User:Laxanan/sandbox

Topic

Bedrock

- Goal with this article - Bedrock is a fairly simple but important topic which is talked about a lot in many geologic contexts. I believe that it is something that should be defined properly and as Wikipedia is a great source of information it is not. The article as it currently stands is filled with a somewhat solid definition regarding what bedrock is when goes on to talk about soil and regolith which is related to the topic but unnecessary for this article it has its own page. I will be taking off the soil section and adding a different section about components of bedrock and weathering of bedrock. Putting the information that was previously included about engineering geology within its own section and adding to the references. Along with clarifying fixing grammar mistakes and simplifying the text in the document. It should be easily understood to everyone and that is the goal.

Essentially a simple article that explains what it means to be bedrock. One that should explain the topic that anyone can understand.

Response to my article ( also posted on talk page )

I have read both of your reviews and do agree with what you have sad regarding the lack of structure and definition. My plan is to write a concrete definition of bedrock one that will explain the type of surface in a concise and understandable manner. I will also remove the soil science subheading as i believe it is misplaced because bedrock is the hard rock layer underneath the unconsolidated material and this section is about soil. Thanks for your feedback on the article and i will take that into consideration when i start contributing to the article.

Reflective essay

Bedrock Article still not finished as due date is the 9th. All it needs is touch ups, a few more references and finishing touches so if you would like to look at that keep it in mind. Thanks
 * April 5th 2019 **

Critiquing articles: What did you learn about Wikipedia during the article evaluation? How did you approach critiquing the article you selected for this assignment? How did you decide what to add to your chosen article?

The article i chose for my critique was meltwater as it was the first article i came across when I was exploring topics and decided to check out some of the links. These links appeared to be broken and i put that into the talk page to be fixed. I learned that the references are not as reliable as i had previously thought. Some were broken others did not refer to the topic and i used this an an inspiration for my own article. To ensure that everything is working properly and it is well written compared to the reviewed article.

Once the review was done i came across the bedrock Wikipedia site and i was flabbergasted, for such a popular topic the article was poorly written and misinformed. I realized the importance of this article when i thought back to the amount of basic geology terms i had googled in first year and used the Wikipedia definitions to better improve my understanding of the basic topics. That is when i knew i had to improve this article to make it better written for the public. When i decided this page needed to be altered i thought of what will make this topic simple and easily understood for the common person. The content in the article contained one section with some useful information and other irrelevant topics within the one paragraph. I set out a plan to first remove irrelevant information in the article and fix grammatical errors before adding my touch. Second i split the topic into different parts separating the definition from other information keeping the relevant information previously added. Finally adding some references, i knew it would be difficult to find information on bedrock specifically but i could use my own  knowledge on the topic for the article and at least add definitions of the topic into the references section.

Summarizing your contributions: include a summary of your edits and why you felt they were a valuable addition to the article. How does your article compare to earlier versions?

As you can see in my summary of edits when reviewing my contributions i have made a lot of edits to the article may not have added too much content but fixed many things such as grammatical issues, adding a lot of in bedded citations and links to other topics, Separating and adding sections to my article and adding citations to the article. From all that i have read and used in Wikipedia organization seems like to be a key theme throughout the training modules and personal experience. That is essentially what i have done organized the information from the mess or information that had previously been there. Even though it is not an abundant amount of information it is concise and organized.

Peer review: If your class did peer review, include information about the peer review process. What did you contribute in your review of your peers article? What did your peers recommend you change on your article?

I had two peer reviews on my article suggesting fixing the grammatical and the organizational issues of which i have addressed in my article. The article i reviewed seemed to be very straight forward with regards to content and structure. I suggested a few improvements to the structure and fixing some of the broken article links in the reference section.

Feedback: Did you receive feedback from other Wikipedia editors, and if so, how did you respond to and handle that feedback?

I did not receive any feedback on y article once i started editing but a previous suggestion was referring the soil section as it was not specifically related to my topic and i followed that advice. It seemed unnecessary to include in this specific topic i sis add a link to it in the See also section of related topics.

Wikipedia generally: What did you learn from contributing to Wikipedia? How does a Wikipedia assignment compare to other assignments you've done in the past? How can Wikipedia be used to improve public understanding of our field/your topic? Why is this important?

In this current age of data and ease of access, Wikipedia is a great tool that is used for many millions of people to gather knowledge and distribute what has been learned. I have a great appreciation for this cite and have learned a lot about the inner working of adding and creating these articles. First the amount of time, effort and resources that goes into Wikipedia articles is tremendous and how its open source makes it even better. I can see edits made all over the world and its truly a connecting platform that distributes information on a global level. This assignment in general is a different approach to a regular assignment in any of the classes i have taken, you re forced to learn about the platform in an interactive way and actually understand the concept by reading various amounts of information. For example if this assignment was to write a research paper lie i have for many of my classes you would read the articles write the paper and forget any information afterwards. But knowing that other people will view the article and base their knowledge on you article places a lot of pressure on the assignment to do it right. I really appreciate the importance put on the article being on the world wide web and the ability to share this information. (Aside ** i have even shared the bedrock article with a few of my friends and told them i fixed it, all with sense of pride, knowing people will read the information i have contributed to Wikipedia.) Being completely honest when non-scientists hear about geology they just dismiss this information as boring and over their heads but for example if they come across articles like mine that are simple and easily understandable it may be possible to peak their interest and get them to click on those links and learn more information about geology. I believe people can be inspired in many different ways why can't Wikipedia be one of them. In conclusion this assignment in general is a good external assignment for this course and i do think Wikipedia is here to stay and getting more people involved in the process is a great way to increase the collective knowledge of the world wide web.