A Student's Report on Wikipedia
editWelcome to Wikipedia, Now Bug Off
editWhat does working on Wikipedia look like? Feel like? During the past month, I had the chance to be a contributor to the site and work on an article about Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. In my time working on the platform I took note of some of the strengths and weaknesses I personally experienced as a user. Overall, I noticed that Wikipedia has an optimal destination for contributors who are aware of an article they want to add or edit; these users would also have to contain the motivation to want to learn how to do so. However, the experience of Wikipedia weakens for others outside of this demographic. The greatest weakness I could outline would be the lack of tools directing newcomers and existing contributors to “stub” or lesser developed articles. The lesser weakness, despite the tutorial offered to Wikiedu participants, would be the lack of structure, guidelines, and feedback for active contributors, especially newcomers. In order to help solve these problems I would recommend three solutions; for one set goals for people to hit when improving/ creating articles, two promote pages to communities, within or outside Wikipedia who have shown history of interest in similar pages, and three have some page/ad/article informing outsiders of why people contribute to Wikipedia as a whole.[1]
The article to follow will be my assessment of Wikipedia’s strengths and weaknesses using the following criteria of contribution, commitment, behavior regulation, and newcomer experience. The final paragraph will elaborate on the recommendations alluded to above.
Lets Contribute
editTo begin this section, I can say that in my experience Wikipedia heavily encourages a person’s intrinsic motivation. That is to say, most of the platform does little to reward via monetary means or other external ways. On top of this, providing certain status rewards, that other contributors could easily recognize, would create a system that could harm the anonymity that the online encyclopedia uses to encourage participation.[2] As a consequence, contributors are primarily motivated by the desire to make public information within the realm of their interests. In turn, Wikipedia has the strength of providing a platform that allows articles with a popular public interest to thrive, while simultaneously creating a lack of contribution to articles that may not have exposure to interested parties who would want to contribute to those articles.[3]
Why Stay Committed
editWikipedia encourages identity-based commitment as well as implements features that reduce repelling forces that undercut personal commitment [talk page (Add Examples)]. In regards to bonds-based commitment, the conversation is more complicated depending on how a community is defined with respect to the site. An argument can be made that Wikipedia contributors are a community within themselves. At the same time, Wikipedia could be seen as a congregation of a bunch of subgroups. Either way in my experience Wikipedia has not shown much support for these interactions. The majority of interactions that could encourage commitment beyond identity-based would primarily be facilitated through the talk tab feature offered. Consequently, Wikipedia then leaves little features for contributors to engage in joining pages with contributors that share similar interests.[3]
How is Behavior Regulated
editWikipedia does well to limit bad behavior by having a self-moderating team that manifest themselves as the contributors to a page. Similarly to commitment this is why pages that are more well known, and in turn have more moderators that care are well protected. As a given, the weakness of this system is that it does little to support smaller pages with less committed people who are active or alerted about actions done to articles. [3]
The Experience as a Newcomer
editThere is little regard when considering how to recruit new or existing members into contributing more to articles that may need more attention. Wikipedia does well to make sure that the selection does have a level of scrutiny with their implementation of features like Wikiedu and the sandbox. On top of this Wikipedia has a weakness of not showing support to retaining contributors beyond their own internal motivation. The talk tab that Wikipedia offers does give limited socialization for Newcomers to talk with people who are contributing to pages of interest. Personally I found that limited interaction beneficial for the purposes of an online encyclopedia. The sandbox is an ideal tool to protect both the newcomers and the active contributors from harmful activity, while the norms of the community are taken in.[3]
So What Now
editWikipedia as a platform does well to create a place where individuals with passion and knowledge of a subject can add and share their expertise in a congregation with others who share similar desires. From providing the freedom, tools, and training, anyone who wants to edit, or add an article to Wikipedia can find most of the accommodations satisfactory. All the same, where the platform falls short is with encouraging viewers of the site, in addition to active contributors, to contribute more to neglected subjects. I would guess this is not simply due to the lack of interest in stub pages, rather a lack of awareness of such pages, as well as the knowledge of motivations/purpose from those who do contribute. In addition to these problems, there is also a lacking interface that can more immediately aid those contributing to immediately evaluate their work. What I recommend in light of these problems is (1) an algorithm-based recommendation system that could direct users to new pages they may be interested in contributing to, (2) an interface that can provide goals and feedback to contributors while they are actively creating [also could be algorithm driven], and (3) some widely accessible informational page to explain the reasons why individuals choose to contribute to Wikipedia as a whole.[1]
- ^ a b Hale, Wm Salt. “Communication 482 Section 2/14.” University of Washington COM 482.
- ^ Hill, Benjamin Mako. “Communication 482 Newcomers II.” University of Washington COM 482.
- ^ a b c d Kraut, Robert E., et al. Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design. The MIT Press, 2016.