Connorfulbright

I'm (1999-Present) a newly graduated student from south Kitsap high school and am attending Olympic college for my first quarter this fall. I am a proud Washingtonian that enjoys almost all aspects of the pacific northwest experience that I feel make it a great place to live. Part of the stereotypical life I live here includes the weather always being gloomy or rainy which I have grown to love over the years. As part of that love, I have invested a lot of time into researching meteorology as well as doing a lot of my own weather forecasting using online tools and weather pattern data. All that time spent on online programs has conditioned me to work well with computers as well as being efficient with knowing how those programs are put together, so naturally I was led to pursuing a education in the I.T. field based on my interest. That being said, Hopefully by the time I complete all the required courses I will be able to attain my computer science (AA) degree and continue training transferring to a university.

I have sparingly used wikipedia in the past and have for the most part been told to stay away from it. Altho I do believe its a very useful and powerful tool for getting information quickly, it often gets scrutinized for lacking accurate resources and citations. Wikipedia is a open source cite meaning anyone can use it and edit most of its content without any authorization by admin users, tho in recent light I have been told the creators of the site have demanded more organization from its users. This is great news to my ears considering I enjoy the layout of wikipedias webpage and its easy to use interface, therefore I will be able to use this resource more frequently than I wish I had been able to in the past.

Article Review

Ive been interested in radio controlled cars since I was a little kid. Over the years I have collected many different electric RC cars/trucks and have participated in many regional indoor off-road RC car races. I have stayed away from gas and nitro powered RC vehicle variants because they’re not safe to use indoors without proper ventilation and breathing in those fumes is no fun. For the most part radio controlled cars use similar components to make them work but not all are made equally. That being said I feel wikipedias coverage on this topic deserves to be a bit more extensive overall. I visited the Radio-controlled car page on Wikipedia, and found three aspects of it worth commenting on: its lack of sources, its opinionated views, and lack of IFMAR info.

Lack of sources

I’ve noticed that on the r/c car wikipedia page many inline citations for the article are either missing or they are nearly non existent throughout the page. This Is cause for concern on a page like this because it could mean there are not enough reliable sources being used. The list of references at the bottom is limited providing only two links to some r/c blogging sites. The links seem to be okay at first with some reliable information but digging deeper its hard to verify who’s really writing the articles on the web pages. The wikipedia page also does not have a section for external links contributing to the question of wether the wiki page has reliable information.

Opinionated Views

There are multiple instances throughout the article of opinion based information being shared. For example in the gas-powered models section of the article it tells you which r/c car maker has engineered the best gas powered r/c you should buy. It then provides a link to a unusual blog site that only has top rated reviews for one brand of cars and the link to that brands website. Id recommend completely removing this part of the article, it has heavily biased claims that have nothing to do with the facts of a gas-powered r/c car.

IFMAR info

The r/c off-road racing scene in the u.s. nowadays is mainly sourced from places along the west coast. That being said it only makes up part of the racing that happens annually all over the world. Wether the racing takes place indoor or outdoor its usually happening under (IFMAR) International Federation of model auto racing regulations. This is an important organization to know of in the world of r/c that is surprisingly not found on any of the summaries on the r/c wiki page. Seems to be a very important piece of information missing and could be a easy fix.

Summary

Overall I would say this page is emerging and has a reasonably strong base of information. For the most part the information provided makes for a okay start too a good page, but the page cites very few sources making it hard for the article to hold solid reliability. The section titled “Gasoline Powered Models" in particular has claims with one misleading citation that will only lead you to links trying to get you to buy their products. Also, there are pieces of information that are not included on this page, some of which are very crucial to the topic of r/c cars.

(sidenote: As part of this assignment, I also posted a question on the talk page of the r/c car page Talk:Radio-controlled car