User:Brug0009/sandbox

1. Bryan Adams

 * 1) "Bryan Adams." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 22 Sep. 2014. Web. 27 Sep. 2014.
 * 2) Mowat, Bruce F. and Sarah Church. "Bryan Adams". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: Historica Canada, 2010. 12 May 2010. Web. 27 Sep. 2014.

2. The Dominican Republic
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 27 Sep. 2014.
 * 1) "Dominican Republic." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 25 Sep. 2014. 03 Mar. 2014. Web. 27 Sep. 2014.
 * 2) "Dominican Republic". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

3. Peggy’s Cove

 * 1) "Peggys Cove, Nova Scotia." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 17 Sep. 2014. Web. 27 Sep. 2014.
 * 2) Ryan, Judith Hoegg. “Peggy’s Cove”. The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: Historica Canada, 2009. 20 Apr 2009. Web. 27 Sep. 2014.

Choosing My Articles
It took a couple of attempts for me to come up with a first topic to research. I started out by trying to find a page on Wikipedia about sandboxes. I found plays, plants, books and a reference to a sandpit. I searched sandpits and found my description of a sandbox; basically a little pit filled with sand that children play in (1.). Then I tried to find an article in other encyclopedias about sandboxes or sandpits and I couldn’t find anything. I decided to look for something that could easily have more written about it. I decided to search a person. Bryan Adams became my first topic. He was easily found both on Wikipedia and in the Canadian Encyclopedia. For my second and third topics, I chose to search places I’ve been. I searched for the Dominican Republic on Wikipedia and found it on my first try. Then I went to the Canadian Encyclopedia to see what they had and only found the Latin Americas. It wasn’t close enough so I changed to the Britannica Encyclopaedia and found my topic easily. Next, I searched for Peggy’s Cove. My family and I went to Nova Scotia last summer and Peggy’s Cove was one of the places we planned on visiting. When we got there, we realized we had too much planned and didn’t make it there, after all. I decided to search it to see what we missed. Peggy’s Cove came up on the first try in both encyclopedias.

Initial Thoughts
Before reading too much in the articles my thoughts are that they should all be fairly accurate. Most of the information should be factual and easy to find out anywhere.

The Bryan Adams Wikipedia article seems to be well done. It is well written, there are a lot of citations although a few more are needed, the writing seems unbiased and there are many headings. Comparing the Wikipedia article to the Canadian Encyclopedia article I found that Wikipedia has more detail. The Canadian Encyclopedia has some of the same biography information although not as much as Wikipedia. There is also a good match-up in the headings of the different sections.

For the Dominican Republic, the Wikipedia article does seem to be well written. There is a great, long summary in the beginning; and there are a lot of headings that are logically organized. Again, I found that there were a lot of citations with a few still needed. The writing also seemed to be unbiased. Looking at the Britannica Encyclopaedia, I found that it had many pages written on the subject. The headings seemed to be similar to the ones I found in Wikipedia.

At the top of the page of the Peggy’s Cove article in Wikipedia there is a warning – “This article needs additional citations for verification.” Some of the facts seem to be accurate but there are not a lot of citations at the bottom of the page. There are a few suggestions for citations in the text. The Canadian Encyclopedia has an article about Peggy’s Cove but it is very small but seem to be the same as the ones mentioned in Wikipedia

Peggy’s Cove: An Encyclopedic Evaluation
In choosing Peggy’s Cove as the article of my research, I am expecting to find that, although Wikipedia has warnings on the page for more citations needed, Wikipedia may just have the better article between theirs and the article in The Canadian Encyclopedia. The first thing I notice is that the Wikipedia article has more information and seems much more in depth. The small amount of information in The Canadian Encyclopedia article seems to be different in a few places though, and I’m interested to see which one turns out to be more accurate.

Wikipedia Summary
A brief description in Wikipedia outlines Peggy’s Cove to be 43 km southwest of downtown Halifax. It states that Peggy’s Cove marks the Eastern Point of St. Margaret’s Bay, Nova Scotia. The history of the community is that it was originally named Eastern Point Harbour or Pegg’s Harbour. Although there are many different stories about why it was called Peggy’s Cove, it was likely named Peggy after Samuel de Champlain’s mother Marguerite, as Peggy is a nickname of Margaret. The community was officially founded in 1811 when the province granted land to 6 families. They settled and became mostly a fishing community with some farming done in the area as well. After World War II the area became mostly a tourist attraction.

The formation of the land was caused primarily from molten matter that came from inside the earth during the shifting of the earth’s crust around 400 million years ago and then formed further by the shifting of glaciers and movement of the ocean’s tides. Wikipedia describes the tide of the Atlantic Ocean in the area and how the ocean affects the weather. It also mentions the marine life to be found along the shoreline. There is a description of a sculpture by artist, William deGarthe of several fishermen and their families protected by St. Elmo’s wings. To complete the article, Wikipedia tells of a crash by SwissAir Flight 111 in which there were no survivors. Today there are two monuments in memory of the crash forming an equilateral triangle with the crash site. Each of the monuments have markings that point out the other monument and the crash site.

The Canadian Encyclopedia Summary
In The Canadian Encyclopedia article Peggy’s Cove, the community is described to be 43 km south of Halifax on eastern St. Margaret’s Bay. This encyclopedia relays that Peggy’s Cove is probably named after the wife of an Irish immigrant named William Rodgers who lived in the area in the 1770s. The land was established in 1811 when the province granted land to 5 men. The encyclopedia notes that, today, Peggy’s Cove is a popular tourist attraction and that in the summer months it becomes a post office. There is a monument called the Fishermen’s Monument, which is a mural on a granite boulder created by William deGarthe. There is also mention of the crash of SwissAir Flight 111, in which all of the passengers were killed. The Community is noted to have been devastated, supportive and very involved in the rescue and salvage operations of the event.

