User:Haivanessa/Reflection

Out of 30,6 million users, only about 5% (140,999) of them are active users. This fact raises a lot of questions, one of them being: is Wikipedia welcoming to newcomers?

In my Online Communities class, we had the chance to discuss this topic over and over again, and the main conclusion we came up with is that: no, Wikipedia is not as welcoming as they should be to new members. Considering that Wikipedia thrives on real people making contributions to its platform, you would think they would take into consideration the idea of a collaborative culture, which according to Wikipedia means, "the process of two or more people or organizations working together to realize or achieve something successful." However, giving people the chance to collaborate in my experience, did not seem to be their forte. One of the reasons why this might happen is simply due to the fact that Wikipedia does not have an actual "customer support" team that works to please its users; instead, the platform uses real people to influence other "real people" to use its platform; this phenomenon can be both positive and negative, as some of the people who participate in the community tend to take their "power" to another level and consider themselves part of the "recursive public"; these are people who are extremely concerned with the maintenance and modification of a certain community to the public, therefore they make their primary job to go over newly published articles and either criticize the author or if they are nice (which they should be) provide helpful feedback.

In my situation, I found myself being harassed when I posted my first article; an article that in less than a day was flagged for deletion and later found to be reputable. However, the process was quite hostile. The users, or in Wikipedian language, "moderators" rather than providing good feedback on how I should improve my article, simply wrote mean comments about the article, my classroom, and my professor. The discussion went on and on until one or two users decided to actually be helpful and sided with me on the discussion. At the end, I was able to fight my case and provide reputable sources that were already there since the beginning. As a conclusion, I found that the particular user, who in fact, was quite mean, seemed to have personal issues rather than issues with my article, in a way I felt that he thought he should be recognized on Wikipedia and not the person I was talking about. I also think my article affected his ego and hurt his social capital which means, "the value of his network" simply because he thought that due to his record with Wikipedia, his comments were more valued than mine. That being said, I think his participation in Wikipedia is due to extrinsic motives which mean "to achieve some other outcome" (KrautEtal 2012, "Building Successful Online Communities", p. 24) as by helping the community he's helping his own ego.

Due to similar users, like the one mentioned above, it does not surprise me that "60% of registered editors on Wikipedia never make another edit after the first 24 hours participating" (KrautEtal 2012, "Building Successful Online Communities", p. 205). I don't think Wikipedia is as nice to newcomers as they should be and simply inviting newcomers to "tea houses" or giving "wiki love" does not make the interaction between a newcomer and Wikipedia pleasant. I think a great way to improve its platform is to provide helpful tips on how to use the platform, provide incentives and have actual moderators.

The main idea and goal of Wikipedia is to provide a platform that contains useful content and information about nearly anything and anyone that is somewhat reputable or interesting, and it gets better – it's written by people to the people! However, although the idea is quite good, how are newcomers supposed to interact with the platform if they never used it as a collaborating user before?

Wikipedia seems very easy to use if you're simply looking for information but for those looking to give back to the community and collaborate, the platform is in fact, quite complicated; there are a lot of rules that comes with being a collaborator and publishing an article – it needs to be reputable, have good sources, good grammar and so on, which is one of the reasons why the percentage of users who comes back after their first visit is quite low. I believe if tutorials were available, explaining what to do and how to do it, newcomers would have a better interaction with the platform. Not only that but if each new user was required to view a 5-minute PowerPoint pinpointing some of the main rules such as "find at least 3 reputable sources" – their experience could also be more positive, as it would prevent other users to lash out on their user page and criticize their articles. I understand that some people learn better from enculturation, which means, "absorption of one's own culture from immersion", however, considering that the main moderators of the community are regular people, a newcomer should have at least some idea of how the platform works.

If newcomers had a better idea of how to start using the platform and what makes a good article, there would be less need for moderators. But nonetheless, the need for moderation is extremely high in Wikipedia, which is "the governance mechanism that structure participation in a community to facilitate cooperation and prevent abuse" (Grimmelmann 2015, p.47) because the content is generated by people like you and me, the need of moderators becomes higher as someone needs to have the power to edit or ban users that are acting inappropriately. It's difficult for newcomers who don't yet understand Wikipedia's culture to respect other users who do not have a higher power than they do. For example, if you were stealing money and someone told you to stop it, most likely you wouldn't listen to them unless they are a cop. Same thing happens in restaurants or stores, if you have a problem, you immediately ask to speak with the manager simply because they have more power and you trust their words. An online community like Wikipedia needs professional moderators with a "higher" title to be able to maintain the community professional yet welcoming.

While reading the rules and hiring moderators would be helpful. Another resource that could help newcomers to become active could be incentives. Wikipedia can still maintain the idea of "real people" writing for "real people" but also give out prizes to show appreciation to active users and newcomers. For example, prizes for "users who have an exceptional presence" or prizes for "newcomer with most edits in the first three months". This would not only provide an identity-based affective commitment from users which is "a feeling of being part of the community and helping to fulfill its mission" (R. E. Kraut & P. Resnick, 2011, "Building successful online communities", p.4) because more people would feel a connection with the community but it would also encourage them to help the community more.

In conclusion, I learned a lot about Wikipedia in the past three months and I really like that it's a non-profit and that the main goal of the website is to educate people on different sort of things. However, as a regular user who edits and makes contributions, I felt that the community was a bit hostile and that by implementing the suggestions mentioned above (manuals, moderators, incentives) the community can become a bit more welcoming and accessible to newcomers.