User:Kjair715

About

I am an engineering student with about 4 years of experience in the areas of mathematics, science, physics and kinematics.

I will be using this user space for new article development.

I am currently learning Engineering Economy and experience my first course in professional practice.

Significant editing disclosures

I am interested in improving the quality and quantity of civil engineering related articles in the Wikipedia as a service to the public. I am also studying how students and engineers publish their work (by writing Wikipedia articles) can affect their motivation and participation in learning and ethics of professional writing.

Significant editing disclosures: (Editing disclosure for NYU Coursework) Spring 2018.

Discussion: What's a content gap?

What do you think a content gap is, and what are some possible ways to identify them?

I think a content gap is merely a delay or break in an illustration or writing where a sequence of thoughts are missing or not accounted for. We can identify them easily if we have a timeline of events pertaining to a subject.

Look at the entry for The Engineering Economist. Does this meet the criteria for a "content gap"... is the material relevant?.. how many articles refer to this page?.

The Engineering Economist is an example of content gap where an article is cited and the articles itself has no content to offer or is just unavailable. There are about 1000 articles that refer or cite this article.

What are some reasons a content gap might arise? What are some ways to remedy them?

A content gap might arise when the author does not have all the facts or is simply missing information. It is a disturbance in the train of thought when reading but it is not always preventable. The author can uses other reliable sources to fill in the blanks of where there is ambiguity.

Does it matter who writes Wikipedia? Should only Civil engineers write Wiki articles?... What does our specialized training offer the reading public that uses Wikipedia?...

Everyone should have the power to write an article but in a responsible way where you are not discriminating or being too bias towards an issue. Civil engineers are experienced writers by the fact that they write professional engineering reports and memorandums and so they have a certain edge when writing for wikipedia because they are trained to write accurate information.

What does it mean to be "unbiased" on Wikipedia? How is that different, or similar, to your own definition of "bias"?

Wikipedia articles should reflect the truth in the form of factual information that can be backed by reliable sources. The truth cannot be expressed in the form of opinions. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia at the end of the day and should be represented as a reliable one. Some users are tempted to write their own truths and opinions against certain topics. Talk pages should be used instead to demonstrate concerns and thoughts whether unbiased or bias.

Assignment: Write a paragraph on your user page, outlining your recommendations for creating an article in Wiki on this journal.

If I were to write an article for The Engineering Economist, I would research information on what engineering economy is and where to get reliable sources. Read some educational textbooks and professional lectures to gather data on the subcategories within engineering economics.

Notes related to Wikipedia work and activities

Discussion: Thinking about sources and plagiarism

Blog posts and press releases are considered poor sources of reliable information. Why?

Blog posts and press releases can have a lot of opinionated content which can be harmful when trying to extract reliable information. What are some reasons you might not want to use a company's website as the main source of information about that company?

A company can try to sell their corporation as the best compared all others. They can be falsifying the truth by simply not disclosing the full details.

What is the difference between a copyright violation and plagiarism?

Plagiarism is claiming credit for a work you did not author, or using someone else's work without proper acknowledgement given to them. Copyright infringement is using someone else's work without obtaining their permission.

What is public domain mean?

Works which was once someone's exclusive intellectual property rights have expired, have been forfeited, and are now available to the public.

What does fair use mean?

Any copying of copyrighted material done for to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work.

What are some good techniques to avoid close paraphrasing and plagiarism?

Use quotations and address the readers that some thoughts belong to another author. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Copyedit an article

Choose a civil engineering article from the list in Week 2. Read through it, thinking about ways to improve the language, such as fixing grammatical mistakes. Then, make the appropriate changes. You don’t need to contribute new information to the article.

Article: Capital budgeting

"Of these three, only the net present value and internal rate of return decision rules consider all of the project's cash flows and the time value of money. As we shall see, only the net present value decision rule will always lead to the correct decision when choosing among mutually exclusive projects."

The paragraph begins with, "Of these three", which leaves you with confusion over what is being referenced or discussed. Th author could just combine the paragraphs to convey the idea thoroughly.

"The investment becomes sunk, and mistakes, rather than being readily rectified, must often be borne until the firm can be withdrawn through depreciation charges or liquidation. It influences the whole conduct of the business for the years to come."

The sentence above clearly has a grammatical error. A corrected version may be; "The investment became regretful and illogical rather than being readily rectified,".

Discussion: Thinking about Wikipedia

What do you think of Wikipedia's definition of "neutrality"?

Wikipedia's definition of neutrality differentiates between physical and ideology. Neural parties should not take sides. Wikipedia thoroughly explains how neutrality is different from objectivity.

What are the impacts and limits of Wikipedia as a source of information? Particularly for civil engineering data, information or knowledge given NPV or NOR.

Civil engineering data such as very specific knowledge that engineers use can not be find because as engineers practice they learn tricks and ways to tackle tasks that become intuitive.

On Wikipedia, all material must be attributable to reliable, published sources. What kinds of sources does this exclude? Can you think of any problems that might create?

Alot of sources like newspaper articles and magazines are not neutral and opinionated because they the opinions of other fellow engineers.

For this question, assume we are not engineers, If Wikipedia was written 100 years ago, how might its content (and contributors) be different? What about 100 years from now?

Wikipedia would have credible sources and educated forms of knowledge that would have added a lot more sources and wisdom.

Now we are answering this as aspiring Civil Engineers. We must also face the question of technology and the role it played in the development of civil infrastructure.

Most civil engineers see technology as a bonus for homes and structures in order for them to become smart homes. We as aspiring engineers should promote infrastructure and technology since it will only lead to innovation.

If Wikipedia and civil engineering topics were being written 100 years ago, how might its content (and contributors) be different? How would Wellington have written about railroad economy? How would Campbell? John Haydon? Milnor Roberts? What about 100 years from now? What would CE knowledge look like 100 years from now? Would a wiki platform remain relevant?

Wikipedia will only be increasing in civil engineering topics although civil engineering has been the oldest engineering discipline.

Work in progress

Week 6 work pertaining to recommended edits to Arthur Wellington article via talk page.

The article first introduces a quotation without using quotation marks >(The saying that An engineer can do for a dollar what any fool can do for two is attributed to him.) There are other sayings made by Wellington that can be referenced like; "When the difficulty of a problem lies only in finding out what follows from certain fixed premises, mathematical methods furnish invaluable wings for flying over intermediate obstructions." The article can also include that after Wellington's death Charles Whiting Baker replaced him as editor of Engineering News in 1895. The legacy section could also include statements regarding his appreciation for the outstanding importance of rail stiffness, and why the use of light rail was a false economy. He pointed out that one was not buying steel, but "stiffness, strength, and durability," and that when rail was priced on the basis of stiffness, the superiority of heavy rail was evident. Kjair715 (talk) 02:15, 7 March 2018 (UTC)