User:Aaph/Report

To the young undergraduate and to the layperson alike, there is a certain, indelible mystique surrounding Wikipedia. The site is revered as the impartial, authoritative, and communicative accumulation of human knowledge, and is relied upon as such by millions. But within this description remains a paradox: how has Wikipedia been able to reach so many so deeply with its mission of democratized knowledge, yet struggled to bring users past the barriers of editorship and commitment as Wikipedians? If Wikipedia is made by and for the public, why is it seated in the public imagination as an object of reverence rather than a site of global participation? Drawing on my experience in Wikipedia and the Wiki Education curriculum, I propose a series of changes to Wikipedia designed to combine institutionalized and individualized approaches to socializing newcomers, facilitate the intrinsic rewards of contribution, and build normative and identity-based commitment to the site. These changes include an article-focused onboarding process, a feedback-focused system of article “ownership,” and a gamified, clustered system for inviting continued participation.

By meeting user interests while communicating site norms, an article-focused onboarding process helps socialize newcomers with legitimate participation and early, clear confrontation with expectations. As a newcomer brought on through the Wiki Education curriculum, I was backed by an accommodating tutorial process, and the accompanying realization that properly contributing to Wikipedia is very difficult. To even begin contributing, I needed to navigate extensive standards of source reliability and biography, which the vast majority of users with the same access to the “Edit” button never become aware of. The ease for any anonymous user to begin editing a real article betrays the complex set of norms governing contribution quality, and these mismatched expectations cause the helpful intentions of many new users to be met with perceived hostility. To reconcile the philosophies of access and quality, I propose reworking the “Edit” button into a portal to an on-article onboarding process, where new users are walked through editing norms in a sandboxed version of their chosen article. Once the onboarding and the user’s edits are complete, they are sent through an approval process after which new users are allowed to make live edits on other articles. The goal of this change is to provide users with a learning setting that allows them to make a real impact at a site of interest while insulating the quality of Wikipedia from mistakes of inexperience. While a daunting onboarding process may put off newcomers, familiarity with site norms is necessary to contribute, and successfully emerging from the approval process may encourage new users with a sense of belonging.

Through focus and visibility of both contributory needs and feedback, a system of article “ownership” can appeal to intrinsic motivation and principles of uniqueness in contribution. Wikipedia, a volunteer-run site, cannot offer most users any extrinsic rewards. As I found in my work, however, it not only invites contribution but excitement about it through purely intrinsic motivation. I chose to improve the article that I did not because I was especially knowledgeable or even interested in it, but because I believed that Wikipedia users deserved better information about its subject than it had been afforded. And after I completed the improvement process, I didn’t just feel pride in my effort, but ownership over my work, and found myself checking religiously for feedback or reversions. To translate these motivations, I propose prompting users to not merely edit, but “adopt” articles, making them responsible for specific improvements while notifying them of positive feedback like increased traffic and approval of other editors. Entrusting editors with a specific site of participation can increase user’s contribution by signaling that it is unique, and therefore likely to influence the community. Prompting users to adopt articles which they have already edited can further invite contribution by meeting them at the intersection of their interest and their ability. Furthermore, the article-specific rewards of this system incentivize continued maintenance, and in turn commitment to Wikipedia. While positive feedback is a powerful motivator for further contribution, this system can be skewed to reward work on higher visibility articles. This can be offset by stressing the unique value of work on lesser-known articles, or by making bodies of editors responsible for ensuring feedback.

An interest clustered “bounty board” system for making contributory needs visible can help build identity-based commitment while facilitating normative commitment. Although it is stressed how much of Wikipedia remains in stub status, one of the most painstaking parts of my Wikipedia experience was finding an article to improve. The process involved poring over the list of stubs by category, a massive list of nested directories each spilling with article names exclusively, and in brutally alphabetized, purely-text based format. Although I think users who have been onboarded and had a positive experience of article ownership want to continue to help, they need, as I did, direction of where to look and how to help. I envision the early sorting of editors into groups as Wikipedians of specific fields, and within those fields, a “bounty board” where potential contributions are listed, briefly described, and offer status rewards scaling with complexity and priority. The clustering of editors into groups of similar users can develop commitment to editorship as a part of their identity and carve out for them a specific space where their contribution is valued. The bounty board system stands to point the many Wikipedia users who are interested in providing accurate knowledge to where their help is needed, while building commitment through compounding, status-based rewards and a steady stream of visible needs. What is dangerous about this gamified approach is the potential for users to eschew contribution quality for completion and subsequent reward. Thus, it is necessary to make rewards evaluation-based with nontransparent criteria, making it difficult for bad-faith users to do minimum-level work. Though this would require moderation at scale, Wikipedia articles already stand to be reviewed for quality.