Lecture 6: Exploring Wikipedia

Article 1: Snowboarding

1. Is this an accurate article?

The article about snowboarding goes really deep, and has a lot of the history behind it.

Now I usually say snowboarding was founded by some crazy surfers from California which took their boards up in the mountains and rode on snow. This article confirms this and also talks about the big inventors in the snowboard industry. It also covers all the events, styles, movies, competitions and a lot of other stuff. It mentions some of the most famous riders through history and today. The external link section and the referencing section contain a lot of sites which is filled with information about this sport. All this makes the article quite accurate and I think it is very reliable information.

2. Does it cover all the basic facts that you'd need to understand this topic?

Like I said in the first question, yes it does. There even is stuff in this article about safety and precautions, and what magazines and films there are out there.

3. Does this article follow the Wikipedia guidelines for useful articles?

The Wikipedia guidelines are about being neutral, stick to the subject, displaying facts and back up the article with external links or references. The article about snowboarding contains all of these guidelines but maybe lack a little bit on the neutral front.

4. Is this article fair and balanced, or is it biased towards a particular side or argument?

The article is written in a very factual way. It takes into consideration the negative facts about snowboarding with injuries and how to be prepared for that, but you can also see that this article is written by someone who loves snowboarding because it might seem like an advertisement at certain points. But I think that is all good, because it is a great sport and it is fun.

5. What changes would you make to this article to improve it and make it useful for the wider wikipedia community?

Nothing actually. I think this article is well written and don’t need any changes. You get a basic understanding of what snowboarding is about and the major things in it.

Article 2: Angels and Airwaves (AVA)

1. Is this an accurate article?

Angels and Airwaves is a relatively new band formed by former Blink 182 lead-singer, Tom Delonge. This article tells their history in a good way, referring to several interviews, articles and Angels and Airwaves own homepage. It is accurate enough but still there are a lot of things in the article which isn’t referred at all, which makes it all a little untrustworthy if you read it for the first time and have no clue from before hand.

2. Does it cover all the basic facts that you'd need to understand this topic?

Well it is music. The history of the band is described very vaguely, but the main thing that might be missing is the question ‘why’. Why did Tom Delonge start this band? Now it says a lot about the albums and prior to those, but still everything is much generalized and it is hard to find any relation to it.

3. Does this article follow the Wikipedia guidelines for useful articles?

This article follows the guidelines to some extent. It misses out on the factual side a little bit because of the bad referencing at some points. I think this article is more about letting people explore AVA’s homepage and finding out by themselves. To summarize, it is neutral, verifying to some extent and factual to a certain point.

4. Is this article fair and balanced, or is it biased towards a particular side or argument?

There isn’t much of an argument or sides in this article. It is just plain facts about their CD’s, a little about Ryan Sinn who left the band (which might be the only negative sided thing about the article). It is more of a chronological story of events than anything else.

5. What changes would you make to this article to improve it and make it useful for the wider wikipedia community?

Add some more whys and what’s in it. Why the band got started, what their plan is, what kind of music it is and why they play this way. I think adding that would get people more aware of who they (AVA) are and what they do and mean by what they do.

Walter Benjamin writes in a way I can't understand!!

How do the ideas from Walter Benjamin's "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" apply to contemporary digital media?

- Now this is a tough one which I can't really get my head around properly, but I’m going to try anyway. Let’s talk about music. If you saw an artist preform live, and this was your favourite song of all times, would it be different to hear them live, than on a CD? It probably would because of the setting, lights, atmosphere and the joy you have because you managed to get tickets. You could say that the song loses its aura when it’s printed on a CD, but still you would enjoy the song, and you can hear it as many times as you want to.

So, if I understand Walter Benjamin correctly, I would say that the ideas apply for digital media as well, because “mechanical reproduction” brings art to a new level and it still do. It makes the audience come closer to the art, and they can draw out what they think or feel about the piece of art, wether it be a musical piece or a painting. I think Benjamin wants to tell us that mechanical reproduction makes art and media more liberal and are we not interested in having a free press and a free flow of art? Art is what the eye sees and the heart and mind feels and think, and no reproduction would ever take that away from what art means for the individual.

There was a time when "Art" was made by artists who were skilled professionals. Now that anyone with a computer can create things digitally (music, images, videos, etc), what does that mean for "art"?

- It means art is more common and liberal. Everyone can express their feelings and thoughts on a piece of paper, on an image or on a video. People can make art that means something for one self and don’t think about what everyone else thinks about it, because it will probably not go out to the big audience. If it does, you might be lucky and earn money on it. But I think you can’t call yourself an artist though. Maybe more of an “expressor” of ones own feelings.

But isn’t that what art is all about? To express feelings and create something for someone else to enjoy? Hell yeah it is!!

Is a photoshopped image "authentic"?

- If we go by what Benjamin writes a photoshop picture wouldn’t be authentic. But if you edit something, makes something new out of something else, wouldn’t that be authentic or original?

I think so at least.

Do digital "things" have an "aura" (in Benjamin's terms)?

- According to Benjamin, recreated things have lost its aura because the aura is in the original piece of art. But it sounds a bit old fashion and radical to think that way, because you will always get something out of the work of art, and you will always feel this ‘aura’ if you like the piece of art. I think it does have an aura; you just have to know what to look for and be connected with the piece to actually feel it.

Answers to tute 4 questions

How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?
I think most of the search engines rank the stuff in their databases recording to how many hits each page has. For instance, if I searched for "computer" in google, then the page which relates to this word, and has the most hits from other searches, will be the top one. It might also be ranked after which page has the most credibillity. Like, the page with the most reliable sources or something like that.

Who, or what, makes one page (that you might get in your search results) more useful than another one, so that it is put at the top of your search results?
Im not sure if I got this question right, but I think it depends on how many words you typed in the search box, which relates to the thing you are looking for. So it would be the one searching for information.

what are some of your favourite search engines? why do you like one more than others?
You got to love google. I don't know much about others, because I havent really checked them out that much. And most of the other big search engines are often "powered" by google aswell.