The Roots Wikipedia Article

The Roots Wikipedia article was a little more tough to edit than the other articles I was working on throughout this project. The reason that it was so tough is because the article was very up to date and had almost any relevant information that I could think of. Additionally, since I am not an expert on the group, just a fan, it was a harder to know any extra information to add that wasn't already there. I did add a section about the upcoming events, which I thought was an important decision. Overall, the article was monitored pretty closely, and someone would make changes to the upcoming events and delete the old ones. Overall, this article seems to be kept up to date and worked on regularly so overall it should continue to improve in the future.

Links to Article Edits:
Wikipedia Edit Article 4
Wikipedia Article 4 Edit 2
Wikipedia Article 4 Edit 3

University of Delaware Wikipedia Article

For the University of Delaware Wikipedia article, the article seems to be an active one. There have been a significant number of changes made to this and I'm assuming that there are a good amount of students in the 477 classes making these changes. What is interesting though is that overall, changes have been made to the entire article. There hasn't been much focus on one section in particular, which i believe is something positive and helps to make the article better overall. As for my edits, they have stuck for now and I believe they are strong additions to the article.

Links to Article Edits:
Wikipedia Edit
Wikipedia Article 3 Edit 2
Wikipedia Article 3 Edit 3

Jonathan Dayton High School Wikipedia Article

The Jonathan Dayton High School article, I believed made some significant progress throughout my time editing it. With the help of me and others the article gained more substance and really began to give a lot more of a feel for the school. Before I really thought the article was lacking in certain areas, such as the sports and extracurricular activities, these are two areas that can be really important to students in high school. For many people, whether its a sport or an activity, can really be a big part of their high school experience. So overall I think the progress of this article has been very positive, there is still work to be done, but it is definitely improved.

Links to Article Edits:
Wikipedia Article 2 Edit
Wikipedia Article 2 Edit 2
Wikipedia Article 2 Edit 3

Springfield Wikipedia Article

The first article that I chose to edit was the Springfield Township article. Throughout the time that I was editing the article there were a few other editors who were also making corrections. These other editors would catch mistakes, such as the one I made where I accidentally didn't catch that a piece of information was already stated in the article, as well as add in references. For my edits I added some information about Springfield that I thought was good for the article. Changes were made by people on my edits, for example catching my mistake about the one fact, and we went back and forth a little in our opinions as to where this should be placed. So it kind of showed an interesting difference of opinion and how wikipedia really works. Overall, I think the article has made some slight improvements, nothing too drastic, throughout my time editing it.

Links to Article Edits:
First Wikipedia Edit
Wikipedia Article 1 Second Edit
Wikipedia Article 1 Edit 3

Class Material Post 4 - Stiuqxela Experiment

In class we have been discussing the stiuqxela search engine experiment. At the end of the stiuqxela experiment there is a very nice prize of a $500 donation to Thoroughbred Charities of America in your name in order to rescue a horse. What I thought was interesting about this experiment is that apparently I was right behind Mike's blog in the experiment. The reason I found that interesting is because I only had one small entry about stiuqxela on my blog. Originally, I would have thought that the only way to be up there in the Google search would've been to have more entries about stiuqxela and lots of links and things related to the experiment. Apparently, this is not always true and that there is a lot more to Search Engine Optimization. Possibly could it have to do with the activity on my blog being more frequent? Just an idea...

Also, another player has come into this experiment, an outside source who is apparently a friend of Mike's. Currently, his article about the stiuqxela experiment is number one in the Google search. The article is on the EzineArticles website and it is called The Mystery Behind Stiuqxela. Hopefully, by adding his link to my blog, this could help my standings, but we'll see because he seems to have a pretty tight hold on that number one spot.

Wikipedia Article 4 Edit 3

For my third edit on The Roots article I added a picture to the article, as well as read through and made some grammatical corrections. I think the picture I added was important because it shows the members of the group and it is different from the other pictures on the article now which are either of them performing or of album covers. Additionally, I added some links to the upcoming events section. This way if someone visits the site and sees this, and then wants to look into the venue where the event is being held, they can more easily do so with the wikipedia links as a start.

Wikipedia Article 3 Edit 3

For my third edit to the University of Delaware wikipedia article I added a section about the College of Arts and Sciences. I feel that the article should talk more in depth about each of the schools to give the reader a more detailed view about what Delaware is really about. For my previous edit I did the Alfred Lerner School of Business and Economics and hopefully, at some point when I have more time I can add more about each of the schools that Delaware has to offer.

Wikipedia Article 2 Edit 3

For my third edit to the Jonathan Dayton article on Wikipedia I added a section about the different clubs offered. I feel that the article was lacking on some key elements that the school should have on the Wikipedia site. So now with the clubs and the sports added it gives a little more insight into the school and not just the basics.

Required Bloglist Post 4

As I was searching through the required blog list, I saw a post on Global Neighbourhoods called Yahoo & Microsoft, Yet Again? Oh No!. I realized first that the Global Neighbourhoods blog is definitely one of my preferred blogs out of the list. I enjoy the way things are written and it's just more enjoyable and fun to read. But about the article...It spoke of the possible merger between Yahoo & Microsoft where Shel Israel gives his opinion on the matter. He believes that this would basically be a terrible move for both the companies. While these two giants are thinking about a possible merger, Google is growing and expanding and getting way ahead of the competition.

