User:RM395/Course/Encyclopedia comparisons

=Assignment=

Compare a Wikipedia article with the same topic's article in a physical encyclopedia of your choice.
 * The encyclopedia you use should not be digitally accessible, so this may require heading to a library
 * exceptions: digitized versions of very old or foreign language encyclopedias (because sometimes the contents of these physical texts are only available online)
 * older, international, obscure, or specialist encyclopedias are likely to yield the most interesting (and perhaps the most obvious) comparisons.
 * e.g. "television" in 1950 vs. Television, "Tiananmen Square" in a state-sponsored Chinese encyclopedia vs. Tiananmen Square, or "Transubstantiation" in a Catholic encyclopedia vs. Transubstantiation

Describe the differences and similarities and render a judgment as to which is better.
 * be sure to choose a topic on which you consider yourself to be knowledgeable. Your judgment of similarities and differences should contain more than observations about what each does or does not contain.
 * It should be an evaluation that draws on your expertise and could not be done by someone previously unfamiliar with the topic. A few example questions that may or may not be relevant:
 * Are both articles missing something?
 * Does one overstate the importance of a particular point of view?
 * Is there factually incorrect information?
 * Which seems to be provide a more comprehensive or neutral perspective?

There is no fixed word minimum for this assignment. The length will partially depend on the topic you choose, but it seems unlikely that a good comparison could be completed in much less than [the wiki equivalent of] a couple pages.
 * Please use paragraphs rather than lists.

=Submission=

Since one page for everybody's evaluations would get unwieldy in a hurry, I've created links to subpages for everybody's username below. Just click the appropriate link and type/copy it there.