Monday, March 22, 2010

Midterm Wikipedia Project

For my midterm project, I decided to select three Wikipedia articles that I felt needed editing. I would change them, cite the source from which I got my information and track the page to see if any changes were made. The first page that I decided to edit is in regards to Human Growth Hormone treatment for athletic enhancement. In this article there is only a small section regarding the use of HGH in relation to quicker recovery from injury. This seemed to contradict my belief of the effects of HGH and I checked this in a document called the Mitchell Report, a report released in 2007 regarding steroid use in Major League Baseball. Sure enough, the report stated that players believed HGH helped them recover from injuries. Its interesting to wonder why this was not in the Wikipedia article. The Mitchell Report was very high profile report when it was issued and I would think someone would note this in the article. The obvious conclusion could be that MLB, trying to put this incident behind them, was trying to make sure there was as little mention of it on the site as possible. Whether this is on their own or together with Wikipedia is anyone's guess.
Before: The biggest benefit an athlete gets from using HGH is its anabolic effects on the connective tissue within muscles.[4] These effects “may promote resistance to injury or faster repair [but] would make the muscle no more capable of force generation”.[4] HGH can make an athlete better equipped to avoid or recover from a sports injury.
After
The second article I examined was on Title IX, the law passed to try and ensure equality in athletics for men and women. The article lacked any real statistics regarding the increase in participation in women's sports. Through some research, I was able to find a study that noted increases in participation in women's sports. I added these statistics and cited the source that I found. It is interesting to wonder if any Anti-Title IX groups were putting pressure on Wikipedia to keep this out of the article because the statistics I found seemed significant, yet they were not in the article.
Before It is difficult to characterize the impact of Title IX on athletics in an unbiased way.
Advocates cite increases in female athletic participation.[24][25][26] Critics note that such increases might have occurred in the absence of legislation.A 2008 study of intercollegiate athletics showed that women's collegiate sports has grown to 9,101 teams, or 8.65 per school. The five most frequently offered college sports for women are, in order: (1) Basketball, 98.8% of schools have a team, (2) Volleyball, 95.7%, (3) Soccer, 92.0%, (4) Cross Country, 90.8%, and (5) Softball, 89.2%.[28]
After
The third article that I viewed was on the Olympics and I examined the section regarding the effects of television on the Olympics. The section talked about how television revenue from the Olympics increased. It did not mention how these increases in revenue had begun and I was able to find some sourced information about how the revenues had started their increase. In this situation, I think that the lack of information is simply due to a lack of research.
Before: Viewership increased exponentially from the 1960s until the end of the century. Worldwide audience estimates for the 1968 Mexico City Games was 600 million, whereas at the Los Angeles Games of 1984, the audience numbers had increased to 900 million; that number swelled to 3.5 billion by the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.[76]
After

1 comment:

  1. right now you are standing at an B+ or A-.. remember this can change either way,
    good work,
    Best, Tj

    ReplyDelete