User:Js1006/sandbox

What I added to the Article (Final)

Temperature, intensity and duration are all factors that influence and define heat waves. Through multiple studies on various heat waves it was found as the summer months went by the less chance of mortality due to heat waves. This means the first heat waves of the season are more likely to have higher death toll in comparison to heat wave that occur later in the season.

The heat waves that are really intense and last longer tend to be more common in Southern United States. Heats waves that last longer than 7 days is rare Northern and Midwestern United States and heat waves longer than 10 days is rare in any location.

The risk of mortality is the highest in Northwestern United States, where for each day heat wave lasted the risk of mortality would go up on an average of 2.50%.

Reflective Essay

During the article evaluation, I learned that there are many different things steps that I normally would not have considered as ways to improve articles. I never thought there may be things in articles that may be distracting. As for sources, it is difficult to find sources that are neutral without bias opinions. As always, it is important to consider both sides an issue so extensive research is needed to make sure the article I am writing isn’t heavily biased toward a particular position. When I was critiquing my article I followed the guidelines given during the training to help improve my critique. As for how I decided on what to add for my article by it depended on what information is already there, what information I found in my research and how they connected and flowed together. It was a work in progress that was constantly evolving.

I feel my edits aren’t that big as I was just adding information that I found interesting to my topic that wasn’t already included. It was kind of hard because my article had already been started and I wasn’t the only one that was editing the article. I was a little late in my contributions which is my fault but it also meant I had less to contribute and more research needed to be done. My article was constantly evolving as I would take new points and change my wording around. Also depending on how tired I was, there were times were I didn’t write anything but any key points which I would then improve on another time.

For the peer review, I would read through the article and then include any thoughts I had with my first impression. After that I would read it again but this time I would go through the Wikipedia training and include the tips that it has an understandable lead section, a clear structure, balanced coverage, neutral content, reliable sources along with the more common things like clear grammar, spelling. I would then go through my initial thoughts as well as my thoughts after the Wikipedia training and combine them together. Afterwards, I made sure to write my thoughts were written in a more understandable manner which I would then post for peer I am reviewing.

I didn’t receive any feedback as I didn’t have as much information at the time but if I had received feedback I would definitely take into account what was given. If there was anything that I didn’t particularly agree with then I would make sure to reply with my thoughts for writing what I did and why I disagree with their feedback. I would also make sure to make any changes that I was given in the feedback that I felt made sense.

In general, this Wikipedia assignment was definitely a new experience. I have heard how Wikipedia shouldn’t be a trusted source since anyone who has an account (which can easily be created). I’ve learned that Wikipedia actually has a lot of training modules to ensure the content can be as accurate, unbiased and not copyrighted. Creating a Wikipedia article seems very simple but to be honest if the articles are written in the format given by the Wikipedia tutorials, it is actually involves a lot of hard work researching, writing, and editing. Especially since you need add good citations and images from unbiased and good academic resources.

This is assignment is very similar yet different to my other assignments that I the done in the past. It similar in the sense of researching and writing an article based on the topic but because we are uploading this live to the internet where the public can see what is posted. I feel there is more requirements for this assignment since Wikipedia is a very large, well known database. Any information that is posted is available to anyone that has access to the internet. I guess there is more of a pressure to ensure that the articles written are properly cited, accurate and non-opinionated. Also, you cannot make your own inferences or include your own private research. It has to be from secondary sources which is different since usually any lab assignments you do have a component where you include your findings and what you think it means.

Wikipedia can be used to improved public understanding of environmental systems because its an easily accessible resource that many people rely on for fast information. It is usually one of the first links that shows up for most google searches. Since it is easily accessible you have to make sure the information is accurate. The more accurate information that is available, then the better it is for the public when they access the pages for information.

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Bibliography/Notes use cite tool

Possible Article Selection

1)Environmental Health

2) Heat Wave

3) Glacial Lake

4) Arctic Sea Ice Decline

Article Evaluation

Soil acidification

This article explains what soil acidification, the processes that can attribute to acidification of soils. There was nothing that distracted me from the main topic. Looking at the references the oldest article is from the year 2006. Therefore, since most of the article is fairly recent I would assume the content to be up to date. More research would be necessary to for improvements because the content can definitely be expanded more.

The article is pretty neutral. The article is just small paragraphs in each section that defines what the process is and explain it a little more. There isn't much information that can be under any sort of influence as it is straight up facts. I feel like there is more to soil acidification and the article can be expanded on even more.

There are six citations and all the links work. However, one of the link went to a main page of the website instead of an article. There isn't consistent referencing system being used. Most of it are journal articles such as Science magazine and Soil Science Society of America Journal.

There isn't much talking going on in this section. There is three things: one asking for pesticide information to be added, another giving a template to help organize the article and lastly someone mentioning they will try to organize it. This article is rated Stub-Class and is part of the Soil wikiproject.

(I did climatology before I realized that I was doing the wrong one but I dont want to erase it so I am just going to leave it here.)

Climatology

This article is about the study of climatology, specifically what it is and what other fields it relates to. It then explains a brief history of the climatology, some indices of climate, some comparisons with weathers and models of climate. If there was anything that distracted me it was the different approach section which i thought interrupted the flow. There is some specifics such as the last known date of El Nino that have not been updated. There are quite a bit hyperlinked pages. Improvements could possibly be to expand the articles so that there isn't many hyperlinks and ensure that the information is all up to date.

The article is written in an neutral point of view. It is often explaining what definitions are and does not appear to be biased. This is good because the information should not be presented in a biased view. Although I feel there could more information overall instead of referring hyperlinks to get further specific about the subtopics.

Out of the nine links I checked, only two have worked so far. There are a total of fifteen citations. Out of the three linked that worked, one was a google book and the other was a government page from the state of California. This has made it really hard to confirm the sources of the information that was used to write the article.

There are conversations that are referencing the format structure of the article, comparisons with other climate related and meterology pages. There is also a conversation of Lindzen. This is a C-Class rated article and related to the wikiprojects of Environment/Climate Change, Meteorology, and Geography.