User:Thomasquinnild/sandbox

= Article Evaluations = ASSIGNMENT: Talk:Code for America

Which article are you evaluating?
I am evaluating Code for America.

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to evaluate this article about the non-profit Code for America because the company has a large stake in the Civic Technology industry. According to its website, Code for America. works to improve government technology services, and connect those services with constituents from historically underserved communities.

My initial impression of the article is that it is well written and comprehensive. The article includes boxes with information about the company's founding, a content index to efficiently navigate through the page, images, a table to illustrate a list of active brigades, and an extensive references section.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The article includes a concise introductory sentence that explains what the purpose and organizational status of Code for America. is, and includes linked definitions for technical vocabulary.

Although the lead does not include a description of the article's major sections, an index table is displayed as an alternative.

The rest of the lead paragraph contains all of the salient information on the company without delving into extraneous information.

Content

Code for America includes seven major sections, with an even amount of content in each. However, two of the sections, Fellowship Program and Former Fellowship Projects, are very similar, so they could be cut down and merged into a single section.

The content also cites reputable newspapers as part of its Founding and History section, which adds to the article's credibility.

Tone and Balance

The tone and balance of the article is neutral, and the author(s) use outside, reputable sources to offer praise for the company, rather than using subjective language themselves. With that being said, the article does not offer critiques of the company, a problem for overall balance.

Sources and References

This articles makes extensive use of current, diverse references, with reputable sources such as the New York Times, and other government agency websites. The references section of the article is also very well organized, with an external links section also included for further reading.

Organization and Writing Quality

Both the article's organization and writing quality were excellent, with no visible spelling or grammatical errors and concisely written sections.

(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Talk Page

Although Code for America's talk page has been used to critique citations and general writing style, there were only two entries into this article. This could be a positive reflection of the article's initial author, and/or a negative reflection on the peer review of the work. Overall, the critiques were taken into consideration and the improvements made.

= Possible Articles to Work On =

Option 1
Article title:

- Civic application

Article Evaluation:

- Dozens of spelling and grammatical errors

- Low-quality formatting

- The links to multiple references do not work

- Article rated as Start-Class on the quality scale for WikiProject Software and WikiProject Politics

- For the aforementioned projects, the article received importance scale ratings of high and N/A respectively

Sources:

- Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics

- Beyond technology: Identifying local government challenges for using digital platforms for citizen engagement

Option 2
Article title:

- CitizenLab

Article Evaluation:

- According to the warning label in the heading of the article, it contains content that is written like an advertisement and does not adhere well to Wikipedia's notability guidelines for companies and organizations.

- The article offers no information critical of the company and rather lists the number of awards the company has won.

- Uses language that lauds the three founders

- Various grammatical and spelling errors

Sources:

- CEO Secrets: CitizenLab founder shares her business advice

- Citizen Lab Goes Open Source to Encourage Participation

Option 3
Article title:

- Civic education in the United States

Article Evaluation:

- This article is very outdated (10+ years) and is not updated with current information regarding civic education in the United States.

- The article does not define civic education, and there are no introductory paragraphs to introduce the reader to the topic.

- The article has grammatical errors and has weak formatting.

Sources:

- How school can teach civic engagement besides civic education: The role of democratic school climate

- Education and civic engagement

Final Topic Idea: Civic Application
Improvements I can make:

- None of the original sources used in the article are from reputable journals or other scholarly reports, so I can improve the article's reputability by including these established works.

- The original article is also lacking a comprehensive set of citations, so I will include a more well-rounded group of articles and other resources.

- The article has numerous grammatical errors, so I will fix them and improve the overall structure.

- I will add to the length of the article, seeing as it is quite short and does not cover the whole array of information on civic applications.

