Reflection on my Wikipedia Journey & Article:
Introduction:
This project was very interesting to me because I learned a lot about Wikipedia which I thought I never had to do ever in my life, however it was also a challenge I enjoyed taking up on. I would say my main challenge when this assignment was given to us was finding a topic that I wanted to invest my time and energy on. Initially I was writing about artificial intelligence and this personal trainer named Vi that gave you tips on exercising. That plan failed and I only recently found another topic of interest about a Netflix sitcom, One Day At a Time. There were many achievements in this process along with some hard challenges, including that I could not fully understand why the online community functioned the way it did. I created a list of advantages/disadvantages I found in this process, and as well as anything that I want to further develop my skills on. The idea of having a Wikipedia article as a capstone project showed how brutal but satisfying it is to be part of an engaging online community. According to Kraut, “…the normative behaviors may be codified and articulated or left implicit, and they may be contested by some members at some times, but most of the time, most people will agree about behaviors that are capable and those that are not” (p. 125). It is true what they say which relates back to my thesis[clarification needed] that there is one path to being successful in an online community but the path is brutal but satisfying at the end of the day.
Advantages:
The biggest advantage I would have to take away from this project was learning the concept of an online community via Wikipedia. I learned what a ‘sandbox’ is which is a trial and error space to “dump” everything that you want on there and making your edits on that space before it is transferred over to main space. This was critical for me as I thought you just started a Wikipedia article right away and there was no platform to plan what you want to say first before posting it for the general public to see. Another advantage would have to be learning how to link different things on my Wikipedia page as I had zero knowledge of how to do that before. I also thought it was great common knowledge to learn the different symbols that you can combine together to make a heading, or a subheading, and how to create a contents box or an info box, everything pretty much gets “built” when you click the edit source button. Which leads to another significant advantage: the ‘edit’ versus ‘edit source’ tabs: it depends on personal preference really, but I prefer to use ‘edit’ because if I need to make quick adjustments to my page, it just occurs with a click of a button. The most confusing bit at first for me was referencing everything because I’m used to referencing things either in APA format or MLA format, but this entire process of linking something to a cite or another existing Wikipedia page opened up a new door to how citing in the online community works.
Disadvantages
As mentioned above in my introduction, my first Wikipedia article did not last very long. I was not devastated about it, but I was shocked at how brutal the online community can be sometimes. I had someone drop a message on my wiki talk page saying, “If you do not know how to use Wikipedia, then you do not belong here, we do not need trolls in our community, so take your shitty article and shove it somewhere else.” The biggest concern I had with Wikipedia though was understanding why certain things were in their respective places. I was baffled at how direct and rude they were about my article, because it clearly said in my user page that I am a student in Professor Reagles’ class, so that goes to show that I am actually a student and this is purely for assignment purposes and nothing more. I think what really concerned me is how devoted some Wiki users are to their articles, and their online space in the Wiki community, but if you pull apart the layers, this is their comfort zone, and this is their way of protecting it. Another disadvantage I had was trying to link pictures to my wiki page. As a newcomer, I really struggled with this, and I did post a comment up saying that I needed help with it, but no one came to my rescue and in fact my comment was not there anymore. The dangerous thing about Wikipedia which I still need to get used to is that anyone can come onto your main space article and edit it, but the worse feeling ever is that they can even delete the information you have on there. You could have put in hours of effort into your article but then it could very easily be deleted it. When my page got deleted I remember wondering what did I have on there that seemed offensive. Other than not having my info box or contents box set up yet, there was NO reason to delete it. This is what I mean when I say that the online community can be brutal because you never know who has your best interest at heart and who doesn’t. In Kraut and Resnick’s chapter they talk this in their third chapter about encouraging commitment in online communities with bonds based commitment (BBC), and identity based commitment (IBC). IBC is, “a feeling of being part of the community and helping to fulfill its mission” (p. 79). In my first topic of choice, I definitely did not feel welcomed to Wikipedia, but once the ball started rolling and I found a topic, I still had a hard time figuring it out, but it’s not the friendliest community to join if you want to start writing about something you feel strongly about.
Changes I made:
I bulked up the introduction of the One Day At a Time (2017 TV Series) article, and added my section of the song and credits and what the lyrics mean. I also changed 'Premise' to 'Plot' as it is a more familiar term when it comes to TV shows. I added more on the episodes, the original author had one sentence, but I feel like that does not give readers much as I want them to start the show when they read this article and get a good summary of what the show is about. I also attempted to add in a picture, although I wanted it at the top of my Wikipedia page where the info box was, I constantly tried and just couldn't get it there. At least there is still a picture on the article and initially there wasn't a picture in this article. I tried getting the diff link of what we did in class, but I was not successful in doing that, to be completely honest I don't think I captured the correct diff link that is on my user page, hence this is why I kept a track record of all the changes I made.
Conclusion
Overall, I would say this was definitely a turning point for me as I have actually never known how to fully use Wikipedia, and how articles are made, but what I find extremely fascinating is that anyone can join and edit a page as long as their online contributions are not harmful. I would not say my initial contribution to Wikipedia was harmful, but I understand that if there is minimal information in a page, it will start to get suspicious for some old timers that are on Wikipedia that feel attacked by the newbies. Kraut & Resnick explains this at the very start of their book that, “people who participate in online groups often have different and sometimes competing interests” (p. 5). You truly never know how people are going to feel online so you always have to
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