User:Aocho032/sandbox

Class

Links

To see the draft of the Robespierre article, please go to User:Aocho032/sandbox/Robespierre.
To see the draft of the Fall of Robespierre article, please go to User:Aocho032/sandbox/Fall.

Week 2 Questions

Wikipedians often talk about "content gaps." What do you think a content gap is, and what are some possible ways to identify them?

A content gap seems to be when some part of the information about a topic (which you would expect to exist, be documented, and be included in an encyclopedic article about said topic) is missing or doesn't have a satisfactory amount of information. For example, when in a page about a historical figure is missing a big section of his life, like his or her childhood.

What are some reasons a content gap might arise? What are some ways to remedy them?

A content gap might arise because of Wikipedia's somewhat intrinsic style of writing articles "patch-by-patch". Returning to the biography example, an user might expand two section while leaving the others unattended. To avoid this, it might be good to approach an article as a whole (and not just a section of it), using several and varied sources so they can compliment and over-come each other's weakpoints, and making sure that the whole of the article satisfies high standards.

It might, however, also happen that no reliable sources exist about that precise aspect of the topic, and the content gap is somewhat warranted.

Does it matter who writes Wikipedia?

It doesn't matter who writes Wikipedia as long as the person who does it has mindset of writing reliably sourced, unbiased, complete, and wholesome articles.

What does it mean to be "unbiased" on Wikipedia? How is that different, or similar, to your own definition of "bias"?

Unbiased on Wikipedia means neutral and encompassing: all accepted positions (regardless of the writer's opinion towards them) should be represented on an article. The goal of Wikipedia is to present the wealth of knowledge about a topic, not to persuade or force an opinion on the reader. The way the articles are written should represent this.

Week 4 Questions

Blog posts and press releases are considered poor sources of reliable information. Why? There are two big problems with Blog posts and press releases as sources, the first one is the fact that neither of them are warrantied to last and be re-accessible, so any future reader who wants to fact check the article by going to the source might not find be able to find it. This is specially bad with blogs, which are often abandoned and deleted. The other problem is bias: a press release will most likely uphold the position of the institution which issues it, and, similarly, a blog post will probably show its author's biases. The information in Wikipedia ought to be unbiased and impartial, and blog posts and press releases seldom are.

What are some reasons you might not want to use a company's website as the main source of information about that company? Any sort of press material produced by a company will attempt to embellish that company, thus it will have an inherent bias: official company websites won't include any sort of criticism, and will usually only include data that would put them in best light. It can also happens that the website is not updated, and it doesn't include the latest information about the company, or that company website only includes superficial information which doesn't provide a whole description of the company, either because, like was mentioned earlier, the company might not want to disclose information that makes it look bad, or because they don't think a costumer might be interested in such detailed information about the company.

What is the difference between a copyright violation and plagiarism? Plagiarism refers to presenting someone else's texts or ideas as yours, whereas copyright violation means transgressing an author's exclusive right of ownership. In that sense, plagiarism can be seen as a kind of copyright violation, but there are some cases where they don't intersect. For example, a public-domain work can be considered plagiarized when it is presented without acknowledging the original source, but this does not implies a copyright violation. In the same way, a person might use a copyrighted work in a way that it is not being plagiarized (e.g., when the original author is being acknowledged), but it is violating the owner's copyright.

What are some good techniques to avoid close paraphrasing and plagiarism? First and foremost, it is important to have more than one source. This helps to get a holistic knowledge of the topic, which makes it easier to talk about a concept without relating that concept (or event) to an specific wording (i.e., without coping word-for-word what one author said). It is also useful to do drafts in which you explain something with your own words, maybe synthesizing different ideas, or expanding some others, and playing around with how some events are presented.

Articles

Maximilien Robespierre -> The main article for my characters. It is pretty complete, but I would like to change the structure a bit, making a formal biography section, and changing how the references are made(so it's similar to, say, the Lafayette article, where there's a section for references and another for cited books).

Cult of the Supreme Being -> Relevant to my character. It can definitely be expanded and connect it to Robespierre's ideas and positions a bit more. Something else that can be addressed is the discussion on the Talk page about it being related to Freemasonry.

Committee of Public Safety and Reign of Terror -> Both of these are in fairly good shape, but as I will be reading about them anyways, if I find some interesting facts not included in the article, I will update them.

Week 5 Questions

In your sandbox, write a few sentences about what you plan to contribute to the selected article. Think back to when you did an article critique. What can you add? Post some of your ideas to the article's talk page, too.

Maximilien Robespierre

• Again, the goal would be to restructure what is already there so it's more organized and complete. This includes
  • The References section, which I have noticed has repeated items and some invalid tags. The goal would be separating the references into a Reference and Works Cited sections (similar to what appears on the article for Lafayette.
  • The life-events sections, which I would like to collated into a Biography section so that the article seems more organized and structured.
  • The Legacy and Memory section, which I would like to expand, adding a Bibliography section, including notable speeches. I would like to add a section in which some of the political positions of Robespierre are presented, specially those which don't fall nicely in the timeline given by the Biography sections. I realized this was a problem when, a couple of weeks ago, I tried to add some information about his backing of Lepeletier's education plan (and his opinion on education in general). I ended up putting it in the Reign of Terror, because it that's where it felt chronologically, even tho it really has little to do with the Terror itself. As a political figure and legislator, Robespierre defended many positions, and although some of them are already present in some way or another in the biographical sections, I believe the article would benefit of adding a section where this positions (and the proposals or speeches where they are presented) are made explicit.

