User:Lwang6/Report

As a new user of Wikipedia, I would say editing on Wikipedia is a big step that takes a lot of courage. First, before I join Wiki Education and tried to register for an account, it said I was banned from editing on Wikipedia while I did nothing on Wikipedia. Since it is an IP ban, I could get exempt by contacting the teaching assistant, but I also tried another way, which is to email the Wikipedia stewards. I received the email after one week and learned that I should contact a local administrator from my preferred Wiki. That experience was not going so well as the beginning, which might drive away people from the internet to edit Wikipedia articles. I learned everything through the Wiki education tutorials and my professor’s videos on how to make a sandbox, how to add citations, and how to find a good stub article to work on. I chose Donghu District as my article and experienced a few obstacles. The first one is that it is easy to forget about the Wikipedia norms while I am editing my Wikipedia article. While I try to add a template in visual mode, it always doesn’t have a section that I want to edit with. For example, in the Donghu District sandbox, I was working on, while I try to edit the historical populations of the Donghu District, there is no option for adding a year or population column, it was blank and I was having a hard time finding the columns. However, when I clicked on the template’s page, it redirected me to the page, which shows how to do that in source editing mode. That means a new user would not understand how to do with the template and might just give up on it if they are bad at source editing mode. Another obstacle that I have experienced was that I can’t link to another language’s Wikipedia page directly, which means while I search for that term in other languages, it won’t work, and it will automatically be an external site link to another Wikipedia article. What I had to do was go to the source editing mode, and add “interlanguage link” before the terms, which I think was extra repetitive work. Also, this cannot be done through visual editing with the “add a link” tool. Overall, I learned a lot. I learned that in this community, we have to explain every minor detail of what we did and have an open mind allowing others to edit our work with no consent from us.

Based on my experience, there are some suggestions that I think are useful for Wikipedia to develop their user experience better for newcomers. The first one is setting up a page, or a report option, for people to turn in reports to their local administrator. As a newcomer, being banned before they even started would most likely turn down their intentions to contribute to the Wikipedia community, especially when they have done nothing and come with good intentions. From Robert E. Kraut and Paul Resnick.’s book, building successful online communities, I learn that moderation criteria that are consistently implemented, the opportunity to explain one’s case, and appeal procedures all help to strengthen the legitimacy and efficacy of moderation judgments (Kraut et al., 2011, p.g. 133). This means that there should be an option for people to argue for their case (such as an IP ban) in an easy and direct way other than finding a local administrator themselves and figuring out how to contact them. Instead, having a portal or online form and being able to select a preferred Wiki which would send messages to the local administrator directly would help increase newcomers’ commitment to the Wikipedia community as well.

The second piece of advice I want to give is that take care of visual editors more. As my experience mentioned, there are a lot of templates that could be edited from source editing mode but are hard to do or edit on visual editing mode. As a newcomer or even people who genuinely look at the Wikipedia article, when they want to make a change, they will find a hard time with visual editing templates (since they do not know of source editing). Kraut also mentions this in his book about the quantity of work that gets done improves when easy-to-use tools for locating and monitoring work that needs to be done are available (Kraut et al., 2011, p.g. 27). An easier tool could make more people contribute even if they do not know of source editing mode, and this could make people contribute more.

The third suggestion I want to point out is that there could be more hints or friendly messages to imply that people are welcome here. I set up my account last year, with no memories of having an accurate image of what my experience would be before I learned through WikiEd. However, I think it is essential to provide prospective new members with a detailed and accurate image of what they will experience once they join improves the fit of those who join. Newcomers would have more interest in contributing to Wikipedia as a long-time contribution rather than just editing one small part of one article. It would feel like they are part of the community as well, and they are welcome to contribute and more likely to become a committed member of the Wikipedia community. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, which means more information from different reliable sources is better, and it doesn’t hurt to add a complete picture of members’ experience looks like. Hints could also be added to Wikipedia pages as well by showing how many people contributed to this article before new editors edited the page. As Kraut mentions in his book, putting a greater emphasis on the number of individuals currently involved in a community drives more people to join than putting a greater emphasis on the group's needs, and when individuals see that others have followed through on a request, they are more likely to do so as well. When individuals see that others have followed through on a request, they are more likely to do so as well. (Kraut et al., 2011, p.g. 35). By showing how many people are editing the page, this could be another welcome message Wikipedia sends by welcoming people to become a plus one to the editing group.

My recommendations should be taken more seriously than a random user because I have been educated by WikiEd, contributed to a Wiki article, and actively received feedback from Wikipedians. I know what newcomers' experiences are like, and I want their experiences to become better.