User:Dodier.k

Hello!

My name is "Kelsie the Kayaker" in Professor Reagle's Online Communities course Fall 2014.

Online Communities Wikipedia Reflection

It’s the last day of the first week of class my senior year, Comm 4625. Capstone, beta class, syllabus, assignments, online communities, Wikipedia – gulp. I’m panicking, I know nothing about Wikipedia and I’m going to have to MAKE MY OWN PAGE – is that even possible? Am I even qualified for that? I remind myself that my extreme aversion to technology is why I registered for the class, and that spending time in an online community beloved by millions users across the world will not actually kill me.

Twelve weeks later and I’m still standing, although there were times I wasn’t so sure. My experience with Wikipedia and online communities in general was a step outside my comfort zone, characterized by missteps and uncertainty. As the semester progressed and we continued to learn the ways in which successful online communities operate and thrive, I came to understand the ways in which my Wikipedia experience was shaped by factors of motivation, newcomer socialization and commitment.

I have used Wikipedia for years, it is without a doubt a great resource for quick and accurate information on all manner of relevant topics, but before this class I never once considered making a page of my own. All the information I had ever needed was already there, compiled, I assumed, by experts in the respective field with some qualification to disseminate their knowledge. I did not understand until later in the course that the basis of Wikipedia’s appeal to many of its users is its collaborative nature, an ongoing global project by millions of users that contribute daily. So what motivates these users and what would motivate me?

According to Kraut (2012), motivation is “a multiplicative function of expectancy and value.” Where expectancy is understood to be the beliefs about the probability that their action will lead to an outcome and value is the value of the outcome or satisfaction they will receive if they achieve the outcome. Motivations can be both intrinsic (free of outside influence) and extrinsic (influenced by external factors). The most promising motivations for online communities are intrinsic motivations as they are more stable and more rewarding over time as external factors may change. Intrinsically motivated actions are ones that directly fulfill some basic desire such as power, curiosity, independence or status (Kraut 2012), and often include social interaction, goal achievement and positive performance feedback. Intrinsically motivated individuals are contributing to Wikipedia for the innate joy of the experience regardless of outside influence, such as our classroom Wikipedia ambassador Amanda Rust who has contributed extensively to the community. Extrinsic motivators, conversely, require the influence of outside forces to elicit contribution. Most online communities offer extrinsic motivators in the form of rewards, both tangible (such as iPods, money and gifts) or community–specific rewards (such as bonus points, status upgrades or other community privileges). These rewards may be contingent on the quality of the contribution (performance-contingent rewards) that is made or may be contingent solely on effort (task-contingent rewards). However, in many online community settings, once people choose to engage in tasks, they will perform to the best of their ability regardless of the nature of the rewards. My contributions to Wikipedia were extrinsically motivated by the assignment and grading structure of this course. My reward is (hopefully) a passing grade on the Wikipedia assignment and, ultimately, successful completion of the course. According to Kraut (2012) this extrinsic motivation makes my contributions susceptible to “gaming” the system, a process through which the rewards become the sole objective of the contribution such as described in the example of Sermo, the online community for doctors. The design of the class, however, with primarily performance-contingent rewards, prevents this gaming by necessitating students perform to the best of their ability in order to receive satisfactory grades.

Once this motivation to begin my experience as a Wikipedia contributor was established, it was then time to integrate into the community. When it comes to newcomers, online communities must solve five basic problems: recruitment, selection, retention, socialization and protection. In my experience, the elements of recruitment, selection and retention were already satisfied, as this was a course assignment. Therefore, the socialization process was my first introduction to the community as a contributor and accordingly held great importance in establishing my relationship with the community – and I was terrified. By the time I became a contributor, Wikipedia was a well established and world renowned online community with a large, established user base and network of norms and expectations. I was an outsider to the community, which by this point I understood was a global project of massive pride to its users, and I was extremely apprehensive about doing something to interfere with that. Despite the Wikipedia mandate to “be bold,” I was terrified to be anything close to bold, to come into this community and ruin everything. With only a brief technical tutorial, I was afraid to fulfill Kraut’s (2012) prediction, “because they lack experience, when newcomers try to participate, they imperil the work that other community members have already performed.” The most formal socialization I received into the community was that presented by our class Wikipedia ambassador Amanda Rust. As I established a user page and began to contribute more to the community, I was always expecting contact from fellow users (positive or negative) – but received none. My page was briefly “patrolled” by a fellow user but no contact or edits were made by anyone outside our class. One explanation for this lack of monitoring and contact is the banner displayed on my talk page announcing that my participation and contributions are part of a Northeastern University course. This places me in the very obvious role as newcomer and may win me little more leeway from other users looking to edit or delete my page. I was, however, a little disappointed by the lack of interaction and official “socialization” into the community that I understood to be highly collaborative and peer-focused. My socialization into Wikipedia directly influences the third theme of my experience, commitment. According to Kraut (2012), “commitment to the community makes people motivated to exert effort behind the scenes to keep the online community going,” and is therefore a very important value to instill in members of the community. Of the three types of commitment distinguished by studies of group psychology, I find affective commitment (based on feelings and closeness of attachment to a group or members of the group) to be the most relevant to my experience with Wikipedia. Specifically, I believe that much of the commitment among Wikipedia users can be attributed to identity based affective commitment, the feeling of being a part of a community and helping to fulfill the mission. Wikipedia is a mission-focused community, more concerned with creating and disseminating information than forming and maintaining social bonds. According to social identity theory, identity based commitment occurs when people feel connected to the group as a whole or its purposes, incorporating aspects of the group into their personal sense of identity or the way they think about themselves (Kraut, 2012). This, I believe, explains the commitment style of many Wikipedia users as they become a part of the larger community and collaborate with others to contribute to a large scale project. Unfortunately, I do not feel that this commitment formation process occurred in my experience. Because I was extrinsically motivated to join the community, I did not initially feel a sense of connection to the community that would foster incorporation into my self concept. The hands-off approach of fellow Wikipedia contributors perpetuated this disconnect, as I felt I missed the formal socialization process by which I would come to identify as a member of the group as a whole. Without the active incorporation into the larger community, my Wikipedia experience seemed very much an individual endeavor by members of our class. As the semester progressed, I noticed that by undergoing this Wikipedia experience, something that was new and slightly daunting to many of us, I feel that my affective commitment to the class community was strengthened. This commitment, however, is much more bonds-based and driven by the relationships among individual members of the class.

Characterized as it was by motivation, newcomer socialization and commitment, my experience within the Wikipedia online community is one that pushed my boundaries and challenged me. I believe this immersion into the online world of a community was the most effective way to understand the ways in which Wikipedia functions, far more interactive than reading the findings of another person’s experience in a book. Ultimately, I do not believe that I will continue to contribute to Wikipedia following the conclusion of this class. While I applaud the efforts of so many dedicated individuals in creating a thriving online community that provides invaluable information to so many, I do not believe my motivation and my commitment are enough to continue to call myself a Wikipedian.