User:Whit0801/sandbox

Wikipedia Assignment 1
 Wikipedia Articles 

Dragon

"Dragon." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 3 Sep. 2014. Web. 14 Sep. 2014.

Glass harmonica

"Glass harmonica." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 14 Sep. 2014. Web. 14 Sep. 2014.

Terry Pratchett

"Terry Pratchett." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 14 Sep. 2014. Web. 14 Sep. 2014.

Africanized bee

"Africanized bee." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 20 Aug. 2014. Web. 17 Sep. 2014.

 Corresponding Articles 

"dragon." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 14 Sep. 2014. http://www.britannica.com.rap.ocls.ca/EBchecked/topic/170779/dragon "glass harmonica." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 14 Sep. 2014. http://www.britannica.com.rap.ocls.ca/EBchecked/topic/235002/glass-harmonica

"Terry Pratchett." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 14 Sep. 2014. http://www.britannica.com.rap.ocls.ca/EBchecked/topic/1854183/Terry-Pratchett

"Killer Bees" Department of Systematic Biology, Entomology Section, National Museum of Natural History, in cooperation with Public Inquiry Services, Smithsonian Institution,Encyclopedia Smithsonian. Web. 14 Sep. 2014. http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/nmnh/buginfo/killbee.htm

Search Criteria
I started by searching Wikipedia, looking for any articles on areas of personal interest. I then read through each article to see how comprehensive they were and if they were actually interesting. While I was reading them I monitored the order and structure of the article to see if it flowed and made sense in the order it was written in. Once I had a few to choose from I started eliminations based on several factors. The main one being the amount and quality of their citations. I checked the articles firstly for a high amount of citations and then checked to see if the authors were using reliable sources. Such as newspaper articles, papers, books and websites as opposed to blogs and websites with unverifiable sources. I also checked for grammatical errors, the level of technical information, biases and if any had been flagged by Wikipedia for inconsistencies or problems. Any articles without a good corresponding article in another encyclopedia were also eliminated. While searching for parallel articles from other encyclopedias I followed basically the same criteria. Checking for grammatical errors, bias, technical information and citations. Although I was less focused on citations for the Encyclopedia Britannica since it is a published encyclopedia and all the information in it would already have been checked for accuracy by it's editors and publishers. I looked for corresponding articles that did not have exactly the same information as the Wikipedia article or that expanded on a different part of the topic. A great example of this is the article I found on killer bees. The Wikipedia article contains a lot more general information, (e.g their behavior, their honey, misconceptions about them, etc.) but also has very specific information on how these bees were created and what problems they have caused. While the corresponding Smithsonian article I chose is much more general and focuses almost entirely on the impact killer bees have had in the United States with very little being said about the effects in South America or about the origin of their species. I thought this would be a good way to compare the different encyclopedias in the second assignment and would be more interesting than if they had almost exactly the same content.

Initial Differences
I noticed a lot of major differences between Wikipedia and other internet encyclopedias. The main differences being anyone can create and edit the articles, the size of the articles and the content of the encyclopedias. Wikipedia articles are huge, they almost all have multiple sections and contain a lot of information. I noticed that they also have a lot more links to external sources and further reading. In good Wikipedia articles there are a lot more citations and footnotes from good quality sources and books not just other websites. Encyclopedia Britannica on the other hand is generally very minimal, they have the shortest articles and seem to function more as a quick starting point rather than a comprehensive resource. The Canadian Encyclopedia's content is entirely Canadian, as expected, but also mainly historical without a lot of information on more recent events. Which makes it a very specific and focused resource unlike Wikipedia which contains information about basically everything. The Encyclopedia Smithsonian is pretty much the same as the Canadian Encyclopedia except about the United States of course. They both focus on important aspects of their countries culture, heritage, ecosystems and wildlife. Another example is the Encyclopedia of the Earth which has a strong ecological and conservationist slant with a lot of articles about endangered species, biodiversity and environmental law and policy. While these other encyclopedias are more focused or have less information they are all produced by recognizable institutions. The Canadian Encyclopedia is created and managed by Historica Canada, (formerly the Historica Foundation) and while it also makes use of general contributors it is not open to public editing. It has about 4,400 contributors including David Suzuki and Margaret Atwood. The Smithsonian is also a very reliable institution managing several American museums as well. Wikipedia is the only one open to the general public and without any kind of organized or official board, committee or foundation monitoring it.

