Submissions/Jensen on "Quality comparison of history articles in English, German, French and Spanish Wikipedias"

After careful consideration, the Programme Committee has decided not to accept the below submission at this time. Thank you to the author(s) for participating in the Wikimania 2015 programme submission, we hope to still see you at Wikimania this July.

Submission no.
2030
Title of the submission
"Quality comparison of history articles in English, German, French and Spanish Wikipedias"
Type of submission
presentation
Author of the submission
Richard Jensen rjensen
E-mail address
Rjensen@uic.edu
Username
Rjensen
Country of origin
US
Affiliation
Montana State University, Billings
Personal homepage or blog
None
Abstract

I have been engaged in the long-term project in evaluating the quality of Wikipedia's military history articles. I made six presentations in Canada, the US, and at Wikimedia 2012 on how the English language Wikipedia handles military history topics, with a special emphasis on the war of 1812. See My article at http://www.americanhistoryprojects.com/downloads/JMH1812.PDF I will now broaden my approach to include both political and military themes, and in this presentation I want to compare English Wikipedia with the French, German and Spanish Wikipedias. My focus will be on Napoleon (comparing English and French), Bismarck (comparing English and German) and the Mexican-American war (Intervención estadounidense en México) I will do my own translations.

My criteria will be:
1. How comprehensive are the articles? Are they well balanced in terms of the development of events?; do they properly emphasize the most important elements or do they get bogged down in relatively minor or even trivial matters?
2. Are the articles well-written and avoid ambiguity? Do they link to other useful Wikipedia articles? What political or cultural or nationalistic biases/POV do they demonstrate?
3. What is the range of reliable secondary sources, the quality of those sources, and how effective have the editors been in using that information to improve the article.
4. What is the internal editing history of each article?; when was it mostly written?; how many changes have been made?; is there an effort to keep up with the recently published reliable sources?; who are the main contributors?; what sort of debates have there been among the editors?. Were there any edit wars?-- What caused them and how were they resolved?
5. What is the pattern of popular usage of the articles; is there a long-term trend in one direction or cyclical pattern or what? Has there been much vandalism?
6. Are the articles linked and actually used in other articles in that encyclopedia? Do they link to Wikipedia articles in other languages?

Track
WikiCulture & Community
Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)
30 minutes
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
Probably
Slides or further information (optional)
Special requests
Need projector for PowerPoint slides



Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with a hash and four tildes. (# ~~~~).

  1. Slowking4 (talk) 02:02, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Llywrch (talk) 03:03, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Лорд Бъмбъри (talk) 14:07, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Add your username here.
Retrieved from "https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Submissions/Jensen_on_%22Quality_comparison_of_history_articles_in_English,_German,_French_and_Spanish_Wikipedias%22&oldid=34572"