Assignment: Choose a Wikipedia article related to your historical research topic to review.
As already established, my research topic for this class is looking at the founders of Washington, D.C., and their impact. So, the Wikipedia article I chose to read and review was, you guessed it, Washington, D.C. (link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C.).
As far as content goes, this Wikipedia page is surprisingly accurate and extremely thorough. The sections of the article include a wide range of topics including D.C.’s history, infrastructure, culture, and even a section for the local sports teams. Because these topics aren’t exactly directly related to each other it’s hard to make out if there’s a system of organization- but for the most part it seems to be in somewhat chronological order. Another possibility is that the sections are organized to build up context for the current events and cultural aspects of the city, which is why the History, Geography, and Demographic sections would be listed before Culture, Education, and Media. Overall, I’m very surprised by the amount of information present in the article. Going into this article, I thought all of the information would be about the history of D.C. and summaries of the history behind some of the more important monuments rather than several aspects that go into the functioning of the city.
But of course, when reading Wikipedia it’s not the information that’s important- it’s the sources. As of the writing of this post (Feb 2, 2024), there are 374 individual sources listed in the references section of the Washington, D.C. Wikipedia article. Needless to say, that’s a lot of sources. Well, maybe not in the grand scheme of historical writing- I’m not exactly sure I do STEM, not History. Anyways, 374 feels like a lot for a Wikipedia article, and it’s definitely more than I was expecting to see, so that’s a win in Eva’s book. After a quick skim through some of these sources, I noticed almost every single source is considerably recent from a historical standpoint and that a lot of them are for data and statistics (which as a STEM major, I know is good). Something else interesting I noticed was that a lot of the sources of different types have been archived. I’m not really sure what this implies about the sources or their credibility (once again, not a History major), but the citation still provide access to them with a link so maybe it had something to do with the source publishers? Anyways, the overall impression I get from the reference page is that the contributors to this article put a lot of work into finding accurate information from current and well-known sources. For instance, there’s a few newspaper articles from large companies, like a 2008 Washington Post by Paul Schwartzman and Robert Pierre article titled “From Ruins to Rebirth,” which seems to be about the rebuilding of D.C. after the riots. Though this article has been archived (by who and for what reason I have no idea), it still seems to me like a pretty credible source. Newspapers are great for getting accurate information about a specific period in time while it was still happening (or very soon after), and when it comes to the specific topic at hand, the newly rebuilt streets after a riot, the periodical information from this Newspaper could be considered a primary source!
Lastly, the final part of the assignment is to discuss the Talk page of the Wikipedia article. Surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of discussions being had about the article, which to me seems crazy considering the amount of information provided. One of the few conversations had between contributors was, also surprisingly, about the sports section. Actually, it’s not that surprising when you read what the discussion was. Someone, on June 10 2023, brought up the fact that the sports section was incredibly under sourced and way too long. Based on what the people in the discussion said, there was one paragraph for every D.C. sports team (7 total), and the implication is that these weren’t quick reads either. There were seven meaty paragraphs for the sports section. Throughout the discussion there was some back and forth about what format the sports section should be in and whether or not to keep the paragraph per sports team. If you take a look at the sports section of the article now, the 7 paragraphs of sports mumbo obviously isn’t there anymore, which is probably for the best, but either way it’s clear the contributors came up with a solution for making the sports section more easily digestible for the readers since they inputed a table of information in addition to four, shorter paragraphs about sports teams in D.C..
Anyways, that’s the last of my review. Once again here’s the link to the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C.#
OK bye 😀
