Az1167

Notes Related to Wikipedia Work and Activities

Discussion: Thinking about sources and plagiarism

1. Blog posts and press releases are considered poor sources of reliable information. Why?
   1. Blog posts and press releases are considered poor sources of reliable information because the former is often published by individuals and the later is often published by organizations or companies, all of whom typically have a specific agenda or are biased in some way. Objectivity and unbiased material are not guaranteed with every post or release and are therefore unfit to be used as references to Wikipedia articles.
2. What are some reasons you might not want to use a company's website as the main source of information about that company?
   1. As aforestated in the first response, a company's website would be as biased as a blog post or a press release since a company would typically want to highlight its strengths as a means to increase the sales of their products or services without necessarily bringing to light any of their shortcomings.
3. What is the difference between a copyright violation and plagiarism?
   1. A copyright violation and plagiarism are inherently the same; however a copyright violation is within a legal framework whereas plagiarism is within an ethical framework. A copyright violation is using someone else's work without receiving that individual's permission. Meanwhile plagiarism is claiming ownership or attribution of someone else's work or even using someone else's work without properly attributing the original work.
4. What does public domain mean? ...
   1. Public domain refers to any work that is not subject to copyright. Anyone can access this work and use it for any purpose he/she sees fit.
5. What does fair use mean?...
   1. Fair use references certain actions, with respect to copyrighted material, that can be taken without having to acquire permission from the copyright holder.
6. What are some good techniques to avoid close paraphrasing and plagiarism?
   1. Always try to summarize external works used, and avoid simply copying and pasting text. And remember to use proper citation whenever referencing and using photos, text, videos, and other information from external sources.
7. Copying text from other sources?
   1. Wikipedia writers should try to avoid copying text (summarizing preferred) from other sources and if they do, references should be cited always!

John Alexander Low Waddell

The article on John Alexander Low Waddell is very detailed and structured. It was broken up in the following format: a concise overview of Waddell, his Early Life and Works, Death, and a timeline of his notable works. However it does not reference external sources enough. In the Early Life and Works section, there are 1500+ characters in the middle, none of which are directly referenced to a source. Waddell passed away in 1938 so it is highly unlikely that the author is a primary source with perfect memory of Waddell’s life and doesn’t need any citations. There are a few cases of run-on sentences and missing punctuations. For example: “When in China he along with Meloy was entrusted by MIT and Harvard University to talk over with National Southeastern University (later renamed National Central University and then Nanking University) and reached the agreement on founding Sino-American joint engineering college in Shanghai, but it soon ceased due to the wars outbroken in the area.” The first section of the sentence calls for two commas: one after “China” and one after “he”. Additionally, this is the first mentioning of “Meloy” in the article which should prompt an external link or a brief introduction beforehand. I’m having trouble with “reached an agreement on founding Sino-American joint engineering college”. If the college is a proper noun, then it should be capitalized. However, this seems to be a description of the college that was founded; in this case, the author should’ve written “a” after “founding”. Additionally, a formal dictionary doesn’t recognize “outbroken” as a word even though some online sources do. I would suggest substituting an accepted term; a simple alternative would be “broken out”.

Discussion: What's a content gap?

Content gaps are essentially gaps in content: missing and incomplete content regardless of the topic. One resource, Wikipedia, provides content across a very wide spectrum of topics. In fact, a quick search of Special:Random, which accesses random articles in the main namespace, can give the reader a sense of the breadth of content generated on Wikipedia. And even though there are currently 138,275 active Wikipedia editors[1], there is still a gap in content. Typically these gaps are in academic articles [2] which I believe have a connection to technical and professional journals which are also lacking. A good example of this content gap is the The Engineering Economist which does not exist even though it is referenced in two articles.

Content gap is an issue in the academic and professional world due to the lack of perceived credibility of Wikipedia since it is thought by some that Wikipedia is an unregulated content machine. Also some may shy from writing for Wikipedia in search for sites that have a more perceived popularity or following base even though Wikipedia is the top 5 most popular website [3]. Some ways of remedying this content gap is to integrate the Wikipedia Education initiative into academic curriculums across the world where students, professors, and researchers can build upon the work done by Wikipedians and fill in the gaps in incomplete articles and publish new articles discussing new topics. This proposal is open to all academics regardless of field of study since each academic will have something unique to offer. The specialized training of Civil Engineers provides us with the technical knowledge paired with the communication skills to effectively educate the reader on contemporary issues related to Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM), Ethics, Leadership, Business, Policy, and much more.

Being “unbiased” on Wikipedia means providing a neutral point of view [4]. This entails the following: avoid stating opinions as facts, avoid stating seriously contested assertion as facts, avoid stating facts as opinions, prefer non judgemental language, and indicate the relative prominence of opposing views. Manifesting these guidelines in your writing will allow you to provide “unbiased” content and ultimately “bridge the content gap”. Whereas “bias” writing takes away from the credibility of the author in that the writing is now subjective and partial.

Recommendations for Creating an Article in Wiki

As a Wikipedia user for over a decade and a student who has completed the Wikipedia article training, I have grouped a couple of recommendations for creating an article in wiki. First of all, the writer must not write an article to promote a biased opinion, political leaning, a company/organization, or anything other than providing unbiased information acquired from high quality reputable publications. The article should cite a number of high quality independent reputable sources, avoid writing about something that’s already written about (consider adding to an article instead), not be plagiarized, and be organized.