User:GriffTheDog

Bio

About me

My name is Ethan and I live in the Pacific Northwest. I have a Chesapeake Bay Retriever named Griff, hence the reason for my Wikipedia name. He is five years old and we got him hoping to train him to be a hunting dog. It turns out that he is the laziest dog to ever walk the face of the earth and he doesn't appear to enjoy going hunting. Since I can't go hunting, my favorite hobbies are now fishing and crabbing. This summer my family and I caught lots of Dungeness crab. Crab meat can lower your cholesterol and is good for your heart thanks to omega-3 fatty acids found in crab meat. I enjoy anything that involves a boat on the water. I am much more of an outdoorsy person than indoors, and over the summer, I was constantly out on the ocean.

My Wikipedia interests

I like to use Wikipedia to research quick bits of information. I typically use other resources when I am conducting research for school projects or other important issues. If I were to continue to use Wikipedia as a volunteer, I would not edit sources unless I was certain that the information that I was editing was correct. I likely would not edit many articles due to the fact that there are more qualified people out there than me.

Article evaluation

I have been interested in Alaska recently because I am hoping to move there after getting my college education. I do not know much about Alaska, and I want to do some research on the state before I move up there. I am hoping that the Alaska Wikipedia page has solid and accurate information about the state as my goal is to get a basic understanding of Alaska. I visited the Alaska article on Wikipedia, and found three aspects of it worth commenting on: I noticed an abundance of citations, an overrepresentation of history and geography, as well as no apparent biases.

Citations

Most of these references were written within the last ten years. However, I did notice multiple references that are cited as far back 1992. This can be a big problem because the information may not be up to date, causing a relay of misinformation. I also noticed that some references were cited in Russian. I do not read or speak Russian; therefore, I have no way to know if the information from these sources is reliable. There are 147 references listed and I clicked on about 20. I did not come across a single cite that would not pull up a third-party reference.  

Representation

This article discussed the history and geography of Alaska extensively, which overshadowed the topics relating to the ecosystem and lawmaker policies. I would like to know more about the wildlife in the area and the regulations the government has put in place to protect against endangerment of species and destruction of the environment.  

Biases

This Wikipedia article had no discernable biases. I expected to find some biases in the sections addressing the economy and the culture. However only facts related to the subtopics were relayed. There was no opinion revealed in their writing. Overall, the article appeared to be written very professionally with the intention of giving readers the facts, with no obvious alternate agenda.

Summary

My rating of the Alaska Wikipedia article would be an eight out of ten. It did an excellent job of providing links and sources to information related to Alaska and there were no noticeable biases in the writing. The only complaints I have relating to this article concern the age of some of the citations, and the overrepresentation of certain subtopics. Notably, though, when old articles were cited, the author was discussing old events. The dated sources were relevant in that they gave a historical perspective and a way to compare older viewpoints from more current ones. This was a well-done article and useful for researching the state of Alaska.