Website Validity Comparison Essay
Comparison between
Citizendium.org and Uncyclopedia.com
While
citizendium.org passes all nine of the validity tests, uncyclopedia.com is
invalid because it fails nearly all of the validity tests. Uncyclopedia is basically
the exact opposite of a valid website, but this isn’t by accident. I believe
that Uncyclopedia is a spoof of Wikipedia, and specifically designed to be an
over the top exaggeration and mockery of Wikipedia’s faults.
So in
comparing my two websites I will go in order of the validity test. The purpose
of Citizendium is purely educational/informative. Citizendium was created by
one of the founders of Wikipedia in hopes of improving on Wikipedia’s model by
employing an editorial staff. Whereas Uncyclopedia’s purpose is to imitate
educational/informational websites (specifically Wikipedia) with a fictional
and comedic aspect.
The domain
for Citizendium is “.org” which means it is an organization and is more
trustworthy than “.com” for the most part. The domain for Uncyclopedia is
“.com” which is commercial and can be used for just about anything.
The Authors
for Citizendium must register with their real name, but many different authors
may edit a single article. What makes this site credible is that there is an
editorial staff that will make sure that each article is factual and has enough
references. If an article has insufficient or inadequate data there will be a
disclaimer posted on the article stating that the article is under development
and is not meant to be cited. They also allow people to edit these posts until
it is approval worthy.
Uncyclopedia,
on the other hand, can be edited by anybody and the names on the account aren’t
verified so anybody can post ridiculous information anonymously. There is no
verification of whether information is viable or not. In fact, on the home page
they state “We hope you will pick a user name, stick around, and let us show
you how to write funny fake encyclopedia articles!” but at first glance this
site can be mistaken for an actual web encyclopedia and any and all information
obtained from this site will most likely be a joke or the information will be
so inaccurate that it could be considered a joke. There are no references for
information provided because all of the articles are comedic imitations of
actual articles.
With
Citizendium, there is potential for biased articles because the public can edit
and upload articles, but the editorial team will not remove the disclaimer on
the article until all biased views or statements have been edited out of it. If
any biased material has slipped through the cracks it would most likely be too inconspicuous
to impact the usefulness of the information.
Uncyclopedia
is completely susceptible to being biased and even encourages this type of
material. The biased material can be considered explicit and entire articles
may be based on a bias idea. The authors can be anybody or everybody with no
filtering of what point of views are used.
Citizendium’s
approved content is very accurate and well written. The items I searched for
comparison were relevant with any irrelevant information contained in
hyperlinks or text boxes that are out of the way of the article.
Uncyclopedia
is completely off topic, and poorly written. If you were to research anything
on this site the subject will have changed three times before the end of the
article and pretty much all of the information in the article will be
irrelevant. As an example, I searched World War II and it turned up and parody
article depicting World War II as like a Star Wars movie and the subject was on
Godzilla by the end of the article. While it was amusing and kept me laughing,
I could not find one piece of truth to the articles.
As far as
currency goes, both sites were updated recently and often. The information in
Citizendium is up to date as far as approved content goes. The articles in
Uncyclopedia isn’t really current in everything but the current items that
individuals find funny enough to write an article about are still posted quite
often.
Citizendium
is open to public editing but in order for it to be approved, the authors must
post references for all of the important information. They way that the site is
set up, authors don’t get much of a chance to talk about their purpose because
there are so many authors. There is also no way that I am aware of to contact
the authors, but the editorial staff responsible for approving the content can
be contacted.
Uncyclopedia
is also open to the public for editing. Much like other wiki sites the authors
can’t reveal anything about themselves. The authors don’t give any credit but
to themselves for writing their jokes. There is also no reference list because
most of the content is original from the many authors. I searched for several minutes
trying to find contact information for this site and there is none, There is
however a way to send them a message or attachment via the website.
Citizendium
has content that varies in clarity and organization depending on who edited the
article but overall has fairly clean and organized set-up. I had no trouble at
all understanding items I have looked up and when proofreading I found little
to no mistakes. Uncyclopedia is fairly hard to understand since most of it is
nonsense. As far as organization and graphics, it is identical to most other
wiki sites and looks pretty clean. The legibility, spelling, and grammar vary
greatly because instead of educated individuals writing informational articles,
Uncyclopedia has armature comedians and anyone who feels funny at the moment
writing their articles.
Accessibility
was not an issue for either site. Uncyclopedia is modelled after Wikipedia and
accessible in the same ways except that there is no text only version. I am
also having a hard time finding a text only version on Citizendium as well.
Both sites do load very quickly and are easy to navigate.
