Reflection
editFounded in 2016, Wikipedia has become the most famous multilingual, free encyclopedia in the world, with more than 32.5 million active users and 600 new articles a day on average.[1] I am glad to have a chance to be part of the Wikipedia community as I am always curious about how it works. Although Wikipedia is an excellent and well-developed online community, I believe there a couple aspects that Wikipedia should improve including management of newcomers, moderation and community governance. Personally, I had a hard time using Wikipedia compared to other online communities, as it does not give clear instructions of how to use the website. Therefore, Wikipedia should provide more instructions of how to use the website for newcomers. Moreover, I would also redesign the talk page on Wikipedia as it looks boring and confusing. On the other hand, community governance is important for the community of Wikipedia. As vandalism on Wikipedia has become one of the most concerning problems, I would suggest for Wikipedia to create a mandatory survey for each new user in order to gain a better understanding of their intention and act as a reference for better community governance.
Wikipedia is not an easy website to use for a lot of people including myself. I had a hard time learning how to operate Wikipedia even for basic steps, like editing or creating a sandbox. In my opinion, the setup of the Wikipedia seems to be related to a lot of coding and computer knowledge. For someone like me who is not a computer science major and have limited knowledge of how to operate my own laptops, using Wikipedia is truly a challenge. Without the help of professor Reagle and the librarians, there is no way that I can finish this project by myself. For this specific project, I chose to do something related to my criminal justice minor, therefore, I decided to talk about something that is related to police and juveniles. Springfield, MA police officers against minority teens is a really interesting case to me, as I am writing a policy paper for my Youth, Crime and Justice class. On the other hand, I really want the public to know the seriousness of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system in the US and how it is affecting our next generations.
At the early stage of doing the Wikipedia project, I had a hard time finding reliable sources for this article. After a couple attempts and communication with the librarians, I finally found some reliable new articles for my project. When I started to put information on the Wikipedia page, I faced another challenge. I had no idea where to start with and how to use the Wikipedia in general. In order to solve this problem, I searched for “Wikipedia sandbox tutorial” on YouTube and I was able to create a sandbox after watching the tutorial. For the rest of the project, I mostly just used Google or found an online tutorial on YouTube whenever I faced any difficulty using Wikipedia or had any questions.
After I finished the project, I had a couple suggestions for Wikipedia. In my opinion, there should be more guidelines and instructions for new users.[needs copy edit] I would suggest Wikipedia to create tutorial videos or even online class that introduce different features of Wikipedia. Moreover, it should be mandatory for all new users to watch those videos. Currently, there are instruction pages on the Wikiversity page about how to create a sandbox and edit an article, however, I did not know that it exists until I finished my project. This brought out another reason why I think online classes or tutorials are necessary for new editors of Wikipedia. From my perspective, it is not easy to get help on the current Wikipedia user interface. First of all, the main page of Wikipedia is just overwhelming. When I first started my project, I was totally lost and all I saw is just bunch of words and I didn’t know where to start. After playing around with it for a while, I was getting used to Wikipedia and I realized that you really need to dig into the website in order to understand how to operate it. Moreover, I am also thinking how many new editors create a Wikipedia account and stop using it because of the confusion.
There should be more social interactions between users on Wikipedia. Being able to connect with the community can increase retention of the newcomers.[2] In my opinion, the type and the style of the communication are essential. For my Wikipedia assignment, I communicated with Elysia Webb, who is a Wikipedia Expert for Wiki Education, about how to create a sandbox. She was really friendly and was able to answer my question. However, the talk page of Wikipedia seems to be too plain for me. When I first looked at the talk page, it was emotionless and boring. I would suggest Wikipedia to redesign the talk page by allowing users to use emojis and change the background of the talk page. Moreover, I would also rename to “talk” button into “mailbox” as it is clearer for user. On the other hand, I think it would be a good idea to have an existing user to pair with a new user. According to Kraut, socialization is important for attracting newcomers, teaching newcomers the ways of the group has positive outcomes, including better organizational commitment and decreases actual turnover.[3] For example, the old member can act as an instructor and teach the newcomer how to use Wikipedia. From my point of view, this kind of interactions not only created a sense of belonging to the new online communities but also increases socialization.
Other problems with attracting newcomers are their recruitment and selection. According to the Pew Research Center, “Wikipedia averages more than 18 billion page views per month, making it one of the most visited websites in the world…The site adds more than 20,000 new articles each month and has 27 million registered users, according to data reported by Wikipedia."[4] Because of its substantial viewing and editing, I believe that it is unnecessary for Wikipedia to recruit new users. However, I believe the selection of newcomers is essential.
Having high quality users increases the overall performance and atmosphere of the community. One unique feature of Wikipedia is that every user has the right to edit any articles, however, it creates a problem of vandalism on Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia, “vandalism includes humiliation, a hoax or otherwise degrading nature”.[5] Wikipedia has its own way to regulate that behavior. Normally, vandalism is automatically detected and removed. Users who violate the rule and commit vandalism on Wikipedia will receive a warning before removing their accounts. There are 4 different types of warnings. The first warning is a reminder and assumes good faith, the second warning is an actual warning, and the last one is a final warning for the user and telling them further vandalism will result in a block. In my opinion, although I did not receive any offensive or disturbing messages from anyone on Wikipedia, community governance including monitoring user’s behavior and removing offensive comments is a must for online communities. I also believe that Wikipedia has tried their best to address and combat bad behavior within the community. In order to maintain the harmony within the community, it might be helpful if Wikipedia has a survey to ask each newcomer what are their intentions to join Wikipedia and what do they want to achieve here. I believe this type of survey will identify the style and values of a newcomer. Therefore, Wikipedia can have a better understanding of its users and it might help to better regulate user’s behaviour in the future.[5]
All in all, even though editing on Wikipedia is a challenge for me, I am still glad to have a chance to contribute on Wikipedia. Moreover, I believe Wikipedia can improve the socialization between users by creating a more user friendly “talk” page. I also suggest that Wikipedia should offer more instructions for new users. On the other hand, I think Wikipedia has been doing a great job on regulating user’s behavior. In the future, I believe that Wikipedia should keep maintaining a healthy and neutral atmosphere.
Example Link
edithttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Yan.yiw/sandbox&diff=cur&oldid=889896890
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Yan.yiw/sandbox&oldid=889896675
Link to my article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Springfield_Massachusetts_Police_Officers_against_minority_teens
References
edit- ^ Leadem, Rose (2018-01-10). "15 Surprising Facts About Wikipedia". Entrepreneur. Retrieved 2019-04-01.
- ^ Zhu, HaiYi. "Effects of Peer Feedback on Contribution: A Field Experiment in Wikipedia" (PDF).
- ^ Kraut, Robert E. (2011). Building Successful Online Communities. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. p. 180.
- ^ NW, 1615 L. St; Suite 800Washington; Inquiries, DC 20036USA202-419-4300 | Main202-857-8562 | Fax202-419-4372 | Media. "Wikipedia at 15: Millions of readers in scores of languages". Pew Research Center. Retrieved 2019-04-01.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ a b "Vandalism on Wikipedia", Wikipedia, 2019-03-28, retrieved 2019-04-01