User:Derryck1/reflection

Through my experience, I would say I’ve enjoyed learning the inner workings of Wikipedia. While probably stricter to most newcomers than other sites, Wikipedia does provide an OK boot strapping process to get as many people acquainted with it’s workings as possible. However, had I not taken this class while simultaneously being taught to properly create and edit articles, I believe I would have been much more intimidated during my article writing process than I was, and overall I believe that Wikipedia needs a more guided system of welcoming newcomers to actually edit and write for its website.

When looking at Wikipedia, and the Kraut and Resnick's "5 basic problems when dealing with new comers"^[1] , it’s clear that Wikipedia in its current stage only has the ability to truly control three of the five problems: socialization, the ways in which the community teach new members about the group, protection, the way the community protect from newcomer disruptions, and retention, the way websites keep newcomers around.

The issue lies in that most people don’t use Wikipedia with the intention of editing articles or publishing articles. For most, it is a quick in and out process to get the information that they need regarding a topic, then leave. Most likely, many people like myself, didn’t and don’t consider the fact that behind every article, is someone (or some people) writing, editing, and updating it. Of the 33.3 million Wikipedia accounts^[2], only 137k^[3] are used for editing.

For example, when visiting the Wikipedia page, there is no listing anywhere of the ability to write an article, however it does give information as to how many articles have been written, and the various languages they have been written in. Upon selecting your specific language version of Wikipedia, there is no indication that it is possible for a normal visitor to write an article. They offer the opportunity to read many different articles, but the closest that the actual website gets to informing others that they have the agency to contribute to Wikipedia is the “contributions” button in the top write hand corner of the page. In my opinion, herein lies one of the first problems of Wikipedia, it displays itself as a wealth of information, but also makes it appear as if it’s database is already complete. While I’m sure this has not been lost on the developers for the website, I don’t believe that it helps aid socialization, and would suggest there be some form of open request for more editors and article writers displayed on the front page.

Additionally, while Wikipedia has statistics on the demographics of users that actually edit articles, I feel they should create a form of cross website cookie tracking to track the demographics of their users (and make that public as well to avoid accusations). I say this because upon googling for a kid friendly version of Wikipedia the closest I found was Wikipedia Simple, a version of Wikipedia where the articles are written with less advanced words to help children and those with lower reading levels comprehend information more easily. While this does increase people’s retention, there is still no aspect of the site that tells children that they should want to contribute to the site and make it better, a lost opportunity on the part of Wikipedia.

Though they did not directly target children, the video that our class used to learn about how to properly navigate Wikipedia was kid friendly. It was animated, basic, and included an assessment of sorts at the end of it, however again, it should be properly advertised and listed in a noticeable place.

Which brings me to the actual editing of my article on Roderick L. Ireland. I chose to use Roderick Ireland because while sounding interesting, the article looked very basic. After doing research on Roderick Ireland (unfortunately there is a plethora of information still being disseminated by Northeastern University’s Library), I took it upon myself to add headings and sections, as well as delve deeper into some of the sections I felt were glossed over in the original article, such as an in depth look at his work with the Roxbury Defenders Committee and the awards/honors he had received.

I was surprised myself when I wrote my version of the article and replaced the existing article, adding 2,074 bytes and wasn’t met with any rejection notice or undos. The most I encountered was minor citation issues, and minor punctuation issues. However, what I did find surprising is that three of the edits on the page did not come from classmates or librarians associated with the class, but instead from normal Wikipedia users, one who even left a comment stating “Go Husky’s!”. Because of these edits, the final product turned out well, though there were still some additional items that I wanted to add, all together I was fine. While I did notice where Wikipedia had faults, and probably would have more issues with their welcoming campaign had I went through this without help, or ran into roadblocks with my own article, apart from issues raised in lack of advertising of their need for editors, and lack of youth targeting, Wikipedia's system of editing is working.