Article Summaries
My Wikipedia article “Africanized Bee” starts by explaining how Africanized or Killer Bees are actually a hybrid species of Western honey bees and African honey bees. It states that African honey bees were bred with various European species of honey bee and introduced to Brazil in the 1950s with the idea they would increase the region’s honey production. However 26 swarms of Killer Bees escaped in 1957 and have gradually been spreading across the Americas arriving in North America in 1985. From this small introductory paragraph the article moves on to its table of contents, a picture of a Killer Bee and a breakdown of Killer Bee scientific classification. There are sections about the Killer Bee’s history, their spread throughout North America, their foraging behavior, their morphology and genetics, the consequences of selection, the impact on existing apiculture, references, further reading and external links. Each section is several paragraphs long and some of the sections have subsections. Foraging behaviour and consequences of selection each have four subsections expanding on the original topic. Overall the article explains in more detail why the bees were created, to be better suited for a tropical environment than the original species and to produce more honey, by who, biologist Warwick E. Kerr, and how they escaped, a visiting beekeeper removed the filter screens that trapped the queens in their hives. The article also explains the biggest differences between Killer Bees and normal Western bees, including some sections on why they are more dangerous than other bee species and also clearing up common misconceptions about Killer Bees. Their spread throughout North America and the ensuing problems they have caused is documented. There are sections on general behavior and a comparison between their behavior and that of other honey bee species. The article ends with a small paragraph about how it is possible to create a gentler stock of Killer Bees safer for beekeeping by breeding and encouraging colonies that are naturally less defensive. Work is already being done with this in Brazil but the challenge lies in keeping the gentler Killer Bees from breeding with aggressive, wild colonies of Killer Bees. The final three sections are all links and references to more information about Killer Bees.

My Encyclopedia Smithsonian article starts with a small table stating Killer Bees order, genus, family and species and subspecies then it moves onto a brief physical description of Killer Bees accompanied by a picture. There are five sections to this article, including the description, the other sections are distribution, damage done, control and selected references. Each section is only one paragraph long. The distribution section summarizes the Killer Bees creation through experimental inter-species breeding in order to create a species of bee capable of greater honey production and the escape of those bees in 1957. It then goes on to explain their spread throughout the Americas focusing on what years the Killer Bees reached different southern states, Texas in 1990, Arizona in 1993 and California in 1995. The next section, damage done, talks about the danger of Killer Bees, 1,000 people have died from Killer Bee stings, and some of their more aggressive tendencies, they will chase possible threats for a quarter of a mile. It goes on to explain the damage they have done to the honey and beekeeping industries since their behavior is more erratic, they will abandon a nest much more easily if spooked than other types of bees. They also interbreed with other kinds of bees taking over colonies of regular honey bees making it very difficult for beekeepers if their colonies become interbred. The final section, control, talks about the two solutions to these problems that are being implemented in the United States. One way to combat Killer Bees is to keep a very high population of European honey bees in commercial bee keeping areas to minimize the chances of a European honey bee queen mating with a Killer Bee, this is called drone flooding. The other solution is to continuously replace the queen of a commercial colony to ensure that it is always a European honey bee and has only mated with other European honey bees. The final part of this article is its list of references.

General Comparison
These two articles are very different even though they share a common subject. The most obvious difference is size. The Wikipedia article is much larger and contains a great deal more information than the Smithsonian article. Wikipedia has nine main sections and seven subsections within these, each section is more than one paragraph. The Smithsonian article has only five with no subsections in any of them and they are all only one paragraph. The focus of each article also differs with the Wikipedia article acting as a comprehensive resource containing information about every main aspect of Killer Bees. The Smithsonian article focuses more on the impact Killer Bees have had in the United States with brief amounts of basic information on the bees themselves. As a result the content of each article differs greatly. Both articles explain how and why killer bees were created but the amount of information varies greatly. The Smithsonian article is very concise with a minimum of essential information. It explains that the bees were imported to Brazil in order to be cross bred to create a better more productive strain of honey bee. It goes on to explain when and how many queens escaped and the general area they escaped from, “1957, twenty-six African queens, along with swarms of European worker bees, escaped from an experimental apiary about l00 miles south of Sao Paulo.” There is no mention of specific persons responsible or how exactly the bees escaped. In contrast the Wikipedia article tells you the name of the biologist who is responsible for the creation of the species and his motivations for doing so, “…biologist Warwick E. Kerr, who had interbred honey bees from Europe and southern Africa. Kerr was attempting to breed a strain of bees that would produce more honey and be better adapted to tropical conditions (i.e., more productive) than the European strain of honey bee currently in use throughout North, Central and South America.” As well as exactly how the bees were able to escape. There is even a link which takes you to a Wikipedia article about Warwick E. Kerr that tells you about his life and his scientific career although there is a warning at the top stating that his article needs additional citations from reliable resources.

