User:Stacy Alabre/Reflection

The Online community of Wikipedia is like a challenging game. In joining the Wikipedia community, as a newcomer I felt lost due to their varied rules and policies. Though I had to complete the Wikipedia Essentials and Editing Basics tutorials for my online communities course, I didn’t find them all that helpful because Wikipedia has so many regulations, and this makes it difficult for a new user such as myself to navigate all of them. Although I’ve only been a part of the Wikipedia community for about four months, it seems that its legalistic atmosphere may be what is making it impossible to attract and keep the new editors the site needs.

Wikipedia Tasks

In Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design, by Paul Resnick and Robert E. Kraut, the authors state that because newcomers are “relatively unsophisticated in how the group operates, they may not have the skill or knowledge to operate in the group's best interest, even if they cared to”. I agree with this statement because in working on my class “Wikipedia Tasks” to give wikilove, fix spelling, grammar and wikilinks I felt like I had not yet edited extensively and wasn’t experienced or Wikipedian enough to make any of these edits or offer changes that other, more experienced Wikipedians might later delete. Even though the number of edits I made were small, I still felt like I was vandalizing some of these pages.

Contribution

The Wikipedia Sandbox

For my Wikipedia contribution I decided to write an article on the Circle of Poison, a topic I will be doing a directed study on, related to the global pesticide complex. Before I started working on this article I was worried that the article might be deleted or rejected, but in class we first started working on the articles in our sandbox, which really put me at ease. As Kraut and Resnick (2012) state, “sandboxes both speed up the learning process for newcomers and reduce the harm to the community they might otherwise cause”. So as a newcomer I liked being able to work on my article from my sandbox, because initially, I was off to a slow start with the wiki assignment. I was not exactly sure how to tackle the assignment and did not want my article to be public right away, so starting my work in the sandbox gave me the opportunity to get used to writing and editing on the site.

When I made my article public, at first I was concerned with not receiving much feedback, but I did end up getting my article reviewed by Adam (Wiki Ed) a Wikipedia Content Expert, AmandaRR123, and received feedback from some other Wikipedians as well . In the feedback that I received from Adam and from Professor Reagle in class, I was having a hard time with tone and staying with a "neutral point of view” (NPOV).

Neutral Point Of View

Wikipedia policy is that all encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view (WP:NPOV), which means representing claims fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. NPOV is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia and is also one of Wikipedia's three core content policies; the other two are “Verifiability” and “No original research policy” (WP:NOR). Spirited debate on the “talk” page of an article results in ongoing negotiations and refinement to an article until it is truly high quality. From what I've observed in lurking in many talk pages and going through the view history of some articles, the editors who can work harmoniously in pursuit of this ideal goal of neutral “consensus” can make editing Wikipedia a wonderful and productive experience. Yet in other cases, it can result in ongoing “edit wars” in which groups of headstrong editors group into dueling factions that duke it out for supremacy of their version of the page. When an edit war breaks out, it seems that “consensus” is mostly achieved not through impartiality but through the greater endurance of one side of partisans.

Feedback

In Adam's feedback, he had removed a section of my article because it didn’t follow the NPOV guideline and had "problems with tone and scope". I was a little discouraged and lost a little bit of my motivation to continue improving my article once that happened, because to me at first as Reagle (2010) states in Good Faith Collaboration, “NPOV seemed like an impossible, or even naïve, reach toward an objectively neutral knowledge. I found this policy to be truly annoying when writing my article, because with the topic I chose it's hard to stay "neutral." I was disappointed to have invested so much time and effort into creating a new part of the article only to have the bulk of my work erased completely. Comparing my experiences to others I found out that I got away quite lightly. The responses often include rude remarks and aggressive comments.

I think there are several problem with this policy, First and foremost, it replicates the patriarchal power structures that legitimize knowledge. And how exactly does one stay objective on certain topics, such as sexuality studies or feminist issues?

Ownership

Though Wikipedia can definitely make some improvements regarding their policies, I do like how the community offers low transaction costs to participation. When it comes to the de-emphasize of social ownership of content I think that should be changed, because I think others should know who the original author of an article is. In my opinion by showing who an article belongs to would definitely create even more commitment to the site. Before taking this course I would have never joined the Wikipedia community, I would come along and do a drive-by edit and never make a contribution again. Even though I feel that ownership would increase commitment, it does seem however, on Wikipedia the fact that it’s difficult to tell who wrote an article, or who edited it, actually seems to encourage contributions. I really wounder why that would cause members to contribute more.

Motivation and Gratitude

Overall, I would say that my motivation for contributing to Wikipedia were purely extrinsic. Because I wanted to achieve an excellent grade, I wrote the article on Wikipedia for my online communities course. Initially I was hesitant to be a part of Wikipedia, I felt that this was a community that I probably wouldn’t fit into, and I was concerned that more experienced users would look down on my work or possibly reject it. However, what I found was a community that really is focused on helpful collaboration. Though in the beginning I was having issues with following rules and policies on what makes a perfect article. I did end up taking the feedback's made by other users and some of my class mates as a form of encouragement and was likely to reciprocate with gratitude, such as giving Amanda some Wikilove and thanking Zach Speed for his edits and giving a great peer review.

The Community of Wikipedia

Finally, I would say that the community of Wikipedia is a unique and well-rounded community due to its governance and moderation. Despite the open edit form that allows anyone with internet access to edit, Wikipedia remains free from the majority of vandals. According to Grimmelmann (2015), this lies in moderation of the community and the commitments that users uphold. Ultimately I think Wikipedia has been so successful because it is such an open community. For the most part the members use consensus and communication to solve problems within the community that would otherwise need to be reviewed by an administrator. It seems that Wikipedia keeps its norms and standards through intrinsic motivation by editors that edit simply to further the goals of the community. This maybe one of the reasons some users join the community. But Wikipedia is not void of criticism and again members may face discouragement through Wikipedia’s many guidelines. The way Wikipedia is moderated and assumes good faith, it looks like criticisms are more than often dealt with on talk pages, and although some do end up being "edit wars", issues that most users have ultimately do end in a resolve.

Conclusion

Despite my initial intimidation and skepticism in Wikipedia, my overall experience in editing Wikipedia has been the opposite of what I had initially thought about the community. Though I did receive some harsh criticism, most of the feedback that I received were encouraging. I think the way Wikipedia welcomes new users, particularly those in the education forum, makes the transition that much easier, but improvement should be made in the tutorials where students can get more experience on understanding the three core content policies. I really enjoyed doing this project, it went from being an overwhelming task where at times I felt lost, to really enjoying being a part of an inviting community. And because I had the support of another experienced Wikipedian and my peers throughout this process I felt welcomed as a newcomer. Though I don't think I'll ever be a Wikipedian, I enjoyed the whole process of learning about this online community. Before taking this course I would have never used Wikipedia as a reference, because I felt it was a site that didn't have any rules and where anyone can write anything without it being fact-checked. However, I now see that is not the case, Wikipedia is not just a reference work but also an online community that has built itself a bureaucracy, with a clear power structure where volunteer administrators have the authority to exercise editorial control, delete unsuitable articles and protect those that are vulnerable to vandalism.