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The Wikipedia article I have chosen to critique is Cyberterrorism. I think the article has a clear introduction of the topic and is easy to understand at first. They state several different viewpoints of what cyberterrorism actually is and how it can be defined in several different ways. I feel they do a good job of differentiating between the terms cybercrime and cyberterrorism in the first section of the article. However, a few paragraphs down it states that cyberterrorism can overlap with cybercrime depending on the circumstances. Then it goes on to say it can also be considered the same as regular terrorism. And the article continues to state varying definitions of cyberterrorism that started to become confusing. I was left wondering if there really was a difference between cybercrime and cyberterrorism.
Most of the statements in the introduction of the article have clear citations from what seem to be reliable sources. However, further into the article, there are a many statements made that do not have any sources at all. For example “Many believe that cyberterrorism is an extreme threat to countries' economies, and fear an attack could potentially lead to another Great Depression.” There is no way to know who they are referring to when they say “Many”. In fact, the whole first section of “Concerns” is not cited. Another thing that clearly goes against Wikipedia policies is something I found when I was checking on the links for the sources in the section where they define the different types of cyberterror capability. They correctly cited the source of the data “CYBERTERRORISM” but when they define the three levels they use the exact same wording of the original article. This is what we learned in our Wikipedia training is called “plagiarism of cited sources” where you use another authors original statements without any paraphrasing of the material.
I feel like the article is not completely neutral and is definitely leaning toward the idea that cyberterrorism is a very real and dangerous threat. I don’t see many differing viewpoints that cyberterrorism is not of immediate concern or that we have ways to protect ourselves from acts of cyberterrorism. In addition, I don’t see many current dates listed and that makes me wonder if things have changed over the past several years and if there is information missing. None of the examples they give cover the last several years. I also don’t think the sections where they list out the different areas of the world (China, Pakistan) and things they are doing to prevent cyberterrorism are well organized and maybe could have been grouped together under a better heading or category. While the article is informative, I feel like there are many improvements that could be made.
I am choosing to add content to the same article because i felt it could be improved.
As stated above - some weaknesses:
needs improved citations
need to remove plagerism regarding types of cyberterror
could use some updated information and more current events
strengths:
Good intro and summary
state several different viewpoints of how to define it