User:Hrk269/sandbox

Article Evaluation
Article 1: William Milnor Roberts

Since the page is about William Milnor Roberts, it does a good job of providing a holistic picture of the life of the man. Roberts' personal life, career, and legacy are talked about in the article.

The article is also successfully neutral in that it only objective information about the projects and works Roberts was a part of. There does not seem to be opinionated information in the article.

It seems the subsections from the "Works" section is somewhat underrepresented - that is, there is not much information about Roberts' involvement in the Office of Ohio River Improvement or the Eads Bridge Construction.

Although there are many references in the bibliography, there are few in-text citations.

Body of knowledge

The article defines what body of knowledge (bok) is and also presents several different interpretations for what it is. In this way, the article is providing different points of view on the same topic and well informing its readers.

I appreciate the examples of bodies of knowledge that are on the page.

The length of the article is appropriate.

All of the references are appropriate.

There could be more information presented about the ontology for a specific domain and how it ties into bodies of knowledge.

Engineering Economics

Everything in the article is relevant to the topic, but since the topic of the article is a field of study, there may be information missing.

There are no claims, or frames, in the article that seem to appear heavily biased towards a particular position. The articles remains neutral throughout the page.

Perhaps the article would benefit if its structure was better organized - subsections might create room for more description and elaboration, and would help make it easier for the reader to understand the topic.

What is a Content Gap?
A content gap occurs on Wikipedia when information that is requested or being looked for does not exist on Wikipedia. Content gaps mostly occur with academic topics - perhaps this is because there are relatively fewer people looking for academic topics on Wikipedia? Academia has discouraged the use of Wikipedia making it a less desirable source for gathering information.

As Civil Engineers, we can write technical articles on Wikipedia with our technical knowledge and experience. Since we have licensure and a monopoly on the field, we are ideal in writing about civil engineering topics. The reading public has the opportunity to read from professionals.

Copyedit an article
The article about Henry Roe Campbell from week 2 is what I will be editing. There are some diction and tense errors in the article. The following is an example excerpt:

West Philadelphia Railroad

The West Philadelphia Railroad as conceived of as a way to eliminate the use of an inclined plane (Belmont Plane) on the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad. In March 1835, Campbell reported on his engineering recommendations for the proposed railroad alignment starting near the Columbia Bridge over the Schuylkill River and converged with the existing State owned railway on Lancaster pike. The total length of the alignment as proposed varied from 8 to 9 miles with a practical grade of 40 feet per mile.

The following is a proposed of how to revise the language:

West Philadelphia Railroad

The West Philadelphia Railroad  was created to  as conceived of as a way to eliminate the use of an inclined plane (Belmont Plane) on the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad. In March 1835, Campbell reported  that  on his engineering recommendations for the proposed railroad alignment starting near the Columbia Bridge over the Schuylkill River and converged with the existing State owned railway on Lancaster pike. The  proposed total length  of the alignment as proposed varied from 8 to 9 miles with a practical grade of 40 feet per mile.

What do you think of Wikipedia's definition of "neutrality"? NPV or "No original research" NOR
I think it is an effective way for Wikipedia to try to remain unbiased in its database and allow for as much fact-based content to be present as possible. By implementing such methods of commenting on Wikipedia pages, authors are given reason to remain neutral in their articles and ensure that they have original research to substantiate the information they are writing about.

In the context of Civil Engineering data, some principles are already established and cannot have original research. For example, laws and principles, cannot have original research. However, biographical information and historical information may have original research.

Since all material on Wikipedia must be attributable to reliable, published sources, this excludes some primary sources such as people who witnessed events. Such materials, if cannot be accessed online, cannot really be attributable or verifiable, rendering them as unacceptable for Wikipedia.

If Wikipedia was created in a different time
If Wikipedia was created 100 years ago, its contributors would only be educated people. For Civil Engineering data, only professionals would be contributing to the pages. People might write about themselves, and the content would be bias. It would talk up individuals like Wellington, Campbell, John Haydon, and Milnor Roberts because primary sources would be writing firsthand.