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Evaluation of Wikipedia Article "Christopher Columbus's journal"

Evaluating Content

Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?

Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added? Identify content gaps.

What else could be improved?

Everything in the article is relevant to the article topic, the main sections are the lead, journal contents, and the history of its' copies and editions. I was distracted by the unusually long copies and editions section, this is because I was confused how it would contain more information than the section that summarized what the journal was about. There is no information that is out of date in the article, however I feel like there is information about the publishing and use of the journal in texts, books, and articles in more recent years. I feel like a section detailing the truths and lies Columbus included in his journal would be necessary; since the article is factual yet used to present Columbus' point of view, there should be a section "fact checking" Columbus' claims. I also think that the "Contents" section is too brief and does not talk about the more important aspects of Columbus' journal recordings but instead focuses on animals, the Spanish language, and the mood of the crew rather than his interactions with the Taino peoples and experiences in the Caribbean.

Review the Lead Section. Does it follow Wikipedia’s guidelines to provide basic information and

summarizes the entire article?

The lead section does a decent job providing basic information and summarizing the entire article. It actually serves more as a where/when/why function of Christopher Columbus's purpose of writing his journal. It does not detail the contents or the later publications of the journal and how people were able to read/interact with it.

Evaluating Tone

Is the article neutral? Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular

position?

Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?

The article seems to be neutral, there are not any instances where the journal is portrayed as favorable or unfavorable. The article does a good job presenting the factual aspects of the journal in a unbiased way where one could not infer that the author of the article believes that the journal and its contents are justified or ugly and hard to look at. Yet again, there is not any content on Columbus's experiences which would yield the most non-neutral claims in the article. I think it would be beneficial to include a section discussing the pros and cons of the journal and its publication, that it's first-person account of experiences are valuable and insightful but that they are also skewed being written by Christopher Columbus himself and that the way he treated the Native Americans is unethical.

Evaluating Sources

Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?

Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come

from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted? For example, does the writer use

signal phrases to clearly identify the source of the information?

Of the four citations included in the article, three of them are working website sources while the last one is a cited book so its link does not work. The first two sources support the claims in the article, they seem to be reliable and academic sources containing valuable information regarding to the topic. The first one is an academic article discussing Columbus's first voyage journal, and the second source is a reference page about the process of publishing and copying the journals into different languages and by different translators. There are many facts in the article that are not referenced with appropriate references, every paragraph contains information cited from references, but it is unclear whether certain sentences are cited from certain sources of not. The third source seems skeptical, it is a reference page completely written in Russian with a single image of a human body. I cannot understand what the page is about without knowing the Russian language and I am not sure why it is included or significant to Christopher Columbus's journal. The article does not contain any signal phrases introducing information brought in from other sources, it does not mention the name of an author of a citation in any section from any source throughout the entire article.

Checking the Talk Page

Now take a look at how others are talking about this article on the talk page.

What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this

topic?

How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?

How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in

class?

There are no listed conversations shown on the talk page of the "Christopher Columbus's journal" article. There are three total edits to the article made over the last four years, with the most recent one being made on June 30th, 2018. The first edit was made on August 22nd, 2015 and the second edit was made on January 3rd, 2016. Edits were made by three different authors with no references to the talk page. The article has been rated C-Class on Wikipedia's quality scale, and has not yet received a rating on Wikipedia's importance scale. The article is affiliated with the WikiProject History, Wikipedia considers the article strictly as a historical reference rather than a social insightful perspective unveiling Columbus's true feelings.

Evaluation of Wikipedia Article "The Handmaid's Tale"

This article contains a Lead, Plot Summary, Characters, Setting, Genre Classification, Critical Reception, Academic Reception, In Other Media, Sequel, and Infobox sections. The key missing section in this article is the Background section. There is no place in the article that discusses why the author decided to write it, whether she was responding to an event of experience, and how this novel stands in Atwood's total body of work. There are comprehensive critical and academic reception sections, but very little in the article that comes from the author herself and how she considered her own work and its purpose. However, this article still does a pretty good job of discussing the controversies, different lenses to read the novel, different issues the book addresses, and how the characters are framed. The plot summary is extensive and does a good job of staying within the neutral tone with solid structure; however, it is a bit lengthy and does not offer readers the opportunity for a quick reference of the book's main points. The article fails to source appropriately throughout the entire piece, especially in the Setting and Academic Reception sections, and the format of the entire article is disorganized and hard to find what readers are looking for.