The Smithsonian article focuses on the spread of the bees mainly concerning their movements in the United States, including the years they arrived in several southern states, “In 1990, Killer Bees reached southern Texas, appeared in Arizona in 1993…” The Wikipedia article covers all this information in greater detail as it contains an entire section on their spread across South, Central and North America, “As of 2002, the Africanized honeybees had spread from Brazil south to northern Argentina and north to Central America, Trinidad (West Indies), Mexico, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Florida, and southern California.”, with dates and details about their current range and how far they could continue to spread, “There are now relatively stable geographic zones in which either African bees dominate, a mix of African and European bees is present, or only non-African bees are found, as in the southern portions of South America or northern North America.”

Obviously with such a discrepancy in size there is a lot of information in the Wikipedia article that is not even mentioned in the Smithsonian article. It has minimal information about Killer Bee behaviour aside from a few mentions of their aggression, “…they have killed some 1,000 humans, with victims receiving ten times as many stings than from the European strain. They react to disturbances ten times faster than European Honey Bees, and will chase a person a quarter of a mile.” While this is all talked about in the Wikipedia article as well it expands on this information talking about common misconceptions, “Africanized bees are not giant bees with deadly stings. The sting of the Africanized bee is no more potent than any other variety of honey bee…” Smithsonian does not even mention their unique foraging behaviour which differs from European honey bees and makes up an entire section of the Wikipedia article. Wikipedia also has an impressive amount of information on bee genetics. There is information about the genetics of the species Killer Bees were bred from as well as their own genetics. Interestingly it is hard to identify Killer Bees since they look very similar to common honey bees and DNA testing is the only way to be sure what kind you have. The Wikipedia article also talks about how many bee keepers are actually coming to prefer having Killer Bees instead due to their increased honey production and have learned how to manage them in order to take advantage of this. The Smithsonian article makes no mention of this at all focusing more on the dangers posed by the bees and talks instead about two ways the United States has tried to keep their bee hives as European as possible. By frequently replacing the queens and keeping as large a population as possible of European worker bees, the Wikipedia article does not even mention these solutions and offers a different one instead. Apparently it is possible to create less aggressive strains of killer bees by carefully breeding naturally gentler colonies with each other. Although there are problems with this approach it is being tried in Brazil.

Neither article contains much in the way of graphic resources. They both only have a few pictures and the Wikipedia article has only one graphic which shows the spread of the bees from 1990 to 1993 in the United States. The Smithsonian article has five references and no further reading or external links of any kind. The Wikipedia article has dozens of links to other Wikipedia articles embedded in the text of the article and thirty one references as well as eleven outside links for further reading on the subject.

Reference, External Reading and Outside Links Comparison
 Encyclopedia Smithsonian 

The Smithsonian article has only five references but they are all very reliable sources: National Geographic Magazine; Annual Review of Entomology, two bulletins from the Entomological Society of America; Bee World and the whole article was prepared by the Department of Systematic Biology, Entomology Section at the National Museum of Natural History. While the sources of this article are all very reliable and have considerable expertise in the field of entomology they are not current. All of the information in this article is at least twenty eight years old. The most recent reference is one of the Entomological Society of America’s bulletins which was written in 1986. The oldest reference is the Annual Review of Entomology from 1975. While some of the information in this article is still accurate, “The general appearance of Killer Bees (= Africanized Bees) is the same as common Honey Bees, but there are some distinctive physical differences between the two.” for example, the majority of it is hopelessly outdated. The article does not contain any further reading suggestions or links to any related outside sources.

