Website Validity Essay

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.