Wikipedia

So this week we are looking at wikipedia and seeing if its knowledge matches up to our own expertise. For some reason I'm inclined to say yes, but i will see anyway. The task asked us to pick two things, could be anything, that we know a lot about and read the wiki article on it.

So for my first thing i decided to pick my favourite tennis player Tommy Haas, from Germany. I know that there would be room for plenty of bias or criticism when it comes to sport players so I thought it was a fair place to start.

The things that we were asked to look for where

* Is this an accurate article?
* Does it cover all the basic facts that you'd need to understand this topic?
* Does this article follow the wikipedia guidelines for useful articles?
* Is this article fair and balanced, or is it biased towards a particular side or argument?

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

Reading through the article I found it very accurate, at least to my knowledge anyway. It covered all the basics facts and then some. It didn't just say his had to take time off but it explained why. It follows all the guidelines, there is certainly nothing but respect for Tommy and his fans in the article. There aren't any put downs of his ability or praises without numbers to back it up.

So for Tommy Haas wikipedia gets a thumbs up. Now for the next one.

The next one i did on Water Fluoridation. This one is certainly different. It's history section only includes the medical uses of fluoride and not any of the other reasons fluoride was put in water (see Nazi Germany). Therefor with the lack of history it does NOT give all the basic facts needed to understand the opposition to water fluoridation. It does feature a small chapter on opposition which is good to see, but it really deserves the same amount of text as the pro water fluoridation section. Not it does down the bottom link to a page full of opposition to it, but I would have liked to see it in the original water fluoridation page.

The article is about 80% one sided, but wikipedia does well not to definitively say one way or the other. The only way this page would be better is by expanding the history section and by merging the opposition page with the current page.

Guess the google

Number 1, click on the picture

Authenticity

I guess there has always been questions of the digital side of art and was it means for tradition hand made art. Theres no doubt that seeing The Last Supper in its original painted form has more of an aura around it then some scanned version on Google Images. But thats what reproduction has done to everything its touched. Things that can't be reproduced are valuable, simply because there's only one of them or one way of making them that is not well known. Those things have value and an 'aura'. But with modern technology anyone can create and reproduce things with the push of a few buttons.

It's happened with art, when now most people would have more artistic flair with a computer mouse rather than a paint brush. It's happened with music, when now anyone can paste a couple of samples together on their home computer and make a fine example of techno.

But this doesn't really ruin the art of these things. It really just makes a new genre of the art. The only way that a photoshop image would be authentic is in the Art of Digital Media. Because thats what it is. No-one is comparing digital art to traditional art. In fact the more something is ripped off with a lesser quality the more valuable the original becomes.

So I think that digital technology is hurting art or overwriting traditional art, its just creating a new genre.

Now to see or get an aura out of digital art I think you couldn't achieve it without knowing something about digital art or even being a digital artist yourself. You would personally need to know how hard it was to create the piece or art before you could really appreciate it. Similar to music really. It's hard to really appreciate some music once you know how easy it can be reproduced.

Now the only thing reproduction technology really hurts is currency. Case and point, America and there paper money. But enough about that.......