 Wikipedia 

The Wikipedia article in contrast has exponentially more sources, thirty one, and the most recent one is from 2012. The majority of these sources are from the 2000s with only a few dating back to the 1980s. As for reliability the sources are all from newspaper articles, scientific and academic journals, different United States government branches like the Department of Agriculture and Universities like the University of Florida. The majority of information used is from scientific and academic journals most of which, with one or two exceptions, date back no further than the year 2000. Scientific journals, like American Bee Journal, Bee World, Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology to name a few and are written by people with experience and expertise in that field. The further reading section includes only two resources but both are from scientific journals written by experts one is older though from 1989 while the other is much more current, 2006. Wikipedia also has an external links section including nine resources although four of these have become “dead links” and no longer work. The remaining links are reliable though they are from United States Government websites, various American universities and the National Pest Management Association, (American).

 Article Assessment 

The Smithsonian article is not a good resource to find information on Killer Bees. The information in it is all factual and accurate, for its time, from reliable sources but it is very old and outdated information, twenty eight years old. There is still good information in it but most of it is no longer useful and researchers would be better off using a resource with current information than digging through this article for information that is still relevant. Aside from its outdated information this article is not a comprehensive resource. Its scope is very limited and it focus narrow. The article has little or no information on Killer Bees behaviour, habitats, impact, genetics, their creation, reasons for their aggressive behaviour and their spread across the Americas. The article consists mainly of out dated information on Killer Bees impact in the United States. For example the section about the damage Killer Bees are doing to the honey industry was accurate in the 1970s-1980s And the solutions that were being considered at the time, drone flooding and frequent queen replacement, either proved to be ineffective or were never actually implemented. Overall this article does not provide current, useful information.

The Wikipedia article is much more comprehensive extensively covering Killer Bee behaviour, comparisons with European honey bees, their geographic spread, unique aspects of their species, reasons for their aggressive behaviour and even their genetics. Added to that this article is considered to be a level-4 vital article in science and is part of both the WikiProject Insects and WikiProject Agriculture which are organized efforts to improve certain articles. Each project has a list of contributors who work on those specific types of article as well as a list of suggestions as to what needs to be done with specific articles. In addition this article is also monitored by the Beekeeping task force which is a group of Wikipedia contributors who dedicate themselves to improving Wikipedia’s information on beekeeping. While they might not be experts on Killer Bees they are knowledgeable about bees in general which is still useful.

Another problem with the Wikipedia page is that more citations are needed to confirm several pieces of information including, whether or not Killer Bees have the same venom as European honey bees it’s just their tendency to attack in greater numbers that causes more fatalities. As well as if mating between European queens and Killer Bee drones generally produces Africanized larva. There are also several links in the external links section which no longer work as well as one in the references.

Even though it can be hard to trust the reliability and accuracy of Wikipedia articles due to their nebulous pool of contributors I think that of the two articles the Wikipedia one is much better. Its information is decades more current than the Smithsonian article and even though we don’t know the identities and expertise of the contributors the fact remains that this article is listed in several specialized projects and groups who are more than you average contributor. Considering all these factors I think that the Wikipedia article is the better resource in this case.

Additional Reading
Howe, Andrew. "Killer Instinct: Societal Views Of The Africanized Honeybee." International Journal Of Science In Society 4.2 (2013): 127-132. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.

Kaplan, J. Kim. "More Buzz About A Bad Bee." Agricultural Research 55.2 (2007): 4-7. MasterFILE Elite. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.

Mitchell, Anne. "Africanized Killer Bees. (Cover Story)." Critical Care Nurse 26.3 (2006): 23-31. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.

"A Nasty Strain - and a Nastier Sting." At Guelph. University of Guelph, 23 Mar. 2005. Web. 3 Nov. 2014

Kaplan, J. Kim. "What's Buzzing With Africanized Honey Bees?." Agricultural Research 52.3 (2004): 4-8. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.

Gravitz, Lauren. "Coffee With A Killer." Discover 23.12 (2002): 15. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.

Tennesen, Michael. "Going Head-To-Head With Killer Bees." National Wildlife (World Edition) 39.2 (2001): 16. MAS Ultra - School Edition. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.

Caron, Dewey M. Africanized Honey Bees in the Americas. Medina, OH: A.I. Root Co, 2001. Print.

MacKenzie, Debora. "A Kinder, Gentler Killer." New Scientist 167.2245 (2000): 35. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.

Randolph E., Schmid. "Invading Bees Gain Advantage By Blending With Native Species." Canadian Press, The (n.d.): Canadian Reference Centre. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.