Content Gap Points/Potential Sentences for Wikipedia Article "The Handmaid's Tale"

Under the Characters Section Professor Pieixoto Problem: Professor Pieixoto is displayed as an articulate, scholarly source who is retelling Offred's accounts but the section's content gap does not include how he still views women and how his "society" views women.

Potential sentence to be added to the article: Pieixtoto's speech also reveals his inherent tendencies to objectify and parody women's struggles; through sexist jokes made in front of the audience, Pieixoto demonstrates that Nunavit does not treat women with full equality.

Under the Critical Reception Race Problem: There is one sentence detailing the critical reception on race in Atwood's novel, it talks about how Atwood does "away with" black people by defining them as the Children of Ham and using the book to borrow from the African-American experience and using that for white women.

Potential sentence to be added to the article: Ben Merriman challenges Atwood's perception of a "speculative fiction" genre on The Handmaid's Tale, by comparing the female exploitation for reproductive necessities to the experiences of African-American slavewomen.

Evaluation of Wikipedia Article "Fun Home"

I like how the article is much more condensed and categorized than "The Handmaid's Tale" article. The "Fun Home" article breaks down its content into five main sections: the lead, plot and thematic summary, artwork, publication and reception, and musical adaption. The "plot and thematic summary" and "publication and reception" sections are the only ones that further break down into focused points, but this practice does not feel overwhelming but instead necessary. I feel like an entire paragraph devoted to the musical adaption is unnecessary in the lead. This article is supposed to focus on the graphic novel and its own themes, and any musical adaption information should be kept to a smaller section by itself. While it is important and monumental, I do not believe that a paragraph full of musical adaption information should be exposed to readers trying to acquire a quick grasp of the article. I like how the article includes images throughout the page, many other articles miss out on the potential to allow readers to feel a "real-life" sense of the novel and its importance. I am a big fan of including the French edition cover in the Wikipedia article, because sometimes other cover page images can reveal new themes and importances of the book to the reader. In this case, the French edition actually depicts Bechdel and her father at the gates of their antique home; Alison is leaning towards her father while holding onto the gate, but her father still slants away. I also find it to be necessary that the article included an "artwork" section, because of the amount of work Bechdel went through to create her graphic novel over the seven year period. The meticulous way she recreated hundreds of family photos, diary images, and faces of her family took an amount of effort that I believe this article properly appreciates. I do think that this article is missing a "genre" section. Fun Home is a graphic novel by technicality, yet, does not quite fulfill the requirements of a "novel". Novels are usually purely fictional, yet Bechdel has created this piece as a truth-telling memoir of her early life and college identity struggle. A section devoting itself to this conversation would allow readers to gain a better perspective on the intent and integrity of the book.

3-Part Evaluation Mock Edit of "Fun Home"

General observation = there is a well sourced paragraph on Fun Home's musical adaption in the lead section of the article

Concrete point of evaluation = the musical adaption paragraph does not fit the standards and expectations of a lead section in an article. The lead section should always briefly summarize the contents of the whole article, and paraphrase the most important points. However, a six line paragraph detailing the musical production of the book is unnecessary and excessive: "In 2013, a musical adaption of Fun Home at The Public Theater enjoyed multiple extensions to its run... Fun Home was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama... The Broadway production opened in April 2015... winning the Tony Award for Best Musical." Wikipedia's criteria suggest that the lead section "provides basic information" and "summarizes the entire article," which contradicts the amount of detail included in this paragraph about one specific topic.

Actionable item = Summarize musical adaption paragraph into a sentence or two, keeping sources, and include in a combined "reception" paragraph at the end of the lead section.

Final Draft of contributions to Wikipedia article on "Christopher Columbus's journal"

All of my changes and new additions are bolded.

Lead Section (drafting Changes added)

Christopher Columbus's journal (Diario) is a diary and logbook written by Christopher Columbus about his first voyage. The journal covers events from 3 August 1492, when Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera, to 15 March 1493 and includes a prologue addressing the sovereigns. Several contemporary references confirm Columbus kept a journal of his voyage as a daily record of events and as evidence for the Catholic Monarchs. Upon his return to Spain in the spring of 1493, Columbus presented the journal to Isabella I of Castile.^{[citation needed]} She had it copied, retained the original, and gave the copy to Columbus before his second voyage. The whereabouts of the original Spanish text have been unknown since 1504. Copies based on an abstract from the journal have been made, most notably by Bartolomé de las Casas.

