Wikipedia talk:Wiki Ed/Texas State University/Introduction to public administration (Fall 2016)

Kelly Williams: Wiki page Article Evaluation The article I am evaluating is “Issue Network”, which is the alliance of various interest groups and individuals who come together to promote a certain government policy. In this article in particular, each fact is referenced with a reliable and appropriate source. Even though there are only five sources for the entire article, considering the article is short, they are still reliable. Two of the sources are links that you can follow on the internet, I feel like they are reliable because the information given isn’t bias and is from a .net website. The other three sources are found in textbooks and other books, again, the information that goes with these facts aren’t bias so I feel like they are reliable. Some of the sources are around 10 years old so maybe so newer information and facts would benefit this Wiki page. I wouldn’t say I got distracted by this, but at first I didn’t understand the point of talking about iron triangles, but once I started reading the paragraph, I figured out why they included that in informing Wiki users about issue networks. Iron triangles are more of the relationship between private parties and government agencies. Basically, one seeks to help the public and one the private, so it’s important to learn about the other when talking about issue networks. This article, I believe, does not have any heavy (or any at all) bias. Like stated earlier, the article’s sources come from legitimate and reliable sources so that we know they aren’t there to make us believe one thing, that is not a fact. A .net website is a neutral source and so are textbooks used for school, because these documents report facts to inform the public, not in hopes to persuade their viewpoints. There might be a underrepresentation of information about the topic as a whole. The article is relatively short and I didn’t completely grasp the subject matter after reading the article. I think that the article needs to be updated, with more sources and even more examples. There could be links to examples of this happening in real life instances to help readers better understand issue networks. Some of the sources are a bit outdated, which I already touched on a little. One article is from 2004, which is over ten years ago of course, I’m sure the information in this particular textbook has changed, considering that twelve years is a lot, especially in the world of public service and administration. I clicked on the first source and was actually surprised that it didn’t have much to do at all with issue network, it was pretty much a google link to things with “issues”. Overall, I think this article has the potential to be good, but considering the outdated links and short length, people might overlook it when trying to find good information about issue networks. Since Wiki already has a bad reputation in the academic world, I think it’s key to help articles like these so that people get good, correct information about subjects were learning about.