Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '14
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Wikipedia, the encyclopedia "anyone can edit", has become increasingly less so. Recent academic research and popu-lar discourse illustrates the often aggressive ways newcom-ers are treated by veteran Wikipedians. These are complex sociotechnical issues, bound up in infrastructures based on problematic ideologies. In response, we worked with a coali-tion of Wikipedians to design, develop, and deploy Snuggle, a new user interface that served two critical functions: mak-ing the work of newcomer socialization more effective, and bringing visibility to instances in which Wikipedians current practice of gatekeeping socialization breaks down. Snuggle supports positive socialization by helping mentors quickly find newcomers whose good-faith mistakes were reverted as damage. Snuggle also supports ideological critique and re-flection by bringing visibility to the consequences of viewing newcomers through a lens of suspiciousness.