User:Billyfrederick/sandbox

Article Evaluation

For INST604, I will be evaluating and making edits to Rules for Archival Description. Here is where I will leave any notes of observations and learnings. billy frederick 21:29, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Critiquing an Article

The article I choose to critique for INST201 is Dial-up Internet access, which is a sub-category under the Internet Access category. Critique to follow shortly. billy frederick 17:12, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Dial-Up Internet Access Article Critique

The Wikipedia article I choose to critique is Dial-Up Internet access. Dial-Up Internet access is a sub-category under the Internet Access category. The article’s lead section is clearly structured and a good start to the article. It gives a brief overview of exactly what dial-up internet access is. Included in this overview is a brief history of dial-up internet access. This brief history, however, is lacking in reliable references and specifics. It does not go into detail about the history of dial-up technology, with only a brief paragraph that sums up when dial-up Internet was first available, to when it was first offered commercially.

While the lead section does have an appropriate and reliable reference for the brief statement it makes concerning when dial-up Internet access was first made available publicly and commercially; it does have any references to back up its claim that broadband has been replacing dial-up as the primary internet access. For this you will need to read the section labeled “Replacement by Broadband”, which uses a reliable and appropriate reference. Overall, most of the article has a good amount of appropriate references, although the section labeled “Availability” has been critiqued by a use with “citation needed”. Furthermore, the “Performance” section has a banner declaring that the section does not cite any sources, and needs user help improving this section.

Beyond that, everything on the article is relevant to the topic of dial-up internet access, without anything being distracting. It cuts straight to the facts, with relevant sections on availability, replacement by broadband, and performance. The article and its viewpoints are written in a neutral fashion, without bias or use of opinions, and is factually based. The sources used are all neutral sources, all of which are reputable sources which are neutrally based. The sources include: news sites such as Fox News, Wall Street Journal, or Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, research sites such as Pew Research Center or Pew Internet & American Life Project; or other reputable sources on the subject, including Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, International Telecommunication Union and Michigan State University’s website. The citation links all work, and there was no clear signs of plagiarism. All of the information resources used in creating this article are from fairly recent articles, with the oldest source only going back so far as 2008. Roughly half of the sources are five years old or less, which suggests that the sources for this article are all utilizing up to date information.

The only vital viewpoint that is underrepresented is the lack of a history of dial-up Internet access itself, and the technology that it runs on. There is no definitive historical timeline, whatsoever. While the article lacks historical viewpoints, it does a good job of representing the technical aspects of dial-up Internet access, including performance statistics. As far as overrepresented viewpoints, the article does an excellent job of balancing the information and sections that it does have.

Overall the Wikipedia article on dial-up internet access is well written, outside of a few shortcomings. What it does well, however, is provide pertinent, and bias free information on the topic of dial-up internet access. This article is just several citations and historical background away from being an outstanding article, but as it stands it is still a great source of data on the subject.

billy frederick 04:16, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Add to an Article - Dial-Up Internet Access

Strengths: This article has a lot of extremely technical details, most of which are backed up by credible sources.

Weaknesses: There is a lack of sources cited for the information under the 'Performance' section. Also there is not much mention of any historical data concerning dial-up Internet access, only technical information. My goal is to add a line or two pertaining to the early history of dial-up Internet access itself. billy frederick 03:58, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Just testing edits. billy frederick 21:23, 8 April 2019 (UTC)