Editing Wikipedia Stubs - Canadienne Cattle

These past couple weeks in my ALES class we have been exploring the world of copyright, referencing and the reliabilty of resources. To provide a hands-on experience, we were required to edit a Wikipedia stub; an article with little or limited information. I chose to edit the one on Canadienne cattle, because there was very little written on it and I'm a cattle girl, so I enjoy learning more about breeds, especially the only one developed in Canada! You can click here to see the article and learn more about Canada's dairy breed. My classmate, Rosie, also edited a WIkipedia article on a cattle breed. In her blog she discusses the difficulty of finding reliable sources on Gelbvieh cattle and her journey of learning how to edit a Wikipedia article. Both breeds have interesting stories with their history and their existence in Canada. Canadienne cattle were first brought over in the 1600's when the French were colonizing modern-day Quebec. They developed into a hardy breed to survive the harsh Canadian environment and to produce milk efficiently. Today they are an endangered breed that breed associations are actively working at increasing their popularity and population.

Original Canadienne cattle stub
(Andria Carlyon, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadienne_cattle>
retrieved March 22 2012)

This picture is of the original article, and as you can see there is only a short paragraph about the breed and two references. It does have a good picture of a Canadienne heifer that gives the viewer a good representation of the breed's appearance.

New, updated Canadienne cattle stub
(Andria Carlyon, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadienne_cattle>
retrieved March 23 2012)

For my article, I added more headings to sort the information and provided some more references to give the information more reliability, one was a peer-reviewed article about the genetic differences between Canadienne cattle and other dairy breeds. If someone reading my article was not very knowledgeable about Canadienne cattle, it would quite easy to have errors go unnoticed and used by readers. I could have changed the dates about when the breed got heritage status, or stated that they did not exist on any ranches outside of Quebec and because the errors would have been minimal, they could be looked over. This could happen with any other articles and stubs on Wikipedia, either intentionally or not.
Therefore, I do not think that Wikipedia should ever be used as a resource when writing papers or articles. It can be used to gain a quick, basic understanding of the subject, but the information should not be used in the writing. The same information should be found on from other sources that are reputable if the Wikipedia article had the correct, error-free material.

Researching West Nile Virus

Well here's my blog that I spent my free time writing, during reading week and our week off from classes. As I had other homework to do, I thought I would do the efficient thing and combine it with my blog! I'm writing a paper on West Nile Virus, which may not sound overly interesting, but it depends on what perspective you look at it with. Here's a bit of information in case you are curious. It is from the genus Flavivvirus. This virus is transferred between hosts by mosquitos, which feed on a wide variety of animals; including humans. Birds serve as the amplifier hosts but horses and humans can also be infected.

Blue Jay photo
curtesy of Briana Carlyon

Jays, magpies and crows serve as sign of the virus's locality because the severe illness causes high mortality. Other animals are dead-end-hosts for the virus, meaning that you cannot get the virus from a person with West Nile Virus. The virus causes fevers, rashes and neurological damage in humans; the majority of people that get the virus are elderly.

Crow Photo curtesy of Briana Carlyon

Inititally it was difficult to find any reliable sources for information (ie. peer-reviewed articles and/or ones from trusted journals) but as I kept searching, trying sites like PubMed and PLoS it became easier to find the information I needed. One really informative article about the pathology of the virus was really helpful because it enabled me to gain a basic understanding and then continue on with further, in-depth research. The UAlberta Library site was the first place I searched because it has been reliable in supplying me with relevant, peer-reviewed articles. This time, no such luck. In order to search more effectively, I will have to search different key words and other trusted sites. Researching and finding dependable articles for writing papers takes a lot of time, but as you gain experience in searching it becomes easier and more efficient.


In Cassandra's blog, she discusses the debate about how technology could be ruining or helping the English language. The shorthand language of texting and chatting online (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) can be harmful or be helpful. This is a prime example of technology is evolving at a super fast rate. Before when researching for papers, you would have to actually check out the hardcopy of the journal from your library. Now, you can do all your research online from your own room, no need to go trekking to the library to do all your research. All or most journals publish their articles online so they can be more accessible to a wide range of audiences. Yay for technology!

References:

Madden, K. (2003). West Nile Virus Infection and its Neurological Manifestation. Clinical Medicine and Research, 1(2), 145-150. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1069038/ Accessed: February 29, 2012