Iyaunti1

After completing the wiki link modules assigned each week on the dashboard we have learned multiple techniques on how to properly add useful and neutral content to existing wikipedia pages. Even though the pages are created by people with various perspectives especially on controversial topics, the material needs to be presented in a manner that is free of bias and one specific viewpoint. It is extremely important to understand what types of sources are useful and which ones to avoid to make before contributing to a page. For this assignment I have choose to critically analyze and review the Gender and development page.

Before, reading the page I decided to examine the talk section to get an idea of what direction the previous contributors were attempting to go with this topic. In the Gender and Development wiki talk page the conversation going on seems like it was done by students for a grade to be honest. There was some discussion about creating an outline but I did not actually see it posted. I think this would have been helpful to see so that anyone who wants to edit would understand the thought process of others. The critics given in my opinion do not really go in depth on how to better improve the page. It is limited only to the information that is already presented on the page for example, WID. One suggestion I would have is to present the content with the assumption that the reader has no previous knowledge of the concepts at all. Because, I am have read about this topic from the assigned readings in class and discussion I am still confused on what this wikipedia page is trying to teach me about gender and development.

I also noticed this in the talk section a lot of the jargon used is very unclear which it make its really difficult and intimidating when thinking about where to begin adding new content for the reader. In the conversation some of the folks are talking about WID and WAD without providing a clear definition of these concepts and their importance to other another as well as its connections to the GAD. Also there is a small discussion going on about what types of images should be added to the page but nothing about their relevance or where the images were sourced from. Lastly, I decided to look at how long ago did a lot of these conversations occur. The last time someone actually spoke with other wikipedia editors was in 2013. Gender and Development much like any other topic is constantly evolving so I think it would be important to tie in new and up to date information.

This specific article does not yet having a rating on the quality or importance scale. It also is flagged as having a tone that does not sound like an encyclopedia. I would agree with this because while reading it I was questioning why is this even important and why would this page be useful. However, it does happen to be a part of a few different wikiprojects; it has a to do list attached but it does appear in Wikiproject Gender Studies and Wikiproject International development. Lastly, the page was apart of the Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. I do not even know what this means but figured it has to be important to some extent because it would not have been mentioned in a yellow box.

I checked out some of the citations listed below and the majority of the links do actually work. But a few of them caught my attention because I was confused on why it was cited. For example, in the Gender, financial crises and neoliberal policy section an article by Nancy Fraser titled “Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History’ was cited to a sentence that was very vague. I also wondered why this specific person piece was used and her credibility on this topic. I was also faced with the issue of trying to use a link that lead me to a website that I needed to sign into in order to access the full text. This was not helpful to me because I can not tell if the sentence was plagiarized or not.  When reading the page I can tell where there might have been some close plagiarizing going on because the style of writing switched and I was not able to confirm this because they were linked to books that was not in PDF form. A lot of the information used was found in various books and online articles and case studies.

A large portion of what we have learned so far in class aligns with the information found on the wikipedia page such as neoliberalism. But the page does leave out so much of the pieces that help to build these concepts. For example, the concept of the third world woman, Gross national product, gross domestic product, modernization, CEDAW are not mentioned in great detail or completely omitted from the article. These smaller concepts are useful in understanding the big picture of what gender and development even means. This largest difference I noticed in what we are learning about in class in comparison to this article is how some concepts are condensed but this is problematic because the ones that have been condensed have the most relevance. The article is pretty neutral when reading it I did not feel like I was forced to think in one specific way about the concepts. But it was written more like an informative essay. By this I mean that writing style did not closely follow what the we were taught to do in the modules. For, example in the Smart economics section, one of the paragraphs begins with “The thinking behind smart economics dates back” (pg.2); if the structure was altered it would make this statement stronger and concise.

After reviewing this Gender and Development page I have decided to work on this for my final project. I think this page would benefit from having someone go in further develop each section so that the reader actually get a grasp on these difficult topics. I will start out by choosing sections that are really sparse and add useful content from the class textbook and readings. Then create an outline that includes all of the major concepts but also highlight areas that are difficult for some folks to understand.