User:Westm118/sandbox

First Assignment: Evaluate Wikipedia
Climate change article review:

This article is very impressive. It does a great job at objectively discussing what climate change is. 'Climate change' is typically thought of as a term that's coined to be negative and carry a stigma while climate change is just a fact of life. The article describes the natural processes that lead to climate change. There are also links to articles about the other subjects that are commonly grouped within this topic of interest. Some individuals may consider the Human Influences section to be bias, but the evidence and ideals behind it are credited for their beliefs. All of the links worked and the article was substantially supported by external references, peer review journals, United Nations data, and many other reliable sources.

Ecology article review:

Since ecology is a large area of study, it's important that as many parts of it as possible are covered. This article does a great job at covering all the areas while also leaving links at almost all of the sections to direct readers to the topic-specific main article page or other helpful resources. Although the article is very long and jammed full of information, ecology is a large topic and deserves that attention. It appears that the facts are referenced appropriately and the article came off as neutral.

Climate change is only mentioned twice explicitly. I hypothesize they did this because climate change is only a small portion of ecology. There is so much more to it than the public thinks- such as the central focus around climate change. If I was going to create a new article about climate change and it's ecological characteristics, I would discuss the history of climate change, how past events have affected it, and work my way up to what's driving the change today.

Effects of climate change on plant biodiversity article review:

The article draws attention to the natural aspect of climate change and it's effect on biodiversity; however, it spends a majority of the time discussing the topic in a modern context. While it is very relevant, some could see that as bias. This gives the impression that maybe those who did the bulk of the writing are trying to share information about modern global warming/climate change that presents it as a problem and in a negative fashion while dismissing the natural-aspects of it. I think the article could be less bias in that regard, whether I agree with the material or not. The rest of it seems to be legitimate: the links work, most things are properly cited, the images are good, etc.. More citations would strengthen the article, but it is still informational and written well.

 GCD 3485 Wikipedia trainings 

 Training 1: