User:Mmcginley96/sandbox

Evaluating Articles and Sources

Essays (Montaigne)

Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?

• Most of the information gathered within the article is relevant to the article topic, granted, some of it rather tangentially. There are several tidbits of knowledge that exist on their own without any transition or overall cogent structure and sometimes without citation. For example, there is a mention of Montaigne's disapproval for the colonization of the Americas without citation or anything else related to the presence of this idea in his essays. However, I think that even the tangential information could be incorporated into the finished article without distracting the reader if properly written.

Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?

• The article itself is neutral. It does not appear to assert any value judgements on Montaigne or his philosophy. Luckily, this article topic is not predisposed to controversy. Appropriately representing viewpoints in proportion to their importance within Montaigne's essays itself seems to be more of the challenge of this article.

Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?

• I think the biggest problem with this article is its utter lack of content. Most of the viewpoints in Montaigne's essays are underrepresented, if represented at all. That being said, some minor information is represented, while larger themes and ideas are completely absent. Thus, some information is overrepresented relative to more appropriate information that is missing from the article, but this same information possesses potential for the finished article, so it may end up being an appropriate level of representation.

Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?

• Link #2 works and supports the article's claim that Montaigne often quotes classical authors like Lucretius.
• Link #1

Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?

• No, many facts are unsupported, and the facts that are supported by an appropriate citation lack substance and are seemingly insignificant.

Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?

• The information appears to be up to date. Scholarship surrounding Montaigne's essays has most likely remained pretty static due to their age, but there is definitely a lot missing about the Essays' content and influence.

Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?

• There is a singular conversation about whether or not there should be an article for each of Montaigne's essays. It then transitions to

How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?

• It is rated start-class on the quality scale, and mid-importance on the importance scale. It is part of WikiProject Philosophy.

How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

• In class, we often project our own value judgements onto the material, and we discuss how the topic, or more aptly, author, meshes with our current ontological system. Wikipedia is different in the sense that it is "objective" in the sense that the bulk of its content requires justification from a secondary source, another scholar or author who has already tackled the topic in question. I have objective in quotation marks because Wikipedia is still vulnerable to bias in the way it chooses to represent or not represent content, and the language it uses to introduce certain content. Generally, Wikipedia is supposed to avoid language that assigns positive and negative values to things and ideas, but this is not always the case due to an inability to oversee all of edits that occur within the system.