So, this merger could be great for Google, but not the best idea for Yahoo and Microsoft. According to the article, he believes a merger like this is basically doomed to fail and that most of these never work out. He also makes the statement that the two companies should know "size is not the only thing that matters." So while Yahoo and Microsoft are debating whether to merge, Google is continuing to succeed and grow.

Wikipedia Article 1 Edit 3

For my last edit on the Springfield Township article I added a line to the transportation section. The article mentioned the bus system but I think it is important to mention the convenience of the train system as well. Additionally, I realized that for my previous edit, I added something in the facts that was already at the beginning of the article that I must have overlooked, and saw that it had been removed for that reason. So I decided to move that fact into the interesting facts section of the article instead of the beginning because I felt that that was a more appropriate spot for it. Hopefully others will agree.

Wikipedia Article 4 Edit 2

For my second edit on The Roots Wikipedia article I just made some minor grammatical edits. There were some problems with the over usage of commas and minor things. I just hope that I helped to improve the article slightly and make it easier to read.

Wikipedia Edit Article 3 Edit 2

For my second edit to the University of Delaware article on wikipedia I added a small section for the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics. I just added what degrees they offer but I think it is good to have a little bit more about each school at the University. So I will most likely add more about the business school but I also hope this would encourage more schools to add information about them specifically.

Comment on Classmate's Blog 2

As I was looking through some of the blogs I noticed an article on Kristie's Blog about an article called "Why Exercise Boosts Brainpower." I thought that this looked interesting and decided to take a look at the article. The article, as Kristie mentioned, spoke about a study done on mice that showed growth of a certain cell in the mice in the region that effects age-related memory decline. So, essentially the article was saying that exercise can help in human growth in that area of the brain as well. Unfortunately, I was unable to click through to a linked article on CNN.com to read more about this study. I think this could be a very important fact, if proven to be true. My grandmother is afflicted with the beginning stages of Alzheimer's and my uncle had it as well. If there could be some link to exercise and this disease or memory loss in general this could be extremely important and hopefully eventually we can find a cure or prevention for this terrible disease.

I also thought it was amusing that on the blog there were some funny comments posted about the article and the study. It was amusing to see and I'm sure people are skeptical about it and I don't blame them.

As I am writing a post today I just felt the need to say that my support and my heart goes out to everyone affected by the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech. I think its important to show our support in any way possible.

Class Material Post 3

In class we read an article from the BBC News called Amazon's old customers 'pay more'. This topic interested me because I thought it was extremely unfair that Amazon could do this. After we read the article in class we were given a certain side to take, either Amazon or the consumers that found this problem. I was on the Amazon side and could think of nothing in their defense. I did not believe it when the article said that Amazon claimed that this was a kind of experiment.

This issue deals with cookie files and how this could be an example of one of the negative aspects with the files. Is it really fair for companies to be able to do this? Additionally, how is it fair that regular, loyal customers are the ones that are being charged more whereas new customers benefit? From a marketing standpoint this is not effective and it is these customers that should be held very highly for a business. Now, with the negative publicity and the discovery of this possible "price discrimination" Amazon could potentially lose many loyal customers.

Required Bloglist Post 3

On the Global Neighbourhoods blog I noticed an interesting article titled, Tim O'Reilly's Code of Conduct. As I read through the article I was a little confused about what exactly was going on. The article was talking about how Tim O'Reilly was proposing a blogger code of conduct in response to an incident that occurred with Kathy Sierra. The article went on to talk about Shel Israel's feelings about the code of conduct but I was still confused as to exactly what had happened. So I researched a little more through Google to find out more about the situation. Basically, the issue is that people were giving death threats and saying terrible things about Kathy on a blog.

In my opinion this stuff is unfortunately unavoidable, so in that sense I agree with Shel Israel that this is just bound to happen. On the other hand, it is terrible and no one should have to deal with it. So on that side I agree with Tim O'Reilly who attempted to do something about it and set up this blogger code of conduct. Unfortunately there is no easy solution to this problem. I think it is more productive for Tim O'Reilly to make the problem known and try to do something about it. It is also just very interesting to see all the views and sides on the different blogs about this issue.

Wikipedia Article 2 Edit 2

For my second edit on the Jonathan Dayton High School article I decided to add a section about the sports offered at the school. The article was originally lacking this section and I thought it was an important one to have. Even though the high school is small, sports are a big part of the atmosphere and student body at Jonathan Dayton. When I was in school there, I was active in basketball and tennis and for students this is a large part of their lives while in high school.

Wikipedia Article 1 Second Edit

For my second edit on my first wikipedia article, Springfield Township, I added an interesting fact. The fact I added was about our pretty famous golf course called Baltusrol. In 2005, they hosted the PGA Championship and for a little town like Springfield this was a big deal. Many people were in the town for the days of the tour and people were selling spots on there driveways for people to park miles away from the course. The town got hectic for the time but it was an exciting event for Springfield.

stiuqxela

We are conducting an experiment to see if the word a stiuqxela will come up during a Google search. So i guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Wikipedia Edit Article 4

For my fourth article on wikipedia, I decided to switch from an original article to do an article about The Roots. The Roots are one of my favorite music groups who have a very different sound. They are a hip hop group with a jazzy sound as well. The edit that I made was to add to the article the upcoming events that the group has. I thought this could be an essential part of the article and help to promote the group. This way the wikipedia article can be a resource for fans to find out current information not only background about the group.