As we have discussed in class, online communities can be very scary to enter as a newcomer, and truthfully, I was very hesitant when it came to joining wikipedia and actively editing and contributing on the site. I am very happy that when I joined Wikipedia it was because of and with a class. I felt more secure joining with a class because others could see that I was a newbie, but that I was a newbie who would be adding educational information that would be reviewed by a teacher, which I feel makes me less threatening to the community. The community can see that I am not a troll coming onto the group to cause chaos, but instead, I am coming to the group to add valuable content or edits. I was also happy joining with a class because Wikipedia is hard and being able to talk to peers about problems as well as having a teacher and a librarian to go to who are very well versed with the site is invaluable. When many people join a online community they have to fend for themselves and risk public embarrassment during the initiation phase, but because we were joining with a class we had Professor Reagle to turn to with questions about content and norms. Professor Reagle helped all of us in the class to seamlessly integrate into the community by informing of us the correct ways to do things and also by over preparing us and alerting us to problems that may arise, such as people questioning the validity of our pages, which could risk deletion and loss of all work. Knowing that deletion was a possibility, I made sure to save my entire page before posting so that all my work was backed up, but if I had not been in a class and known that before my work was deleted, it could have deterred me from the community forever.
Because I joined Wikipedia through a class and ws[needs copy edit] not deterred, but instead educated about the online community I had a very good experience. I am not technically savvy and would have had a very difficult time contributing to this community because Wikipedia is so customizable and anything can be edited or formatted fifteen different ways. Once I got used to adding verbiage to the page I was converting from a stub to a full article, Capitol City Plume Superfund site, I then attempted to figure out how to create different boxes to display the subheadings, which I failed at, but thankfully Professor Reagle helped out and added in the correct template. Templates are still something that really confuse me and I believe they are one of the downfalls of the community because they are not all able to be found in one place, and have to be typed out instead of just inserted. Although templates deter me from the group, I really like the user talk pages and although they aren't exactly comment sections they act as one. As Reagle pointed out in the introduction of his paper, in the section titled, Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web, he pointed out that "comment is communication, it is social, it is meant to be seen by others and is reactive" and I feel that the talk pages serves as the comment section in this online community (Reagle, pg.2). I have not had a ton of interaction in my talk page yet, but I did have a very exciting comment left for me. A few days after I moved my edits from my sandbox to the public page, I received a comment from the user Ian, and Ian's comment congratulated me on my contribution and also prompted me to submit my page for review and possible publication on the "Did You Know..." section on the main page of Wikipedia. I am still in the process of submitting because I am making proposed revisions so that my page can be featured, but whether my page makes it up or not, it still has made me feel closer to the community. There are millions of pages on Wikipedia, and the fact that some stranger took the time to write me a nice message and provided me with the steps to submit my article is endearing. This little gesture changed my experience on Wikipedia. Before this I felt like I was alone and people were unaware of me in Wikipedia, but because Ian reached out to be, I now feel more apart of the community and am more willing to stay active within it.