User:Vishare Huang/reflection

Introduction

A “collaborative culture” is an essential factor to all online communities. A community cannot survive without some form of user cooperation towards a common goal, even if the users do not even realize they are collaborating. Wikipedia is perhaps the most collaborative of all communities, as users work toward the ultimate goal of building a largest universal encyclopedia. Wikipedia permits anyone to edit it, and anyone can immediately set up an account to join the community. Hence, the extraordinary breadth of the articles and the real-time coverage of topics made Wikipedia an authoritative educational platform. To sustain a collaborative culture, there are some norms and that have been set in Wikipedia to regulate members’ behaviors including the Wikipedia:Neutral Point of View and Good Faith. Moreover, since Wikipedia is known as a place that provides so much freedom for its members, the vital factor that made Wikipedia successful today attribute to its moderation and governance mechanism. And in this article, based on my personal experiences, I will argue that these norms can not only assist Wikipedia newcomers to better adapt to the community, but are also likely to contribute to the community. I also argue that the establishment of moderation can effectively promote cooperation and prevent abuse so that to bolster and form a healthy online community.

On a platform like Wikipedia where lots of people are relying on this site to gain knowledge, I feel honored that I have the opportunity to contribute to this vast and highly rewarded community.

Neutral Point of View

To form a collaborative culture, one of the biggest challenges communities need to overcome is dealing with newcomers. Compared with the old members, newcomers have less motivation to contribute to the community or to be well-behaved in the group (Kraut & Resnick, 2011, p. 179). More importantly, Neutral Point of View (NPOV) is a critical component of article creation in Wikipedia, and it requires Wikipedians to do their best to present the “facts” on both sides of a concept. However, newcomers often fail to follow the NPOV policy or act in ways that we called “biased” (Kraut & Resnick, 2011, p. 179). As a newcomer of Wikipedia, it was difficult for me to follow the principle of neutrality at the beginning due to the lack of experience. For instance, I wrote, “The newspaper became timelier, persuasive, and informative and it raised LGBT issues that other mainstream practitioners missed.” (Special:Diff/889909398) I didn’t try my best to be objective towards whether Bay Windows covers most of the LGBT issue among all the media mainstream platforms. Hence, as Joseph Reagle (2010) explained that neutrality is when Wikipedians “focus on a neutral presentation of what is commonly understood about that topic” (Joseph Reagle, 2010), instead of reaching a conclusion that is based on Wikipedians’ personal judgments. So later I corrected this sentence into “…helps to enhance the breadth and depth of coverage for the Bay Window newspaper.” (Special:Diff/889909398)

Good Faith Collaboration

In Wikipedia, having a good faith towards others’ contribution is also vital in creating a collaborative cultural environment. Especially when Wikipedia implement anonymity and members are interacting with each other through computer-mediated communication, conflicts and “flame wars” are more likely to occur. According to Joseph Reagle (2010), “Assuming the Best of Other” can prevent the conflict from happening due to the reason that it motivates people to help each other in an etiquette manner. To sustain the cooperation between members, “the importance of trust, empathy, and reciprocity on building community relationships and facilitating the exchange of ideas is key” (Joseph Reagle, 2010). Throughout my experiences of editing Wikipedia, every time I wrote comments for my classmates, I had a positive intention towards others’ works. So, I would always say, “I love how detailed your article is,” “Overall, I think you did a great job!” (Special:Diff/889909398) Moreover, I received comments like “Your guys sandbox looks nice to me with lots of new information." (Special:Diff/889909398) As Haiyi Zhu, Amy Zhang, Jiping He, Robert E. Kraut, and Aniket Kittur stated (2013), “positive feedback and social messages increase people’s general motivation to work” (Haiyi Zhu, Amy Zhang, Jiping He, Robert E. Kraut, & Aniket Kittur, 2013). These positive comments encouraged me to work harder on the article and took the task more seriously.

Newcomer Initiation        

Given that dealing with newcomers is a challenge that many communities will encounter, Wikipedia did a great job in recruiting and keeping members around. At the beginning of this semester, I was asked to read the “Wikipedia Essentials” and finish the “Editing Basics Tutorials” before creating an account. Also, I was not only told to read and bookmarked the pages “Help: Cheatsheet” and “Help: Wiki markup”, but also, I need to post my self-introduction on my user page. Regarding to Kraut and Resnick (2011), “entry barriers for newcomers may cause those who join to be more committed to the group and contribute more to it” (Kraut and Resnick, 2011). After this long starting process, I found myself valuing the Wikipedia community much more highly than I was at the beginning. And I think this phenomenon also can be explained by Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills’ (1959) study: “persons who undergo an unpleasant initiation…find the group more attractive than do persons who become members without going through a severe initiation” (Elliot Aronson & Judson Mills, 1959). For me, the initiation process is notoriously discouraging because I was a WikiInfant who often felt confused towards what I found and needed extensive help to comprehend the things (Seven Ages of Wikipedians, n.d.). However, as I moved on to the Wikichild stage, I gradually learned how to use the sandbox, talk page, visual editing, etc. After finishing these tasks, I got a clearer idea of how to begin navigating and editing Wikipedia. Hence, I regarded myself as a Wikipedian immediately after I finished applying the things I have learned through the tutorials.