Differences and Similarities Between the Two Articles
Some differences between the two articles are the level of detail in the Wikipedia article versus The Canadian Encyclopedia article, and some minor details such as the location being 43 km south of Halifax in The Canadian Encyclopedia and 43 km southeast of downtown Halifax in Wikipedia; the community being founded when the province granted land to 5 men in The Canadian Encyclopedia and to 6 families in Wikipedia; and The Fishermen’s Monument being a carving of granite in Wikipedia and a mural on a granite boulder in The Canadian Encyclopedia. One last difference that I noticed was the origination of the name Peggy’s Cove. In The Canadian Encyclopedia the name is stated to have probably come from an Irish settler, William Rodgers, who named the area after his wife. In Wikipedia the author(s) state that the name likely originated from St. Margaret’s Bay, named for Samuel de Champlain’s mother, Marguerite. Peggy is described as a nickname of the name Margaret and therefore Peggy’s Cove is named after the Bay it resides in. Other stories are listed, including the story of the Irish settler, although they are told as legends and not believed as fact. Neither article states that these are certainly the origination of the name; they are described only as probably or likely the reason the name Peggy’s Cove came to be.

Similarities between the two articles include these facts: the year that the community was founded was 1811, the SwissAir Flight 111 crashed near Peggy’s Cove on September 2, 1998 killing all aboard it, and Peggy’s Cove is now a popular tourist attraction.

Contributors
There are several contributors to this small page on Wikipedia. One in particular is peer reviewed, has many Wikipedia awards and has an avid interest in Acadian history, mainly in Nova Scotia. This user goes by the username HantsHeroes; he provides content and fixes mistakes. A few users who have contributed to this page have been mainly grammar and vandalism controllers. The two vandalism controllers that I looked at had many awards for fixing pages. They each removed inappropriate language and nonsense that had previously been added. One user, a retired teacher with the username Awien, tried to make grammatical changes to the page. He made corrections to all of the mentions of the word Peggys by adding apostrophes which were subsequently removed by HantsHeroes. There were a couple of Bots that had made changes to the page. These are automatic controllers that are set up as users with names such as ClueBot and YoBot. One of them made changes that were simply too tedious for a person to do like linking fictional characters to other Wikipedia pages, and updating pages of famous people who have passed away to show the change. The other Bot was a vandalism corrector. It caught one of the vandals on the Peggy’s Cove page the same day the vandalism was added. There were two users who used IP addresses. Both of them were vandals, adding silliness to the page to make it sound ridiculous. One such change was showing that the population of Peggys Cove was 1 person. They also added foul language and replaced the names of hurricanes from Bill and Juan to Mushy and Cookie. All of the changes were caught and changed quickly.

References and Links
There are five references listed at the bottom of the page. One of them is a broken link, the others were books that I was able to find on the Chapters website. Three additional sources were listed. One of them was a broken link, one was a document from the Coast Guard that I couldn’t find, and the last was a document from the Department of Natural Resources. One external link was provided which was also broken although it looked promising. It was from the Nova Scotia Lighthouse Preservation Society (NSLPS). With a little searching I was able to find the Peggy’s Point Lighthouse page on the NSLPS website.

There were several links throughout the page to other Wikipedia pages that relate to Peggy’s Cove such as St. Margaret’s Bay, Halibut Rock, and William deGarthe. Other pages are linked as well, such as WWII, Devonian Period, and tectonic plates, which are not as closely related to Peggy’s Cove in particular.

Reflection on the Quality of Articles
While both articles appear to have good information, Wikipedia has more information than The Canadian Encyclopedia. In the Wikipedia article the damage from flooding by hurricanes Juan, in 2003 and Bill, in 2009 are mentioned. The formation of the rocky landscape is explained and a description of ocean life and effects are also contained in the Wikipedia article.

Even though there are warnings from Wikipedia that more citations are needed, and the sources are not all listed, in comparison with the other sources I’ve looked at, the information appears to be correct. Since the name of the community was formed long ago it isn’t likely that we will ever know for sure who it was named after, but the artist, William deGarthe, mentions both versions of the story in his book, This is Peggy’s Cove. The Peggy's Cove Coastal Region website also gives both the description from Wikipedia, and the description from The Canadian Encyclopedia by referencing deGarthe’s book.

The talk page is interesting for two reasons. First, there is debate over the spelling of the name of Peggy’s Cove. It has been a continual change that has been made throughout the history; one user will change all of the Peggys to Peggy’s and then another will go in and change them all back to Peggys. The general agreement is that the name should be changed to Peggy’s since Peggy’s Cove Coastal Region and the province of Nova Scotia both, as well as many other businesses and organizations, prefer the apostrophe to be added. At this point, the name remains Peggys with no apostrophe.

The second aspect that is commented on a few times by one user is that someone keeps going on the page to advertise Ivan Fraser’s souvenir shop. There were three separate occasions when the information was added, all of it in 2009. Nothing has been added since then and I see no reference to it on the current Peggy’s Cove page, so I presume that it ended in 2009 with the final request that he stop adding the material.

By researching the history of Peggy’s Cove, I was able to find that the true fact regarding the founding families is that there were six families of German descent who received grants for land in 1811, the document with this information is held within the provincial archives. The six families are also mentioned on the St. Margaret’s Bay website.

As I expected, the information in Wikipedia has been well researched and presented. I found it a much better source of information than The Canadian Encyclopedia for Peggy’s Cove. In order to see that the information is complete and trustworthy there does need to be more citations and references as the banner at the top of the page recommends.