Some scholars have questioned the accuracy of the copy made by Bartolomé de las Casas, but in more recent studies the las Casas copy has been verified. A number of alternative translations of the journal and bibliographies of Columbus are derived from the las Casas copy. The most commonly sourced works include The University of Oklahoma's The Diario of Christopher Columbus' First Voyage to America 1492-1493, John Cummins' The Voyage of Christopher Columbus: Columbus' Own Journal of Discovery, and Robert Fuson's The Log of Christopher Columbus.

Background (all added to Wikipedia Article)

The story of Christopher Columbus's origins and young life preceding his sea-faring voyages is still largely unknown. Born in 1451 in Genoa, Columbus left home to become a mariner when he was 14 years old. Columbus survived the sinking of a Portuguese ship, worked for a merchant, and began mapping with his brother Bartholomew before his marriage to Doña Felipa Perestrello e Moniz in 1478. Columbus was interested in studying geography, philosophy, theology, and history. Columbus lived the life of a wandering traveler through his ocean-oriented profession until 1480. Through inaccurate calculations and estimates, Columbus believed that he could successfully travel west to east in order to open up a new trade route to the East Indies. Initially, Columbus presented his potential trade passage to John II of Portugal. However Columbus’s request for financial accommodations to support his eastward expedition was rejected by John II. Afterwards, Columbus experienced a number of dismissals from presenting his first voyage proposal to Venice, Genoa, France, and King Henry VII of England before reaching Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand II of Spain in January 1492. Columbus's first presentation of his expedition to the Spanish royalty resulted in denial. Yet after a reexamination pushed by Columbus's persistent attitude and unique character, Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain agreed to finance his first voyage. Columbus and ninety men commenced their journey from Palos on 3 August 1492 in three ships, the Santa Maria, Nina, and the Pinta.

Contents

In the prologue, Columbus mentions his orders to sail to India were received in January 1492, following the exile of the Jews; however, conflicting reports exist over the actual date of the expulsion with Columbus citing January and other sources, including the Alhambra Decree, citing March. After the prologue, the diary begins with Columbus's departure from Spain towards the Canary Islands "half an hour before sunrise" on 3 August 1492. On 16 September, Columbus reported he had entered the Sargasso Sea. The journal mentions several animals encountered during the westward voyage, such as dolphins and frigatebirds.^{[citation needed]} Columbus also describes magnetic declination. While he was not the first to become aware of that, it is assumed that before Columbus's first voyage the Europeans did not know the western magnetic declination, as all areas where the European sailors travelled to had the eastern magnetic declination. The journal also briefly mentions the crew's mood during the voyage. Columbus writes that the covered distance regularly announced to the crew was usually smaller than the real one. On the eve of arrival to the New World the journal reported an unknown light sighting. Columbus named the first landfall of his voyage San Salvador on 12 October, and described the people residing on the island as naive, naked, yet welcoming to the European explorers. Even though the journal shows Columbus's imperfect knowledge of the Spanish language, he makes comparisons of the New World landscape to that of Spain, such as spring like in Andalusia, rivers like those in Seville, and hills like those behind Córdoba.

Publication History (previously Copies and editions, but I thought the new title fits the content of the section better)

Bartolomé de Las Casas: transcribed the only primary-sourced based copy of Columbus's journal

All existing copies of the journal are based on the journal's abstract – a manuscript of 76 folios discovered later in the library of the Duke of the Infantado by Martín Fernández de Navarrete. The manuscript was kept in the Biblioteca Nacional de España until about 1925 when it was reported as missing. Navarrete reported the discovery of the journal's abstract to his friend, Juan Batista Muñoz who used it in his Historia del Nuevo Mundo published in 1793.^{[citation needed]} In 1825, Navarrete published the abstract with expanded abbreviations, spelled out numerals, corrected punctuation and modernized spelling. All editions of Navarrete's copy since 1825 differ to some extent from the las Casas copy, which was published in 1962 as a facsimile by Carlos Sanz. In 1892, an edition of Navarrete's copy was published by Italian scholar Cesare De Lollis with critical apparatus.