Downfall of Robespierre

• https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ca%C3%ADda_de_Robespierre
• https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chute_de_Robespierre
  • I found these two articles while I was looking for information about Robespierre in the Spanish and French Wikis. The English wiki seems to already have a page for The Fall of Robespierre, but this article is for the play by Robert Southey and Samuel Coleridge. An English version of these two pages would be a good addition to the wiki, after all, Robespierre is ubiquitously defined by his role in the Terror, and by his downfall. If anything, all of this information could also be added to the Thermidorian Reaction page.

• An outline for the new article would be
  • Lead section.
  • Background.
    • Robespierre's role in the Terror up to the Thermidorian Reaction.
    • Causes of the fall
  • Timeline of the Fall
    • 8 thermidor
    • 9 thermidor
    • 10 thermidor
  • Robespierre Reputation

Others

• Cult of the Supreme Being
  • As I mentioned, I would like to expand this article. Specially important for this article is to make explicit the differences between the Cult of the Supreme Being and the Cult of Reason. Also important is to include how promoting the Cult of the Supreme Being led contributed to the Downfall of Robespierre.

• Committee of Public Safety and Reign of Terror
  • Just like above, expand and organize.

Compile a list of relevant, reliable books, journal articles, or other sources. Post that bibliography to the talk page of the article you'll be working on, and in your sandbox. Make sure to check in on the Talk page to see if anyone has advice on your bibliography.'

• The Revolutionary Carrer of Maximillien Robespierre – David P. Jordan
• Fatal Purity – Ruth Scurr
• Profiles in Power: Robespierre - John Hardman
• Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life - Peter McPhee
• Robespierre - George Rude
• Robespierre - John L. Carr
• Robespierre: The Incorruptible - Max Gallo
• Robespierre and the Festival of the Supreme Being - Jonathan Smyth

'Improving an existing article?' To see the draft of the Robespierre article, please go to User:Aocho032/sandbox/Robespierre. You should find some structural differences reflecting a starting point for what I attempt to do with the restructuring. The other changes I plant to do are reported above.
'Creating a new article?' To see the draft of the Fall of Robespierre article, please go to User:Aocho032/sandbox/Fall. You should find a draft of the lead section, and an outline for further development.

Week 6 Questions

'What do you think of Wikipedia's definition of "neutrality"?'

There are plenty of mediums out there which are better suited to push an agenda or pursuit political discussions. Wikipedia is not one of them. Wikipedia strives to be a collection of knowledge, an Encyclopedia, and knowledge in itself is (or strives to be) factual, verifiable, and unbiased. Thus, it is fair that it should pursuit neutrality in the way it does (i.e., through " carefully and critically analyzing a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them fairly"), for it allows them to be observers and recorders rather than participators, to introduce a reader to a topic in a holistic way, so that she is able to make her own opinions of it. It also stops Wikipedia from becoming a sort of partisan media. What I mean by this is that it stops its articles from being shamelessly biased towards some position or another. It lets Wikipedia be about what it is supposed to be: Facts, Truths, and Knowledge.

'What are the impacts and limits of Wikipedia as a source of information?'

The main benefit of Wikipedia is its accessibility. Although other e-Encyclopedia exist (Encarta comes to mind), they are either not free like Wikipedia is, or they require extra steps like CD-readers or storage, which can be a bit hard to obtain, and they are almost always monolingual or just printed in the main languages (English, Spanish, etc.). In contrast, Wikipedia is accessible virtually anywhere and anytime. And on top of that, the width of its knowledge dwarfs any other competitor, with a humongous collection in English, as well as in 294 other languages. That's just amazing .

The main limit is that, even tho there are policies in place regarding the quality of the articles, when anything anywhere in the internet is open-source, then it becomes hard to enforce any rules. This means that, no matter how much effort, there's always going to be some mistakes in some articles, or some edit wars are going happen. This means that not always the content in the article can be trusted to be neutral or altogether truthful. But at any rate, Wikipedia is not meant to be the only source (specially for a class or investigative project), but a gateway to other reliable (i.e., through the references and citations), as well as a means to gather a quick-holistic view of a topic.

'On Wikipedia, all material must be attributable to reliable, published sources. What kinds of sources does this exclude? Can you think of any problems that might create?'

Non-reliable sources include articles and blogs (specially when they are not produced by professionals), as well as self-published books, and articles, or works who show inherent bias. In summary, any publication which has questionable origin and might lack professional editing or doesn't hold to professional academic standards. This heavily reduces the amount of sources that could be used for an article, and also limits the kind of people who can contribute effectively to the website, because only a somewhat limited amount of people have access to this sources (like, for example, us College students).

'If Wikipedia was written 100 years ago, how might its content (and contributors) be different? What about 100 years from now?'

For starters, the demography of the editors would be completely different. Nowadays more people have access to reliable sources than back then, as Colleges have become bigger and more inclusive. This not only mean that there are more people reviewing and contributing to articles, but also that there are more diverse people doing so, and even though this implies two things: an increase in the different positions towards the same article, which ultimately results in the necessity for neutrality. And an diversification in the topics of the articles which reflects the difference in background and interests of the new demography (although, to be fair, this also means a reduced uniformity in the quality of the articles themselves). Sure, an encyclopedia done 100 years ago might have been slightly more professional than Wikipedia might be right now, but it would pale in compassion both in size, and in universality.

Sandbox

be BOLD <- Cool.

What's this all about? bold