User:Allykwong/Wikipedia Reflection

Contribution to Wikipedia

Comment directly on your experience in Wikipedia. What did you do and what did you learn?

My Wikipedia contributor experience consisted of researching and writing on the Bellevue Botanical Garden. While it was difficult to find sources on the topic besides the organization’s website, I was able to find more information when I researched different partners of the organization. The organization’s website was useful as it contained facts about every sub-garden, however, more information was needed to create a complete Wikipedia page. While finding articles on the garden’s history and background was easy, it was difficult finding additional sources about every sub-garden. After reading all the articles, I pulled three sections together including history, featured gardens, and the Bellevue Botanical Garden Society. In addition to learning new research techniques, I learned the mechanics of how to contribute to Wikipedia correctly and what a good article consists of. Through the WikiEdu modules, I learned how to format an article, write in a neutral and clear voice, and find and cite reliable sources. Because Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia with a broad audience, I learned how to write my article with a different tone and style than academic papers. For example, in my Wikipedia article, I was writing fact after fact and citing after most sentences with no analysis or commentary of my own like many academic papers. Overall, I learned how to write a good article through practice and research on writing my article on the Bellevue Botanical Garden.

Advice to Wikipedia Community

Provide detailed, concrete, and actionable advice to the Wikipedia community and the Wikimedia Foundation. What should Wikipedia think about doing? What should they think about changing?

In retrospect doing the Wikipedia assignments and contributing to Wikipedia seems like a simple task, it was difficult for me to get familiar with the process and finding the assignments. As a new user, I thought it was confusing to understand each page’s function and where each part of the assignment was located. For example, while finding the talk function to send a message to a classmate, it was not obvious how to find my classmates’ page through the WikiEdu and write the message on the Wikipedia page. Although I learned this process after talking to another student, I realized that there are also talk pages associated with articles during the peer review. To improve upon this I think it would be helpful to have a module on talk pages that identifies the differences between user talk pages and article talk pages and learning the function in general. Including pictures of where each talk page is located might be helpful in seeing there is more than just one type of talk page. Additionally, having an easier way to send messages to classmates or finding their talk pages would be helpful in learning how to send messages in Wikipedia. While I was able to learn these functions through trial and error and direction from my instructor, I think making how to use this function more clear would be beneficial to other beginning Wikipedians and can encourage them to use it.

Experience and Course Concepts

Connect your experience in Wikipedia explicitly to the concepts in the course material we have covered. Justify your recommendations in terms of the theories and principles we've covered. Why should your recommendations be taken more seriously than just random advice from one new user?

My recommendation to make the different talk pages more accessible and obvious to new users relates mostly to the concepts of commitment and newcomers. Because I struggled to find my way around the different functions of Wikipedia as a newcomer, it affected my commitment to the community as I felt like I didn’t know how to contribute. My needs-based commitment (feeling like it would be costly to leave a group) being part of a class shifted to a normative commitment (feeling of rightness or obligation to a community) after I was more familiar with the page, however, this shift only occurred because I was part of a class that supported me in completing the project. While my class did well in recruiting me to contribute to Wikipedia, I had to learn about Wikipedia and become socialized with the community and norms on my own. Because the talk page is an important function in seeing recent changes and seeing what other contributors made note of about the article, socializing new contributors to the various kinds of talk pages (user talk page, article talk page) and how to talk to another contributor can help a new user feel more capable of making a contribution and increase their commitment to this community. Although this is my first time editing and expanding an article on Wikipedia, my experience along with what my class has been learning about online communities allowed me to see how new users build their commitment to a community through their experience.

Theories, Concepts, and Changes

If possible, reflect on what parts of the theories or concepts we covered applied or didn't. You don't have to take everything taught in the course for granted. What would you change or add based on your experience? What is unique or different about Wikipedia?

I think parts of the concept of eternal September or the idea of large influxes of new users in a community that needs to be socialized to the process and norms applied in my experience in contributing to Wikipedia. While we each did work in our own sandboxes and had it looked over by two peers and a professor before transferring the article live, the process of learning the norms, how to contribute, and the different functions took a few weeks. I thought the sandboxes were a great way of learning how to write an article and learn the functions of Wikipedia, however having more support in learning each function such as the different sandboxes and talk pages could have improved my experience. Because Wikipedia is accessible to everyone and is a resource I use, I thought this experience contributing was very valuable and a way to give back and reciprocate by paying it forward and making it a better community. Although anyone can live edit on Wikipedia, allowing people who don’t know how to contribute by walking them through each function can improve new contributor’s motivation to work on Wikipedia articles more frequently.