User:RM395/Course/Encyclopedia comparisons

Assignment

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Compare a Wikipedia article with the same topic's article in a physical encyclopedia of your choice.

  • The encyclopedia you use should not be digitally accessible, so this may require heading to a library
    • exceptions: digitized versions of very old or foreign language encyclopedias (because sometimes the contents of these physical texts are only available online)
  • older, international, obscure, or specialist encyclopedias are likely to yield the most interesting (and perhaps the most obvious) comparisons.

Describe the differences and similarities and render a judgment as to which is better.

  • be sure to choose a topic on which you consider yourself to be knowledgeable. Your judgment of similarities and differences should contain more than observations about what each does or does not contain.
    • It should be an evaluation that draws on your expertise and could not be done by someone previously unfamiliar with the topic. A few example questions that may or may not be relevant:
      • Are both articles missing something?
      • Does one overstate the importance of a particular point of view?
      • Is there factually incorrect information?
      • Which seems to be provide a more comprehensive or neutral perspective?

There is no fixed word minimum for this assignment. The length will partially depend on the topic you choose, but it seems unlikely that a good comparison could be completed in much less than [the wiki equivalent of] a couple pages.

  • Please use paragraphs rather than lists.

Submission

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Since one page for everybody's evaluations would get unwieldy in a hurry, I've created links to subpages for everybody's username below. Just click the appropriate link and type/copy it there.

User (link to comparison) Page compared on Wikipedia
Brodmont Japheth
Eems.p Dog training
eng395jy Les Paul
Information-01152001 Intellectual property
isaiahgee Robert Gates
jastout Charlotte, NC
jeflicki History of printing
Katerwaul La Llorona
kslinker5493 Competitive swimming
Luna002 Sayyid Qutb
MangoDango Chip 'n' Dale
MartellRedViper Data caching
mdcoope3
rebaduck Duck
ryenocerous
Seannator American Civil War
SJRick Musa (genus)
tabbboooo Serial killer
thepresidenthal Chess
Tinaface86 Rockford, Illinois
Youngpenn Fiddle