Bartolomé de las Casas did not have the original journal either and ordered a scribe to make a copy of the journal's abstract discovered by Navarrete. The scribe made several errors while copying the abstract, such as frequent confusions of Columbian leagues with Roman miles. The authenticity of las Casas's copy was challenged by Henri Vignaud and Rómulo D. Carbia, both of whom believed the copy was largely or entirely a fabrication. In 1939, las Casas's copy was proven to be authentic by Samuel Eliot Morison, and this view was endorsed in later studies.

Columbus's journal was translated into English, Italian, French, German, Russian and other languages. The first English translation was made by Samuel Kettell and published in 1827. In 1991, an English translation based on the Sanz facsimile of the las Casas copy was published by the University of Oklahoma Press. John Cummins wrote The Voyage of Christopher Columbus: Columbus' Own Journal of Discovery in 1992, mixing translated parts of las Casas’s copy of the journal with excerpts from Diego Columbus’s biography, to provide a comprehensive first-hand account of Columbus’s first voyage.

Reception and Analysis

Multiple scholarly interpretations and descriptions of Columbus and his actions are based on the las Casas translation rather than the original copy of Columbus's Diario which has disappeared. John E. Kizca, a professor and history department chair at Washington State University, adamantly argues that since the only remaining primary source of Columbus's journal is translated by Bartolome de Las Casas, Casas's translation cannot be relied upon. Kizca asserts that Casas's translation is biased due to his own personal opinions of Columbus and the magnitude of his actions in the Americas. Kizca explains that Casas hides Columbus's true motives through his translation because he observes Columbus as the representative figure of manipulating the Native Americans and "as the embodiment of Spanish policy towards overseas expansion."In The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy, Kirkpatrick Sale displays Columbus through passages of his journal as the chaotic result of a corrupted European society. Sale concludes that Columbus was overwhelmed by the pressures of Spain to discover something significant, which led to his materialistic-minded and polarizing perspective of the Native Americans and their home. Charles Alperin of the Jewish Federation of Omaha and many other Jewish scholars have pointed to the prologue of Columbus's journal as evidence for his Jewish heritage. Conspiracists cite the prologue's unexpected delay in Columbus's departure and the vague mentions of Jewish people as the primary evidence in Columbus's first-hand journal.

Jose Rabasa, professor of Romance languages and Literatures at Harvard University, describes Columbus's journal as an accurate account of his journey, despite Columbus inaccurately reaching the East Indies. Rabasa characterizes Columbus's narrative of his discovery as picturesque and glorified, citing examples from Las Casas's translation like "pretty water," "stones with gold-covered spots," and "a good river." Rabasa indicates that Columbus composes his journal with a conqueror approach to exploration in order to convince Queen Isabella of the industrial potential of the new lands. Elvira Vilches, author and professor of Romance studies at Duke University, approaches Columbus's intentions for his journal in a purely religious light. Vilches considers the Diario as Columbus's proof that he successfully spread Christianity to the Americas and as Columbus's evidence that he should acquire more resources to conduct more voyages to the New World. Vilches contends that Columbus’s successful presentation of the contents of his journal and accompanied slaves from his first voyage commenced a chain of events. Vilches traces Columbus’s mass murder and elimination of Native Americans back to his promise to the Spanish royalty of finding enough gold to fund a Christian crusade in Jerusalem. Vilches argues that the journal’s documented New World potential directly led to the promise of gold which resulted in the massacre of innocent Taino. Dona de Sanctis, the editor in chief of the Italian American magazine, defends Columbus's interactions with the Tainos through his Diario. She specifies that Columbus compliments the Native Americans' appearance and acumen upon first meeting them; she explains that Columbus's crew only retaliated with violence after the men Columbus left behind were killed off by the Tainos, and that Columbus's journal should serve as an important historical artifact emphasizing the significance of Columbus's accomplishments.

The University of Oklahoma's translation, The Diario of Christopher Columbus' First Voyage to America 1492-1493, won the "Spain and America in the Quincentennial of the Discovery" award gifted by the Spanish government in 1991 in celebration of the 500th year anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the Americas. Robert Fuson, professor of Geography at the University of South Florida, was awarded both the "Book of the Year" by the Library Journal and the "Elliott Montroll Special Award" by the New York Academy of Sciences for his work The Log of Christopher Columbus.

