they imperil the work that other community members have already performed” (Kraut et al., 179). Something that I appreciated while completing weekly tasks on WikiEdu was the way it allows you to mark assignments as completed, as opposed to self-correcting or closing upon the selected due date. My ability to control my own progress helped me remind myself where I was struggling, reviewing the modules that confused me before hitting the “Mark as Complete” button. It is clear not only through my interactions with WikiEdu but also in lecture that “immersive experiences with clear goals, feedback, and challenges that exercise people’s skills to their limits but still leave them in control are intrinsically motivating” (Kraut et al., 47). The idea that these modules can educate and challenge students while still giving them autonomy to decide their level of proficiency is something that Wikipedia does exceptionally well. The modules also require time and effort, which encourages those who want to participate to put in the work – this way “the community screens out undesirable members, while encouraging or selecting the others” (Kraut et al., 180). Another thing that Wikipedia excels at is its ability to take feedback. At the end of all the training modules on WikiEdu there is a place for students to leave opinions – opening up the platform to receive criticism and improve. This concept is also reinforced in the affiliated readings when discussing how platforms who “encourage systematic, quantitative feedback generate more verbal feedback” (Kraut et al., 47). This feedback works to improve the application, increasing participation and success in the competitive environment of online communities.
Despite this success, however, Wikipedia has some flaws – one of them being the way it motivates people to participate actively as opposed to passively. Before joining this course and learning about Wikipedia through WikiEdu, it had never occurred to me to edit a Wikipedia article, or even that the general public had the opportunity to do so. However, we’ve learned that using incentives to gain participants is difficult due to all the factors involved in continuous participation. There’s also the way Wikipedia functions as a platform: people are more likely to only edit articles they find personally relevant, and therefore are more likely to be “one and done” as opposed to recurrently participating. One way the online community could remedy this is through a performance incentive: “rewards—whether in the form of status, privileges, or material benefits—motivate contributions” (Kraut et al., 53). Focusing on performance based rewards as opposed to task based rewards can also minimize risk and maintain the strict expectations that Wikipedia prides itself on, in order to avoid “members gaming the system by performing the tasks with low effort” (Kraut et al., 55). Rewards that focus on the quality of work as opposed to completion would not only reinforce what WikiEdu already does with the self-completion aspect of its training, but would also keep the group of recurring participants dedicated as opposed to simply taking up space. It may appear as if any traffic is good traffic for online communities, but “as online networks grow to a size never seen before, many question their sustainability and believe that they are becoming too large to be useful” (Choudary, WIRED). Keeping the participants for Wikipedia encouraged to participate with relevant information helps the platform increase traffic in a stable and reliable way. These participants can also be encouraged through identity and affective commitment: because Wikipedia is a very detached community right now, it’s likely that participants would be more likely to stick around if they were able to connect with others. Affective commitment is inspired by “feelings of closeness and attachment to a group or members of the group”, which is something that Wikipedia could improve upon (Kraut et al., 78). Although there are talk pages, bringing more attention to them and initiating conversation could improve the sense of community Wikipedia is lacking. I would suggest for Wikipedia to look toward Stack Exchange or Reddit to implement this, as they are platforms dedicated to communication and answering questions. Overall, despite Wikipedia doing a great job with newcomers, there can be improvement within incentives and increasing motivation for people who are interested in being a steady fixture in the community.
Wikipedia is an online community with a lot of traction in our modern world – it rarely falls under the radar and its articles are often the first search result on Google. Because of this, there’s a lot of attention on the success of the platform (its treatment of newcomers) and its drawbacks (its lack of motivation for continuous participation). This paper not only reflects upon my personal interactions with Wikipedia as a platform, but implements what has been learned throughout the quarter thus far to provide constructive criticism on the way the online community functions.