User:Mattsmilkman

Bio

About Me

I am a first generation college student with interests in everything ranging from Neuroscience to Social Work to Criminal Justice. Although my final major/career is undecided at the moment, I know its core value must be helping people in some way. Likewise, my friends and family would describe me as outgoing, kind, resilient, and (while I hate to admit it) stubborn. When I'm not working as a Customer Service Representative or in school, I enjoy playing volleyball, video games, and spending time with my friends and family. I also enjoy singing and playing guitar, even though I haven't taken the time to learn a song all the way through. Some of my favorite pastimes are traveling to new places and listening to music whenever I can, preferably alternative/pop-punk/rock. I also love raising animals, those of which I have raised are dogs, bunnies, hamsters, and, though not an animal, beta fish. On that note, in March 2022 after messages with 30 different people and being scammed on Craigslist, my family was blessed with two beautiful Ragdoll kittens (both of which happen to be the craziest cats I've ever met).

My Wikipedia Interests

I have always found content relating to medical discoveries, criminal databases/events, different biological pages about organs such as the heart, brain, etc. and mental/emotional development to be the most interesting to read. One article in particular I've always enjoyed reading is Gene therapy, because it is entertaining to read how the manipulation and modification of genes can have different effects and outcomes. Another one I like learning about is child development, especially because of how important the first few years of a child's life are in their growth. Emphasizing how crucial it is to focus on child development early on is something I have always been very passionate about. If I ever start editing articles on Wikipedia, those sections will most likely be where I will contribute. I would like to focus on providing the most accurate and educational information to the internet, mainly because I know how problematic misinformation can become.

Article Evaluation

I have an interest for things that you don't hear people talk about everyday, ones that catch you off-guard and make you wonder why they exist. I research these types of things daily and happened to come across one that caught my eye. I visited the Flat-headed frog article on Wikipedia, and found three aspects of it worth commenting on: lack of citations, under-represented sections, and the age of the article.

The article begins with talking about the Flat-headed frog, where it is central to, its natural habitats, so on and so forth. However, there are no citations/evidence confirming this information, other than a database verifying the fact that this species is listed as Least Concern for extinction. While there are Taxon identifiers linked to taxonomic databases, that is the most citations this article has on the scientific background of this frog.

Another point I found interesting was the lack of information on the actual frog itself, other than the basics. Although it does list its natural habitats, the scientific family it belongs to, and the threat of habitat loss, there is no information present about other features or facts. These are included but not limited to the behavior, detailed population statistics, pictures/visuals, eating habits, ancestry/evolution, breeding biology/size, etc. I think it would be interesting for these facts to be added, along with the citations to back it up.

The third and final point I noticed was the age, with it's first known editing/publishing date being July of 2007. That makes the articles age about 15 years old, and there is still barely any information listed. I'm not sure what the reasoning for that is, but I happened to do a quick Google search and found quite a few articles on this species of frog, some being more in depth than this one. I also found in the "View History" section that this article was autogenerated by what appears to be a bot.

While this article happens to be extremely underdeveloped, I am glad there are still some taxon identifiers confirming certain facts about this species. But there definitely needs to be some improvement on the lack of citations and information, especially given the age of the article. I would love to see the addition of facts such as their behaviors, ancestry and breeding biology, along with the citations to accompany those facts. My best guess is there haven't been enough contributors/time spent to help this article grow to its potential, but that definitely has the ability to change.