Wikipedia Reflection Essay
Dear Wikipedia and Wikimedia foundations, I, here writing this article to briefly discuss my experience during my use in Wikipedia and article editing parts. I will also post some personal suggestions for the community to be continuously improved. I will apply those ideas based on my current experience while editing my Wikipedia articles, and the knowledge I gathered from COM 481 in the Commitment part and Newcomers part! Please feel free to address any of my problems in my reflection post!
The article I choose to update in my Wikipedia page is called, “Tencent Video”, while editing, I do realize a couple questions pop up as I go further in the process. Some of the sources I choose to use are recognized as unreliable sources in my sandbox. I know that due to the Wikipedia norm some Chinese websites were prohibited because it would be hard for Wikipedia to testify to the credibility of some websites. However, after I click publish pages in my sandbox, Wiki tells me I have some inauthentic sources but not clearly indicates which one should be removed. In improving this, by explaining which specific sources should be reconsidered or removed will make the rules more clear.
Before starting the article, I did a lot of similar research toward the video section because I want to see what “Tencent Video” is missing compared to other established articles. However, during my research, I see many irrelevant articles titled “video” but the contents are nothing about videos, instead, they put advertisements in their articles and in the talk page, it shows the article has been graded as c-class or even higher. I do not think these articles will help the beginner with anything positive if they wish to find some accurate articles on their research topics. What I recommend here is that maybe Wikipedia can improve their advertisement filters or set up a higher threshold for users to participate in Wikipedia. Though I know that Wikipedia is a place everyone can engage with and make contributions, it would be good to enhance the qualities of users and the contents.
While searching for pictures that may add to my article, I feel it hard to find credible sources of pictures. There are many limitations applied to my picture selections, in this case if Wikipedia could publish some image books with credible sources for the user to select, I think it will greatly help the users better represent their ideas because sometimes pictures are more persuasive than solely text form.
Due to the norm in Wikipedia that not all users are intentionally making good behaviors and contributions to the community. I actively applied the knowledge I learned from COM 481 in the Wikipedia community. I found some spammers, and trolls in some video related articles. However when I try to report one issue during my use of Wikipedia, I am having a hard time finding correct spots for reporting, when I click on help, it indicates me to a different page titled, “Help: Searching”, with no sign of where to report.
During my research on the articles, I often experience one problem with the search bar, which indicates that an error has occurred during my research, because the search section is currently too busy to load. I am not sure if that only happens to me but one thing I am sure about is that I do not perform that amount of research.
By watching the tutorial each week on my Wikipedia dashboards. I am able to fluently perform sandbox drafts, revisions, adding sources to my bibliography, talk page, and leave comments on my peer’s paper!
After learning the concept of newcomers in COM 481, I realize how newcomers are significant for a community’s development. By attracting the right newcomers, the community will have more contributors that allow the community to grow faster and develop better. As mentioned in the lecture slides, the sandbox is one “safe place” for users to do experiments on their articles without formally publishing into the Wikipedia official page. I really like this setting because it gives me a chance to make “formal mistakes” before I really turn those mistakes into formal. However, the sandbox is not so friendly for first time users, which is newcomers, because based on my experience exploring sandbox area, I feel confused at first because I am afraid of making mistakes, my originally thought is that if I make some changes to the original article then it is oficial which means I am scared of making any edits in my sandbox. In the future, if Wikipedia would make a strong sign telling the newcomers to feel free to make any edits or changes into the sandbox without worrying about any consequences, it is going to be more attractive for new users since Wikipedia is free to use so the costly barriers would not be an issue.
For the user's Wikipedia account, I would suggest letting the account link with other accounts of the users. In this case, the user and Wikipedia have formed a bonds-based relationship, by doing this the user and Wikipedia community will trust each other more and the user will be less likely to post things which would harm the community. For example, because Wikipedia's account needs to link with our emails, and that is the only requirement for creating accounts. People can have multiple emails with no cost, therefore some bad intentional users would use this advantage to post articles or ruin other published articles for their personal interests. After doing such, they would delete their accounts and pretend nothing happened in their end. However, if their accounts are linked with their other accounts, they would need to be responsible for their behaviors in Wikipedia’s community.
Last but not least, with the technology developed, Wikipedia has become a developed and mature community. I firmly believe with the suggestions I posted above, new users and current users will engage more into the community, and make more valuable changes and improvement for the articles.