Bibliography:


 * 1) Shirky, Clay. “The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change.” Foreign Affairs, vol. 90, no. 1, 2011, pp. 28–41. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25800379 . Accessed 16 Sep. 2022.
 * 2) “Grantee Spotlight: California Environmental Voters | Rose Foundation.” Rosefdn.org, 2022, rosefdn.org/grantee-spotlight-california-environmental-voters/. Accessed 17 Sept. 2022.
 * 3) Block, Fred L., and Matthew R. Keller. State of Innovation: The U.S. Government's Role in Technology Development. Routledge, 2016.
 * 4) Dunaway, Johanna, and Doris A. Graber. Mass Media and American Politics. SAGE Publications, Inc., 2023.
 * 5) Lee, Gwanhoo, and Young Hoon Kwak. “An Open Government Maturity Model for Social Media-Based Public Engagement.” Government Information Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4, Oct. 2012, pp. 492–503, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0740624X1200086X, 10.1016/j.giq.2012.06.001. Accessed 20 Sept. 2022.
 * 6) “Scaling Civic Tech.” How Can We Harness Technology to Promote Civic Engagement and More Responsive Government?, 2022, knightfoundation.org/features/civictechbiz/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2022.
 * 7) Stoddard, J. (2014). The Need for Media Education in Democratic Education. Democracy and Education, 22 (1), Article 4.
 * 8) Moore, Martin. Centre for the Study of Media, Communication, and Power, 2016, pp. 1–92, Tech Giants and Civic Power.
 * 9) Chan, Clarice. “Corporate Civic Responsibility: A New Paradigm for Companies to Advance Public Interest Technology.” Corporate Civic Responsibility, Tech Talent Project, 21 Dec. 2020, techtalentproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Corporate-Civic-Responsibility_Chan_TechTalentProject_1.6.21.pdf.
 * 10) Balestrini, Mara. “A City in Common: Explorations on Sustained Community Engagement with Bottom-up Civic Technologies.” University College London, University College London, 2017, pp. 1–321.

First Draft of Article Revision
Civic application describes a type of application software aimed at motivating the user to participate in public good development. In civil societies, civic applications are created to enhance public good, civic engagement, and generally social capital.

Civic applications can for example aim at:


 * development of engaged citizenship,
 * strengthening of local communities,
 * growth of democracy,
 * supporting entrepreneurship,
 * protection of nature and common living space, etc.

Civic applications are to some extent often social networking services, but what distinguishes them is the civic goal, the mission funding its existence.

Interaction between the user and the application is what differentiates civic applications from any IT service (website, portal) speaking about any citizen's topics, where interaction is not necessary and if exists often takes the form of commenting under articles.

Civic applications can be accessed from a server via an Internet browser (online) or using mobile devices, such as mobile phones or tablets (mobile), less often from the user's local drive (offline).

Origins
On January 20, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama signed the "Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government," requesting that government agencies make their data–such as real-time crime feeds and air-quality metrics–open and available to the public. This memorandum marked a pivotal legislative moment, as the government improved the distribution of public services through new technologies characterized by civic open data. The "Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government" also provided companies seeking to join the civic technology world with a framework to build their own civic applications.

However, the history of civic applications can be traced back years earlier, with the creation of various civic technology platforms such as Ushahidi which supported election monitoring and crisis reporting, as well as TheyWorkForYou, which simplifies complex political information into layman's terms.

Current Applications
One potential benefit of civic applications is that they can help disseminate democracy. On social media applications, users have widespread access to political information, including the voting decisions of their elected representatives and information on legislative ballots. Civic applications can help politicians bridge the communicative divide between the government and their constituents.

However, civic applications also have shortcomings. For example, many civic applications struggle with financial sustainability. Many civic applications have either non-profit or not-for-profit corporate strategies, which prevent them from adopting stable strategies of fundraising and a majority end up failing from lack of income stream or funding.

Non-Governmental Organizations and public national institutions are noticing the value of the civic apps and invite people working in the Information Technology domain to participate in their development (e.g. in Greater Portland, Chicago , Boston, Boulder, Washington D.C, Seattle , and other American cities as part of the Code For America initiative). Very often they are created as part of "hackathons", IT development competitions. In 2008, Vivek Kundra hosted the first open government data hackathon. The event, called "Apps for Democracy" invited outside civic hackers to make use of the city’s open data portal, leading to the creation of 47 apps.

