User:Luanpham/sandbox

The article I’m critiquing is “Net Neutrality”, and it can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality.

The article is extensive and detailed. A quick word count shows it at over 10,000 words and 35 pages. The article is part of a series, and it is linked to other issues that play a role in shaping different viewpoints about Net Neutrality as well as explaining the underlying technical aspects. The article explores the topic many different ways, and the contents demonstrate the diverse approaches of the article. For example, the article approaches Net Neutrality by issue(s), by legality, and even by countries that occupy most regions on the globe. If anything, the information is so extensive that many of the points in the contents have their own articles. The article is very detailed as standalone information, especially when it comes to technology. In terms of legality and viewpoints, the article attempts to give a broad overview and then links directly to a more specific article. Technological aspects are often explained using examples and some paraphrasing, but not plagiarism as PDFs to the studies and journals themselves are cited. This article may in fact be too detailed, for example: “network providers often implement various policies such as blocking of port 25 to prevent insecure systems from serving as spam relays” or the discussion of nodes and favorable packet traversal may be distracting from an overview of net neutrality.

Most facts are referenced, but the exhaustive length of the article works against complete citations. The article has over 200 citations, most of them being direct PDFs to studies/technological diagrams, or reputable online news sources and technology websites. The latter is often used for quotes from significant figures in the industry, such as a quote from Eric Schmidt cited from WIRED. Oftentimes, when a concept is explained without citation there is a [citation required] tag already placed after it. Some of the sources are biased (either in favor or against net neutrality), and are described as such when being quoted. Citations themselves are not described as biased in one way or the other, although it is possible to access and investigate most of the citations.

Everything in the article is on topic and relevant to net neutrality. However, since net neutrality is such a diverse issue, I felt that many of the perspectives could have their own own articles (and they did) rather than being directly placed in the body of the net neutrality article. I think someone looking for an understanding of net neutrality (as a concept) may not be interested in the details of packet switching or specific connection speeds. That being said, it’s hard to argue that these are not critical to the topic.

I was actually very impressed that the article was not purely for net neutrality, especially seeing as how it might affect Wikipedia itself. The article specifically has an “Arguments in favour” and “Arguments against” section, both of which are approximately equal length and have relatively neutral explanations of the technological, economic, and social/long term legal ramifications of either viewpoint. The article does a good job of explaining how data is data, but also of packet priority and the physical shortcomings of our networks and the potential need for some kind of throttling or differentiation. Just as this is a very nuanced problem, the article offers many different approaches and solutions to both the arguments in favor and against-- leaving the reader to weigh them.

Although there is some information that isn’t currently included in the article, I’m not sure that it should be. For example, there are ongoing talks with the FCC chairman about the future of net neutrality under the new administration and the effects it may have on small businesses (how will their data get throttled?). This aspect isn’t analyzed or presented in the Wikipedia article, but it hasn’t been settled at this point. That being said, the article itself regards an issue that is still up in the air, so it may be a viewpoint worth including. For better or for worse, net neutrality is a very organic topic right now. The article reflects that as it grows and grows, but soon it may need some pruning and more effective “branching” off.

Adding to an article (notes, rough draft):

End-to-end principle

IPv4 relied on network address translation to combat address exhaustion. With the introduction of IPv6, users once again have unique identifiers, allowing for true end-to-end connectivity. Unique identifiers are typically based on physical addresses, or can be generated by the host.