User:Munkett

Bio

About me

Hi. I have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which turns me into a cheaply made knockoff of Elastigirl (not sold in stores). EDS is a genetic condition that comes in 13 sub-types and I have the variety that mostly affects the musculoskeletal system: Hypermobile Type. When I'm not going to doctor appointments to keep my hypermobile joints a-workin', I like to compose, draw, go for walks and bike rides, read, play videogames, and play piano. To clarify, "Munkett" is a nickname I was given by a friend because I'm crazy like a monkey and long and skinny like a ferret. I never want to write the word hairball again.

My Wikipedia interests

I don't really know where I'll go with this volunteering bit, as my interests lie elsewhere, but I could wind up editing the pages about my health problems! I mostly use wikipedia for music theory, weird animal facts, to find what voice actors did, and as a first stop to find more in-depth articles on a subject I'm researching.

Article Evaluation

I've had eight cats spanning 16 years, and when there's that many cats around the house, there are many hairballs that follow. While they are unpleasant, I know they can signal a cat's health and I wanted to learn more. I visited the hairballs article on Wikipedia, and found three aspects of it worth commenting on: its lack of citations, its sparse information on animal hairballs, and the informative citations on hairballs in humans.

Citations

Surprisingly, there is only one fact with a citation in the paragraph about animal hairballs, which has to do with hairballs as a sign of various tumors. There is nothing for the information on hairballs in rabbits, cows, or even cats. There are, however, many citations for the kind occurring in humans.

Information

This is a very limited article and the meat of the content gravitates toward the human variety of hairballs. Very little is said regarding the animal variant. Only one paragraph is devoted to all types in different species and there is no information on other conditions besides tumors that hairballs can be a sign of. This could be improved with adding more causes of hairballs and a more in-depth look on how hairballs form in different species.

Links

The citations that are provided all work and lead to informative health articles, with the exception of one linking to a forum post. Some of the articles of cases in humans were around 20 years old, but using a quick internet search, the same articles were cited repeatedly on other websites. Hairballs in humans seem to be a rare occurrence.

Summary

Altogether, I think this article is fairly minimal and much could be added by someone with a veterinarian background. All but one of the facts concerning animal hairballs are missing citations and there is not enough information on animal hairballs, but the links provided for the human kind were up to date and informative.