Wikipedia Reflection Essay

Half way through the quarter, I have to admit what I have been experienced is way beyond my imagination. When I chose to take this class, I did not expect editing Wikipedia would be a huge part of it, instead, I thought analyzing those online forums such as Reddit would be part of the class. I think the first time I used Wikipedia was in high school, when I had to search something which was unavailable on Baidu, the website similar as Wikipedia in my own country China. I still remember my first try on Wikipedia is Chinese Wikipedia. It was clear and organized, but content wisely, it was just a compacted translation of original Wikipedia in English.

My first try of editing was on Baidu because I accidently clicked the edit page, where I found out that I can actually contribute to the page and article. Then I assumed same thing works for Wikipedia. It was definitely my first time to discover there are something similar between the encyclopedic website. And about two years ago, when I witnessed one of my favorite athlete to break college basketball all-time scoring record, I went back home and added this moment on the article belongs to the athlete on Wikipedia. That’s my simple motive of contributions to online community. Unfortunately, it was deleted by admin. Now I know the reason of deletion must be I wrote the sentences from a fan’s perspective, which cannot meet the criteria of Wikipedia. It was an anecdote, but I still feel related especially after I experienced the challenge through the editing work now.

Getting started to know about Wikipedia is really smooth to me. I think everyone else in the class would feel the same way. We may not edit Wikipedia a lot before, but we are heavy Wikipedia users as college students. Because of this, knowing more about how it runs, how it is composed of, how do those rules work etc. is fun. And at the very beginning of our editing step, the Visual Editor was introduced to us, which facilitated our initial work. Not everyone is familiar with those codes, and I feel like having this user-friendly is a huge step for everyone who might contribute, especially for beginners. It eliminates the very first barrier.

The WikiEdu works great for us. It provides step-by-step tutorial for some early works that we did. It connects beginners with Wikipedia itself as a necessary tool to help us make sure every effort we put in works. The existence of WikiEdu is similar to Canvas, which is a platform between lecture, instructors, class materials and students. I cannot think of any other platform that can work better than WikiEdu in its role. But when we actually started to create or add our own content, the real challenge came and the challenge itself made all of us who engaged in the project clueless.

Just like our guest speakers from last week said, Wikipedia can be really challenging for “new babies”. And me and my peers, even our instructor who first time teaches the class, are exactly “new babies”. I think the biggest challenge here is the conformity of what students are trying to produce, what instructors endorse students to produce, and how Wikipedia community censor the content from the students. Any conflict between either two sides may affect the progress of positive contributions. From personal experience, there are so many work that Wikipedia can do to cope with this situation. It’s tough to find an ideal solution for everyone, considering the core value behind Wikipedia is “volunteered”, but I have some idea that could be constructive.

So far, the challenge I met when working on my article is my article about KITH, an increasingly trending streetwear clothing brand, got deleted by Wikipedia admin. The reason she provided is primarily about how my content includes promotional information, which cannot be accepted by Wikipedia community. On the other hand, the article I posted went through the peer reviews from my classmates and the review of my instructor. It’s not a perfect article but I doubt my article should be deleted.

The whole process of communicating with Wikipedia admin is frustrating. The admin deleted my sandbox and user talk page, as well as the article I was trying to post. As a new user who tried to move the article I’ve been working on from my sandbox to publish for the first time, I indeed made some mistakes republishing the deleted article but I was totally unaware of it. Now I might not have the chance to publish the article again because the admin had the page protected. For new users like me, the tolerance of mistakes by Wikipedia, or specific Wikipedia admin, is extremely low. I didn’t raise my hands when the guest speaker asked us in class if anyone of us would edit the Wikipedia again after this class, and there were only one of twenty students who raised his hands. I was not surprised merely because I think Wikipedia needs to do a better job develop new users, not rejecting them when mistakes happen.

So, what I want to offer here are some suggestions that I’ve been considering for a while, especially the reflection process I went through after the article deletion happened. First of all, the whole Wikipedia community needs to find a way to develop new users. For example, me and my peers, as well as our instructors, are playing a huge role to bring new editors and contributors to the community. We have legit class plan and start our work based on WikiEdu project. When mistakes or misconduct happen, doubting whether we have “good faith” should be the last thing to do. Why not trying to be more patient and giving us more constructive ideas rather than simply rejecting and ignoring us? I know some of these are individual behaviors, but Wikipedia admin should follow a more complete rule or codes of conducts facing new members like us. Second, the censorship system can be improved. When I talked to my instructor about my article deletion, I got to know about that the admin who was assigned to check my article was random. There are countless topics on Wikipedia, then how about Wikipedia community assign the censorship to particular admin with more experience in particular topics instead of doing the arbitrary system? Just imagine, if an admin who know about clothing or fashion come to censor my article, what I may expect is he/she can provide more concrete advice based on his/her familiarity with the topic. Then as a new user like me, I can take the opportunity to make my article get closer to Wikipedia standards.

As a new user of Wikipedia community, I also get more aware of my role when we talked to guest speakers last week. We can do little things but have a big impact on the online community. When we go to Wikipedia for anything, we can go to the talker page to leave whatever we discover or suggest there. I started to realize there are so many approaches to contribute. I don’t have to be an excellent editor to contribute to the community. Just go discover and leave my thoughts is already a big success. By getting to engage in Wikipedia project, every experience and effort, no matter positive or negative, is still valuable to push the community to make more progress.