WikiMotivate: A Facebook Plugin for Motivating Content Creation and Contribution on Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a widely recognized and valuable source of information, However, it encounters persistent challenges in attracting and retaining active contributors. It is recorded that only 10 people from Zambia contribute and create content on wikipedia in the month of may 2023. while a large number consumes the content. This creates an imbalance between content consumers, who greatly benefit from the platform, and content creators, who play a crucial role in its sustainability and growth.The reluctance of users to contribute can be attributed to various factors, including a lack of motivation, limited awareness of the contribution process, or uncertainty about the value of their own expertise. Zambia, a nation endowed with rich cultural legacy, a historical significance, and breathtaking natural beauty,is underrepresented on wikipedia. WikiMotivate aims to close this knowledge gap by enticing zambians to update pre-existing content, add new entries, and share their natural expertise. By displaying the most active contributors on a scoreboard, the plugin will encourage participants to engage in healthy competition and recognition The goal of the WikiMotivate facebook plugin WikiMotivate is to encourage and improve Zambian content contributions to wikipedia, the largest online encyclopedia, By utilizing gamification features like leaderboards and badges to encourage and incentivise active engagement, the plugin aims to solve the lack of locally produced information about zambia on the network. An automated process was set up and used to fetch the history of edits from wikipedia and then posted on WikiMotivate which was able to rank and allocate badges. An evaluation process of the software was then conducted in order to assess the effectiveness of the software. We derived history of edits from 4 distinct pages on wikipedia into WikiMotivate and discovered that the majority of the contributions do not come from zambians. Only a small fraction of zambians were discovered to have come from zambia. During the evaluation process, the ministry of health page was used to test the WikiMotivate software where a number of people interacted with the software in order to test its effectiveness. In conclusion, WikiMotivate used badges and recognition to honor and commemorate the milestones and accomplishments of contributors. Users were encouraged to consistently create and share material on a range of topics related to zambian society, geography, history, and culture by means of these gamified features. Through the application of gamification techniques on the widely used facebook platform, WikiMotivate hopes to encourage more content creation while also giving zambian users a sense of pride and ownership in their country. It is expected that this strategy will promote teamwork, leading to a more thorough and varied wikipedia entry about zambia. WikiMotivate is an innovative initiative that seeks to greatly increase the exposure and richness of zambian material on a worldwide website such as wikipedia. In this abstract, the suggested application of gamification is described along with how it might help to increase the visibility of zambian stories in the digital realm of the world's most popular online encyclopedia.