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Wikipedia reflection essay

The public sphere today is gathering us as a discursive space in which groups and individuals are able to associate and discuss mutual interests and judgement. Together with the affordance of technologies, we are able to contribute to the public goods through collective and coordinated actions. However, common users always ignore the network effect that is potentially significant to everyone’s daily online behaviors. As I stepped into the world of Wikipedia, I finally realized how I could possibly be benefited by the community as the platform grows larger and stronger. This experience cultivated me a new online behavior, which made me realize that I should not take everything online for granted.

The pluralistic ignorance blocks many people from contributing on Wikipedia. They even never think that they can do anything to make this place much better. So did I. Once I was a casual user of Wikipedia. There was no motivation for me to become editor since the cost was way beyond benefit. After taking this class, my extrinsic motivation encouraged me to explore this new world. I could not think more benefits beside receiving credits from this class in order to successfully graduate. It is the first step that costs. But fortunately, Wikipedia offered a clear and concise instruction to new editors. It was so fun when I was first editing on the user page.

However, things totally changed when I was able to look for an interesting topic and contribute to it directly. I never believe in digital dualism. My online behaviors totally reflect myself in real life. Therefore, when I was able to find a homophily target online, I quickly identified myself with it. For instance, I am big K-pop fan. When I was recommending my favorite variety show to my friends, I would never feel exhausted. Same things happen online. When I was editing the Wikipedia page of my favorite show, I was recommending it to the rest of the world. It was the intrinsic value that motivate me to contribute more on Wikipedia. Moreover, My commitment turned from a Needs-based to Identity-based.

Nevertheless, editing an article on Wikipedia is not as easy as posting a tweet on social media. The content is qualified only when you meet all the requirements. Therefore, I tried my best to look for good resources for citations, translate Korean News into English, and phrase sentences in neutral way. Luckily, the talk page did help me a lot. Whenever I had problem editing the article, the hardcore editors would help correct my mistakes and lead me to the right way. For example, when I was citing resources, a hardcore editor taught me how to find reliable references as mentioned in Wikipedia:WikiProject Korea/Reliable sources and helped me correct some grammar problems. Suddenly I realized how important to have standard norms and regulations to hold the community accountable. It is necessary to keep all the articles in high quality on Wikipedia. Therefore, normative rules are provided to regulate individual editors and instruct them how to contribute better and how to avoid bad behaviors. Moreover, it is efficient to have multiple editors on same articles. Each editor behaves as a mutual moderator to make sure that the content is neutral, correct, well-cited and polished.

After contributing to my article, I realized that Wikipedia is composed by those people who are anonymously contributing to the human history. While reading a Wikipedia article now, I subconsciously correct little mistakes in it. Many little makes a mickle. We should definitely not take those valuable resources for granted.

In order to motive more people, Wikipedia should first make people know that Wikipedia is not unreachable. I remember that a while ago, there was an announcement on every single Wikipedia article page, motivating users to donate and support. This strategy could also be used to recruit more editors--put it up on every article page would expose it to more people. There are two kinds of basic users: one is looking for something new on Wikipedia, the other is looking for what they’ve already known well for fun. If the former does not find the information they want, then they will go to other resources. The later usually think that they know more than current Wikipedia article. But both of them become potentially new editors. Have people rate how good the article is, and if they think the article is below his/her expectation, then encourage them to edit it themselves!

Also, as a Chinese international student, I use Wikipedia more frequently than Baidu Pedia for academic use. In China, Baidupedia takes up huge market. And currently there is no strong competitor. One reason Wikipedia is not popular in China is the government scrutiny and prohibition of google. Building up a totally separate Wikipedia server might be a good choice. The currect Wikipedia has same article that can be translated into different language versions. Some sensitive articles are not allowed in China, so that the whole Wikipedia has to be blocked. If Wikipedia can build up a server that only has Chinese version and qualified articles, it might be passed by the fire wall. Moreover, since Baidu is the biggest search engine in China, Wikipedia might be blocked by Baidu. Therefore, it will be convenient to have mobile application version in China.

I am looking forward to see more and more people contributing on Wikipedia around the world.