CoraCalytrix

Bio

About Me

I'm currently a photography major in the Running Start program, though I'm hoping to switch to becoming a linguistics or language major. Currently I'm taking ASL classes, and I also studied Spanish for a few years in high school, not that I can claim to be all that proficient in either yet. My little free time these days is most often spent discussing anime with my friends; particularly Attack On Titan at the moment. If not ranting about that, however, I might be drawing. I used to enjoy reading just as much as art, but have unfortunately fallen out of that habit in the last few years. Back in my younger days when I'd spend every second of lunch breaks, recess, late nights, or even my other classes (to my teachers' annoyance) reading books under desks, I had the most affinity for sci-fi and fantasy.

My Wikipedia Interests

I would honestly have never taken any interest whatsoever in editing Wikipedia articles without the prompting (and requirement) of my teacher, but I suppose if I am most likely to share my knowledge in anything then it might be in anime-related media, as previously mentioned. Or, thanks to the number of books I've had to read about it by now for ASL classes, I would perhaps be interested in editing articles about Deaf culture.

Article Evaluation

Because I’m currently taking classes in American Sign Language, I’ve in turn already spent over half a year studying Deaf culture. Being one thing I can say I’m not a complete novice in, I visited the Deaf culture in the United States article on Wikipedia, and found three aspects of it worth mentioning: The lack of citations, its currentness, and whether it should even exist as an article to begin with.

Citations

Firstly, as Wikipedia itself points out in several parts of the articles, it is sorely lacking in sources. Even the introduction has nothing to back up its definition of a culturally Deaf American, even if it does admittedly explain some terminology with citations later in the article. The Language section detailing the history and formation of Deaf culture only includes a single outside source, and the same goes for the section ‘Attitudes toward cochlear implants’. ‘Attitudes toward oralism as a teaching method’ also includes no sources whatsoever. Even though it’s true that American Deaf culture is a subculture compared to Deaf culture as a whole, this article has 17 citations in total while the article Deaf culture has 76.

Currentness

Furthermore, plenty of the citations are years or more than a decade old. This is somewhat strange, considering the article itself is technically up-to-date. Its last edit was apparently April 8th of this year, so it has barely been a few weeks. Despite that it is missing details, it doesn’t seem to be changed infrequently. Even more strange would be the fact that some of Wikipedia's notices on missing details and citations are as old as January 2010. If it is being improved upon still, then the utter incompleteness is puzzling.

Notability

Because American Deaf culture is indeed unique from Deaf culture as a whole, or at least a subculture of it, one could argue it does indeed deserve its own article. Yet there are plenty of details both of their respective articles share with each other. In fact, in Deaf culture, there is a paragraph dedicated to Deaf culture in the United States anyway. It seems that the majority of visitors to these articles believe that section in the article Deaf culture should simply be moved to Deaf culture in the United States, but it might simply be more useful to have it all in one place. In other words, its usefulness as an article is questionable.

Conclusion

Essentially, the article itself is helpful, but too incomplete to be called necessary (especially while Deaf culture provides more information than this does, while only varying slightly in content). If it were worked on more, and if many more citations, details, and up-to-date sources were added, then I do believe it could be more deserving of its place as a unique article.