As I started to work on the article through the sandbox, I found that this place can help newcomers to develop their skills and speed up the learning process, because it allows Wikipedians to experiments with the editing process and practice the formatting of Wikipedia (Sandbox, n.d.). In this way, according to Kraut and Resnick (2011), it can “reduce the harm to the community that newcomers might otherwise cause” (Kraut & Resnick, 2011, p.219) to sustain a collaborative culture.

Moderation and Governance

There’s no doubt that moderation is an important factor in building an online community. According to Grimmelmann (2015), the moderation process on Wikipedia can be understood as “works through group dynamics rather than hard-coded limits in a massive community with millions of members” (Grimmelmann, 2015, p.80). In this way, through flexible and large-scale participation, the potential problems can be quickly solved by the assistance from other members in the form of multi-channels. Also, Grimmelman mentioned how editors use prosocial norms such as NPOV and good faith to self-regulate behaviors and testify the works when editing (Grimmelmann, 2015, p.82). The exposure of norms on Wikipedia is frequent which users can find them through the conversation in talk pages. In my experiences, I and Suzie asked Shalor for help to move our articles to the main space and review our articles through talk page. (Special:Diff/889909398) Shalor can be seen as a moderator in this case because she pointed out that we need to find more reliable sources and work on the tone of the article to make it more fits with the Wikipedia's style guidelines. (Special:Diff/889909398) Even though the moderation through talk page in Wikipedia seems subtle, it is tremendously effective and humanized. As Grimmelman (2015) stated, “it allows different groups of editors to work in parallel, creating smaller and more cohesive subcommunities with a more localized sense of purpose and stronger shared norms” (Grimmelmann, 2015, p.83). Moreover, according to Kraut and Resnick (2011), newcomers can be more committed to the community through the interaction with old members (Kraut & Resnick, 2011, p.??).

Wikipedia now has a very specific banning policy enforced by community consensus. Different from blocks, bans are “formal prohibition from editing some or all Wikipedia page” while blocks “prevent a user account or IP address from editing Wikipedia” (Banning policy, n.d.). As a newcomer, I didn’t get banned or blocked during the editing process, but I understand that having the banning policy in mind as a warning sign can help me to avoid disruptive behaviors. It’s also useful in the ways of avoiding misunderstandings and promoting collaborative culture within the community. Even though the consensus decision-making process can be difficult in terms of determining which sanction is available to discipline users, the nature of Wikipedia’s operational model need the consensus and banning policy to regulate members behavior.

Conclusion

Wikipedia is an interactive and collaborative online community that welcome anyone to edit it. Its non-hierarchical structure makes everyone’s contribution equal which bond people together. The system designed to help newcomer familiarize themselves with the community quickly through the interactions with other members. Moreover, the norm-setting gives members a clear understanding of how to behave in the community. More importantly, Wikipedia has strict policy that set to regulate behaviors which I think is necessary because it helps to promote cooperation and prevent unwanted abuse that may happened through individual's interactions. After this project, I definitely found that editing through Wikipedia become more interesting and I am willing to contribute more to this community in the future.

 

Reference

Joseph Reagle. (2010). Good Faith Collaboration: The Cultural of Wikipedia. The MIT Press. Retrieved from https://reagle.org/joseph/2010/gfc/chapter-3.html

Kraut, Robert E., et al. (2011). Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design. The MIT Press.

Elliot Aronson, Judson Mills. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation. Retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/Motivation/Aronson_Mills_1959_The_effect_of_severity_of_initiation.pdf

Seven Ages of Wikipedians. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 1, 2019, from Wikipedia:Seven Ages of Wikipedians

Sandbox. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 1, 2019, from Wikipedia:Sandbox

Banning policy. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 1, 2019, from Wikipedia:Banning policy

James Grimmelmann. (2015). The Virtues of Moderation. Retrieved from https://yjolt.org/sites/default/files/grimmelmann_the-virtues-of-moderation_0.pdf

Haiyi Zhu, Amy Zhang, Jiping He, Robert E. Kraut, Aniket Kittur. (2013). Effects of Peer Feedback on Contribution: A Field Experiment in Wikipedia. Retrieved from  http://haiyizhu.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/SharedLeadershipExperiment.pdf