A63AberleHenriksonFischerAparicio

A63AberleHenriksonFischerAparicio

To-Do

1. study the document “Projects for the HCC Foundation Course” (in “Students’ Projects” on the Wiki)
2. select a project that is of real interest to you
3. find collaborators and form a group of peers (such a group may already exist) with whom you will work on the project
4. sign up for the project (if it is still available) on the site “Students’ Projects”
5. identify parts of the project and an initial role distribution between your team members
6. each team member should contribute
   1. a brief rational what she/he finds interesting
   2. what she/he plans to do to get started on the project

Which project did you select?

Project-4: Wikipedia versus KNOL: Different Approaches to Create Interesting Encyclopdias

Describe the parts of the project you have identified and the initial role distribution among your team members

Team Emails

Andrew Fischer: makenbaccon@gmail.com

Nick Aberle: aberle.nick@gmail.com

Trevor Aparicio: aparicio.csci@gmail.com

Bethany Henrikson: bethiomoo@gmail.com

Andrew Fischer- Study these different environments and determine their strengths and weaknesses.

Trevor Aparicio- Learn how to modify/create and track a wikipedia article and start brainstorming ideas on what article to write. Then, begin to actually create the article

Nick Aberle- Working with Trevor on creating a Wikipedia article. Once the article has been created, we will track it as it grows and changes until the project due date.

Bethany Henrikson- Going to try and find similar articles on Wikipedia and KNOL and analyze the changes they have undergone.

For each team member, provide a brief rational what she/he finds interesting

Andrew Fischer- I use Wikipedia on nearly a daily basis, not just as a resource for school, but as a fun way to learn about things outside my field of study.  I chose this topic in order to determine whether wikipidia is the best place for me to be getting information, or if another website, like KNOL might be better.

Trevor Aparicio- Wikipedia has become a huge influence on the knowledge base of many students in contemporary society. I have used it as a reference base many times for all types of knowledge from school work to games to other random ideas or concepts that I just wanted to look up. However, all throughout my middle and high school career I was warned against using this site as a knowledge base because it can be easily edited and changed by anybody with a computer and internet access. Even though much of the information on the site is correct, there is the possibility that information could be false and therefore misleading. This is why I think it is important to have a database of information that comes from credible sources such as KNOL or other online encyclopedias. I feel that sites such as Wikipedia may be a good starting place to find certain information, but if looking for specific knowledge that must also be accurate, then KNOL would be a much better source.

Nick Aberle- Ever since I discovered Wikipedia when I was in middle school, it has been a huge part of my academic life. I can't imagine doing a research project without at least using Wikipedia as a starting point for finding resources. The main issue that I have found has always been the reliability of the information that Wikipedia provides. Of course, anyone can add to and change the content of any article. This openness fosters the massive information repository that is the site, but also lends itself to the potential of incorrect or biased content. For me, Wikipedia has always been the go-to site, but it might be interesting to explore alternatives such as KNOL. I am also a long time user of Wikipedia, but have never contributed content myself. I think it will be interesting to add to the site and see how my contribution effects the massive store of information already present.

Bethany Henrikson- Though Wikipedia is usually my starting point for writing papers, I've always been told it's an unreliable source and to never use it as a source for a research paper.  Getting out of high school and spending more time on things I want to learn on my own, I've realized how helpful it can be to just get an idea about what things are, in general, and get some specifics before heading down to other Google suggestions for the topic.  I want to go into design of some sort, like User Interface Design, so I find things like Wikipedia interesting.  It is a site that is widely used, so they have to make their tools easy to use to make a page and to navigate around their site.  I haven't heard of KNOL before this project came up, but I look forward to learning more about it and perhaps what it does better/worse than Wikipedia.

For each team member, provide a statement of what she/he plans to do to get started on the project

Andrew Fischer- I will start by looking up articles on the same subject in wikipidia, KNOL, and Britanica.  I will compare these articles and judge them based on their readability, their quality of the information, their quantity of information, and their quality of original sources.

Trevor Aparicio- Study and figure out how articles are created/edited on Wikipedia and on KNOL. Research some sources on random articles to see if they are relevant and credible sources. Determine, if possible, how credible some articles are. Start looking at each of the sites through the different viewpoints as mentioned above.

Nick Aberle- Start brainstorming what sort of things that an article on Wikipedia could be written about (that doesn't already exist). This may be the hard part considering the vast amount of articles already present. If this is too difficult, maybe finding an article that has a very small amount of information that could be made much more robust.

Bethany Henrikson- I plan to look up articles on the same topics, most likely things I find interesting and don't mind reading more about, on both Wikipedia and KNOL.  From there, I will find out how to find how the articles have changed over time, and see what people change, how, and why.  Hopefully there will be some differences and similarities between Wikipedia and KNOL, because that makes it more interesting.