User:Nataliewarther/reflection

Introduction

For our Online Communities class, we were required to familiarize ourselves with the online community Wikipedia and contribute to the conversation by creating an article of our own. I created a page entitled “Robert Montgomery (artist)” about my favorite visual artist known for his site-specific installations created from light and text. The experience has been educational, frustrating at times, and in the end, rewarding. After this assignment, I see Wikipedia as much more than just a quick way to fact check my friends at bars.

Welcome Process

Before I understood how Wikipedia operated, I was intimidated and nervous about the assimilation process. The site seemed complicated to navigate, and I didn’t know what norms the community operated under. When I first made my account, I was pleased with how I was welcomed into the community. I received a friendly message from Ian, a member of the Wiki Education Foundation. Ian welcomed me to Wikipedia, reminded me to complete the student training, and encouraged me to reach out to him if I had any questions. The student training was very informative, easy to follow, and friendly. These two early experiences really impacted my attitude towards the community and my desire to contribute.

This interaction is a direct result of Wikipedia’s “Don’t Bite the Newcomer” policy, a policy I’m personally very fond of. As Reagle points out in his chapter Good Faith Collaboration, newcomers are a very valuable resource in the efforts to maintain and encourage contribution within an online community, which is why making them feel welcome is vital. He states, “We must treat newcomers with kindness and patience — nothing scares potentially valuable contributors away faster than hostility. It is impossible for a newcomer to be completely familiar with the policies, standards, style, and community of Wikipedia (or of a certain topic) before they start editing. If any newcomer got all those things right, it would be by complete chance”. As an intimidated newcomer, I was happy to be welcomed into the community in this way.

Wikipedia and Quakerism

Moral Foundations

This type of friendly welcome is just one of many aspects of Wikipedia that reminded me of Quakerism. I attended a Quaker school for most of my life and lived on the campus for my last two years of high school. Quakerism is a sect of christianity which focuses on the virtues of community, collaboration, charity, simplicity, and honesty, to name a few. Everything we did in my school was for the greater good of contributing to the community. Our classrooms were always set up in a large circle to facilitate class discussion and collaboration. The institutions of Quakerism and Wikipedia both rely on consensus, which on paper sounds like a great idea. In reality, achieving consensus is often like pulling teeth, and even when you think you've achieved it, you haven't. Upon studying the parallels between Quaker communities and the Wikipedia community, I noticed my commitment for Wikipedia increased. I felt a personal investment in the community because the pillars they founded themselves on were directly related to a community I was a part of in real life. It made me feel related to Wikipedians, since I can relate to their struggles around achieving consensus and operating on the foundation of kindness and patience.

WikiLove

Another aspect of Wikipedia which reminded me of Quakerism is the concept of “WikiLove”. As is addressed in Fung’s article “WikiLove: An Experiment in Appreciation”, everyone likes to feel valued for their efforts. This is also an echo from my Quaker education, which strongly emphasised the benefits of telling each other that they were appreciated. Wikipedia has applied this concept to their community by allowing users to leave each other small badges or thanks for edits. Fung addresses this component in his article: “Whether it’s welcoming new users, inviting users to participate in specific topics or discussions, recognizing effort using barnstars and trophies, or just sending a whimsical note, expressing appreciation is not an activity that is facilitated by the software” . In a community that has grown to rely on technology mediated bots for a lot of it’s operations, there is something special about small positive human interactions. It may be a minor component of how Wikipedia operates, but the fact that I had the opportunity to thank people for their help on my page really impacted my attitudes towards the community. I want to be part of communities of individuals who value kindness, collaboration, and appreciation, and WikiLove helps Wikipedia fulfills those personal requirements.

Final Reflections

Being part of an open collaborative space where everyone has shared investment is really special, and I’m thankful that I had the opportunity to repeat that experience with Wikipedia. As Reagle mentions in his chapter The Challenges of Consensus, collaboration is "the process of shared creation: two or more individuals with complementary skills interacting to create a shared understanding" . I never understood that this could be achieved within an online space before this class, and I'm quite fascinated by it. It makes much more sense now that people would be committed to the outcomes and eager to make Wikipedia great.

When this class first started, I did not predict that I would feel any type of investment or commitment to Wikipedia. To be honest, I didn’t even understand that it was a community. I saw it more as a collection of random information, and never knew that there are invested community members who truly care about the space and interactions fostered by the online platform. I have developed a new fondness and respect for the community after writing an article of my own, learning the norms, and studying its inner workings. Just like any community, Wikipedia faces many challenges and has room to improve. In his chapter 3 Good Faith Collaborations, Reagle quotes Leuf and Cunningham (2001): "Wiki culture, like many other social experiments, is interesting, exciting, involving, evolving, and ultimately not always very well understood". This is a transparent and honest description of a community that is working together for a shared outcome, experimenting together, and willing to fail together in order to figure out what works. I’m thankful that I had the opportunity to become a part of this community, and am looking forward to using Wikipedia to school my friends in trivia at the bar for many years to come.