User:K8c0nway/Wikipedia Reflection

Introduction

Eight years of rigid, Catholic education (as a Unitarian-Universalist, no less) taught me a lot; including but not limited to: extreme methods of memorization, that wine and carbs bring us closer to God, that leprosy is to be avoided at all costs and that Wikipedia is to the well-educated as Satan is to the Twelve Apostles. Therefore, as a proud rule-follower I denounced Wikipedia, taking care never to reference the site in academic contexts. However, like most my age (I assume) I did use Wikipedia as a jumping-off point for determining the key elements of an issue/topic and for collecting more “appropriate” sources from an article's references. It wasn’t until beginning college and my introduction to intersectional feminism that I began to question how we define a “credible” source and to reconsider Wikipedia's place in education. Now, having contributed an article to Wikipedia and having studied intersectional feminism, I have a few ideas regarding why and how the Wikipedia community should be more proactive in recruiting and retaining minority-identified editors (hereafter referred to as MIEs).

Therefore, my reflection will take a two-pronged approach. I will first argue, based upon my own experiences as a newcomer and supported by Kraut & Resnick's design claims, that Wikipedia should do more active recruiting and place greater emphasis on the socialization and education of newcomers in order to foster identity-based commitment among contributors, therefore encouraging contribution. I will then discuss why tailoring these efforts specifically to the goal of growing MIE contributions would be beneficial to the Wikipedia community at-large, especially in its pursuit of WP:NPOV.

My Experience

The Need for Active Recruitment

Prior to our Online Communities experience with Wikipedia, I was aware that anyone could edit or create an article, but never quite took that to heart. I suppose that because of my preconceived notions regarding who has the "right" to contribute to a reference work, I had assumed there would be more barriers to creating a Wikipedia account than actually exist. Furthermore, Wikipedia does not quite make an effort to communicate the ease with which one can sign up and begin contributing to the community. For example, when logged out of my Wikipedia account (AKA lurking as a non-member) I searched for an article that I knew did not exist. As a non-member, I was brought to a page that prompted me to request that the article be written. However, upon signing in and running the same search, I was brought to a page that offered for me to create the article myself. I thought that this small detail perfectly exemplified how Wikipedia's recruitment strategy is lacking. Whenever a non-Wikipedian searches for an article only to find that it doesn't exist, that moment presents an opportunity for Wikipedia to recruit a new member. Instead of prompting the searcher to request that an existing member write the article, Wikipedia could instead describe the benefits and ease of creating an account and getting started. This approach to recruitment could be considered a "happy medium" between what Kraut & Resnick describe as a laissez faire approach, "in which prospective members seek out or stumble upon a community," and active recruiting, "which will lead to the community having access to a larger pool of prospective members." This "access to a larger pool of prospective members" would also hopefully serve to diversify Wikipedia's editor base, addressing my belief that the community needs more MIEs. This small tweak would also foster identity-based commitment to the community by ensuring that any Wikipedian whom joins the site in this manner, is motivated to do so because of a vested, personal interest in the topic that they are writing about.

Improving the Newcomer On-boarding Process

In my opinion, creating an account is the only truly "easy" part about becoming a Wikipedia. The hard work begins when trying to familiarize oneself with the Wikipedia polices and guidelines and begin navigating the site. Because the structure of our Online Communities class facilitated a guided, incremental introduction to the Wikipedia community, I was able to create my account and article pretty painlessly with the help of Prof. Reagle and Shalor. Shalor even made edits for me (Special:Diff/890477235) when pressed for time the day before our deadline. However, I imagine that a newcomer who does not enjoy the benefit of a structured on-boarding process may struggle to gain their footing. According to Kraut & Resnick, "by using formal, sequential and collective socialization tactics, new members are likely to become more committed to the community, learn how to behave in it and contribute more." This design claim perfectly illustrates Professor Reagle's approach to introducing our Online Communities class to the world of Wikipedia; and given that we've all now created generally acceptable articles, I'd say it worked. However, while I have written my one article, I do not plan to continue contributing to Wikipedia, thus exposing another issue with the site: editor retention.

Wikipedia does have a WikiProject devoted to editor retention. In the project overview, members are urged to send welcoming messages to newcomers as well as moderate Q&As and disputes. Yet, noticeably absent from the WikiProject overview is any emphasis on proactively educating newcomers. I believe that this is representative of a larger Wikipedian mentality that finds its roots in RTFM, which as Prof. Reagle notes, is a gendered response and can work against building community. In his paper The Obligation to Know: From FAQ to Feminism 101, Prof. Reagle writes "of course, there are kinder, and likely more productive, ways of addressing newcomers, including mentoring, sandboxes (where newcomers can experiment and learn), and graduated levels of responsibility (Kraut et al., 2012: 218–220)." Therefore, I think that being more proactive in providing newcomers with the information and tools they need to get up to speed and housing all of that information in one easily-accessible subset of the user's main space (rather than on separate pages throughout the site that must be sought-out) would help the community retain its editors and grow them into long-term contributors.

Given that Wikipedia is clear about its disinterest in functioning as a social platform, I don't particularly see the need for increasing bonds-based commitment among Wikipedians, but do think that strengthening contributors' sense of identity-based commitment to the larger Wikipedia community would help retention and contribution levels. Kraut & Resnick claim that "people will be more willing to contribute in an online group when the group is small rather than large;" and that, "named subgroups increase members' commitment to the subgroups." In consideration of these design claims, I think Wikipedia would largely benefit from building-out the WikiProjects initiatives, in an attempt to make these subgroups more central to the typical user experience. Because the subgroups are smaller than the community-at-large, are named and by nature would align with the subgroup members' interests, I believe that taking action to "beef up" the initiative would increase members' identity-based commitment to the larger Wikipedia community.

Wikipedia Bias & Possible Solutions

While Wikipedia’s mission is admirable and its existence fascinating, the homogeneity of the community contributes to the existence of site-wide, systemic racial and gender biases. I argue that these biases work against Wikipedia’s ability to attract and retain MIE newcomers, thus hindering its pursuit of content objectivity specifically as it relates to WP:NPOV. I rely on standpoint theory to substantiate my belief that the inclusion of MIE perspectives helps to advance the communal pursuit and creation of a body of objective knowledge, and make use Kraut & Resnick’s design claims for enhancing identity-based commitment as a suggested framework for garnering greater MIE participation.

Standpoint theory "argues that knowledge stems from social position," and "that traditional science is objective and suggests that research and theory has ignored and marginalized women and feminist ways of thinking." Furthermore, American feminist Sandra Harding asserts that "people at the bottom of social hierarchies have a unique standpoint that is a better starting point for scholarship. Although such people are often ignored, their marginalized positions actually make it easier for them to define important research questions and explain social and natural problems." According to UNU, 87 percent of Wikipedians are men and 13 percent are women. If we analyze this statistic through the lens of standpoint theory, that leads us to the conclusion that Wikipedia is missing out on a lot of important perspective due to the contributor gender imbalance.

This gender bias is present in all forms of traditional media and "credible" sources, therefore making it oftentimes difficult to gather the non-primary sources that Wikipedia requires, when attempting to write from an intersectional feminist perspective. As a solution, I refer back to my above suggestion of building out WikiProjects. I suggest that Wikipedia greater utilize those groups to recruit MIEs and give them a common space to "geek out" over their interests. Furthermore, I would propose that Wikipedia loosen its definition of what constitutes a credible or "notable" source, in cases when contributors are trying to build-out the minority perspective within an article— whether that be a more holistic representation of gender, race or class; or ideally, a perspective that takes into account the intersection of all three.