Assignment #11: Daniela Retelny

The first page on Wikipedia for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) was created in July 2004. At this time, the page had very little information on the topic. Overall, the page included a brief list of goals and aspects of HCI, notes on terminology, academic conferences, topics in HCI, references and external links. Each topic was very brief and consisted of one or two bullet points. For example, the notes on terminology section explained the difference between HCI and CHI (computer human interaction) and the differences between usability and usefulness. However, as the HCI field has evolved over the past 5 years, so has the Wikipedia page.

The HCI Wikipedia page has changed substantially over the past 5 years. However, even though the page currently has well over 10 times the amount of information compared to the first page, the original structure and information on the page still resides. The most recent updated page includes the goals of HCI, the differences between related fields, design principles, design methodologies, display design, future developments, human computer interface, academic conferences, see also, footnotes, further reading and external links. As we can see, in addition to the topics added, all of the original topics still exist. The only change that was made was the change from “a note on terminology” to “differences with related fields”, which ultimately makes more sense given what information was contained in that topic.

There is a lot of evidence on this page that shows collaboration was maintained. The edit history shows that changes to the page are made at least once everyday. However, unlike more popular topics, the changes made are typically quite small, such as one or two words. Usually, unlike other topics, a person will make one change to the page and never edit the page again. However, a majority of the other contributions these users made to the site were on pages related to other technological fields. Therefore, this shows that most of the editors are interested and knowledgeable in technology.

I would change a couple of things on Wikipedia to make collaboration easier. It would be nice if users could have a profile displaying some information about themselves, particularly their interests, knowledge and professional experience. If completed honestly (which is not always the case), this could help user’s better trust the information they find on Wikipedia, increase the legitimate peripheral participation in the group and help readers distinguish novice Wikipedians from experts. (Bryant et al, 2005). Also, improving the way user’s view changes made to each page would help aid collaboration and mitigate some of the confusion of the current tracking changes system. Lastly, Wikipedia could benefit from having some sort of reward system for posting information. This could help motivate people to add and improve information on Wikipedia.