Bibliography of sources for editing "Christopher Columbus's journal" article

Berkin, Carol, Susan Imbarrato, and Inc Manly. "Columbus, Christopher." Encyclopedia of American Literature. New York, NY, USA: Facts On File, 2013. Print.

Carey, Richard T. "The Conquest of Paradise." News from Indian Country, 1992, p. 28. Ethnic NewsWatch. Web. <https://search.proquest.com/docview/367678520?accountid=11091>.

Collis, Christy. "Exploration Writings." Encyclopedia of Life Writing: Autobiographical and Biographical Forms. Ed. Margaretta Jolly. London, UK: Routledge, 2001. Print.

Columbus, Christopher, Samuel Kettell, and Bartolomé de Las Casas. Personal Narrative of the First Voyage of Columbus to America: From a Manuscript Recently Discovered in Spain. T. B. Wait and Son, 1827. Print.

Coulter, Michael, and George Thomas Kurian. "Columbus, Christopher (1451 - 1506)." The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2012. Web.

De Sanctis, Dona. "In Defense of Columbus." Italian America 2008: 1,15,24. Print.

Heffernan, J. B. "Columbus, Christopher." New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., vol. 3, Gale, 2003, pp. 864-867. Gale eBooks, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3407702592/GVRL?u=wash43584&sid=GVRL&xid=29b942d3.

Herold, David. "Morison, Samuel Eliot 1887-1976." American Writers, Supplement 1, edited by Leonard Unger, vol. 2, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1979, pp. 479-500. Gale eBooks, <https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX1381600032/GVRL?u=wash43584&sid=GVRL&xid=709f6ba4>.

Hulme, Peter. Columbus and the Cannibals. London ;: Methuen, 1986. Print.

Kicza, John E. "A Synoptic Edition of the Log of Columbus's First Voyage / Las Casas on Columbus: Background and the Second and Fourth Voyages." Renaissance Quarterly 54.1 (2001): 280-2. Literature Online. Web.

Muncie, John. "Columbus' Voyage 'Diario' Warrants Literary Discovery." San Diego Union, The (CA), 1989, NewsBank; Access World News. Web. <https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=AWNB&docref=news/1178C89C809095CE>.

Paredes, Leslie. "Robert Fuson, 77, Longtime USF Scholar." St.Petersburg Times (FL), 2004, NewsBank; Access World News. Web. <https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=AWNB&docref=news/10606324E86C519E>.

Rabasa, José, and Sara Castro-Klaren. "Writing Violence." Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture: A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2008. Print.

Rosenblatt, Eli. "Christopher Columbus: Jew?" Forward, 2008, Ethnic NewsWatch. Web. <https://search.proquest.com/docview/367703261?accountid=11091>.

Staff and Wire Reports, Tribune Staff. "Spain honors OU book." Tulsa World, FINAL HOME ed., sec. BOOKS, 27 Feb. 1991, p. 5B. NewsBank: Access World News, <https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=AWNB&docref=news/0EB546C4662F58F2>.

Vaughn, Leroy W. "Our Heritage: Blacks and Columbus." Los Angeles Sentinel, 1998, Ethnic NewsWatch. Web. <https://search.proquest.com/docview/369331039?accountid=11091>.

Vaughn, Leroy. "Our Heritage: Columbus Vs. Belgium's King Leopold II." Los Angeles Sentinel, 1998, Ethnic NewsWatch. Web. <https://search.proquest.com/docview/369349693?accountid=11091>.

Vilches, Elvira. "Columbus's Gift: Representations of Grace and Wealth and the Enterprise of the Indies." MLN 119.2 (2004): 201-25. Literature Online. Web.

Vizenor, Gerald. "Christopher Columbus: Lost Havens in the Ruins of Representation." American Indian Quarterly 16.4 (1992): 521-32. Web.

"Was Christopher Columbus Jewish?" The Jewish Press (1977-1989), 1979, p. 11. Ethnic NewsWatch. Web. <https://search.proquest.com/docview/371491469?accountid=11091>.

"Water Sources -- in Search of Columbus: The Sources for the First Voyage by David Henige / the Voyage of Christopher Columbus: Columbus' Own Journal of Discovery Translated by John Cummins / the Voyages of Columbus by Richard Humble / and Others." History Today 1992: 58. Print.

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