Civic applications are part of a greater concept of civic technologies, which encompass a variety of civic applications, together with any software tools and platforms, enabling its development or hosting, and the software supporting local and national governments in performing their public functions.

References [edit]

 * 1) Jäske, Maija; Ertiö, Titiana (2019-03-06). "The democratic potential of civic applications". Information Polity. 24 (1): 21–39. doi:10.3233/IP-180105
 * 2) Stoddard, Jeremy (2014-04-14). "The Need for Media Education in Democratic Education". Democracy and Education. 22 (1).
 * 3) "civicapps.org for Greater Portland".
 * 4) "Open City - Civic apps built with open data".
 * 5) "Harris: A selection of civic apps that aid Chicagoans".
 * 6) "Five Cities Get Free Civic Apps Through Code for America". Mashable.
 * 7) Balestrini, Mara. “A City in Common: Explorations on Sustained Community Engagement with Bottom-up Civic Technologies.” University College London, University College London, 2017, pp. 1–321.
 * 8) "Civic Apps Competition Handbook".
 * 9) Shirky, Clay. “The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change.” Foreign Affairs, vol. 90, no. 1, 2011, pp. 28–41. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25800379 . Accessed 16 Sep. 2022.
 * 10) “Grantee Spotlight: California Environmental Voters | Rose Foundation.” Rosefdn.org, 2022, rosefdn.org/grantee-spotlight-california-environmental-voters/. Accessed 17 Sept. 2022.
 * 11) "A Timeline of Civic Tech Tells a Data-Driven Story of the Field". Civic Tech Field Guide. Retrieved 2022-09-27.
 * 12) Block, Fred L., and Matthew R. Keller. State of Innovation: The U.S. Government's Role in Technology Development. Routledge, 2016.
 * 13) Dunaway, Johanna, and Doris A. Graber. Mass Media and American Politics. SAGE Publications, Inc., 2023.
 * 14) Lee, Gwanhoo, and Young Hoon Kwak. “An Open Government Maturity Model for Social Media-Based Public Engagement.” Government Information Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4, Oct. 2012, pp. 492–503, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0740624X1200086X, 10.1016/j.giq.2012.06.001. Accessed 20 Sept. 2022.
 * 15) “Scaling Civic Tech.” How Can We Harness Technology to Promote Civic Engagement and More Responsive Government?, 2022, knightfoundation.org/features/civictechbiz/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2022.
 * 16) Stoddard, J. (2014). The Need for Media Education in Democratic Education. Democracy and Education, 22 (1), Article 4.
 * 17) Moore, Martin. Centre for the Study of Media, Communication, and Power, 2016, pp. 1–92, Tech Giants and Civic Power.
 * 18) Chan, Clarice. “Corporate Civic Responsibility: A New Paradigm for Companies to Advance Public Interest Technology.” Corporate Civic Responsibility, Tech Talent Project, 21 Dec. 2020, techtalentproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Corporate-Civic-Responsibility_Chan_TechTalentProject_1.6.21.pdf.

Peer Review Farouk Najjar [edit]
I wanted to start off by saying this is a very well made start to your lead section! I love the use of the bullet points and feel it would be a good idea to turn those bullet points into possible future sections for the article. Those bullet points could be used as a table of contents!

Additionally, I just wanted to add that I feel the tone is rather optimistic and highlights most of the positive viewpoints of civic applications, possibly adding bias to the article. A review of the tone could help, or maybe a possible section on some of the negative implications of civic applications as well.

Thank you for taking what I say into consideration. Farouk Najjar (talk) 06:38, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[ reply]


 * Thank you for your review, Farouk! I appreciate the feedback, and I agree that this article could use a more comprehensive perspective. I will include a few more sources to highlight the negative aspects of civic applications so that the reader can understand this topic from opposing viewpoints. Thomasquinnild (talk) 06:24, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[ reply]