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Assignment One

List of Wikipedia articles

DVD

• "DVD." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 29 Sep. 2014. Web. 30 Sep. 2014.

Mobile phone

• "Mobile phone." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 9 Sep. 2014. Web. 30 Sep. 2014.

Peking man

• "Peking Man." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 30 Sep. 2014. Web. 30 Sep. 2014.

List of Britannica articles

"DVD." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 29 Sep. 2014. <http://www.britannica.com.rap.ocls.ca/EBchecked/topic/163346/DVD>.

"mobile telephone." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 29 Sep. 2014. <http://www.britannica.com.rap.ocls.ca/EBchecked/topic/1482373/mobile-telephone>.

"Peking man." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 29 Sep. 2014. <http://www.britannica.com.rap.ocls.ca/EBchecked/topic/448989/Peking-man>.

Writing Part

Research process To begin with, I initially searched my brain trying to come up with something I’m interested in. Since I have been buying Blu-ray disks recently, I decided to find articles talking about movies or videodiscs as a technology. To make the research more diverse, I forced myself to think more broadly. Since there would be three topics, in addition to the first article, I decided to choose one topic that was commonly known and familiar, and another topic about something uncommon and strange. Also, Britannica was the other encyclopedia source I used because I thought it was more popular and it came to my mind first.

Choices of article The first article I chose from Wikipedia was DVD. I wanted to choose Blu-ray at first because I was interested in the technology; unfortunately there was no independent article about it in Britannica, so I went for DVD instead. The second one was mobile phone, which was also known as cell phone. Cell phones have become so popular since the last decades that all most everyone in the world has one. I was curious to know how it all began and some more information that I might not know. At last, for the third article, I chose Peking man. I remember this mostly because it was mentioned in a Chinese history class when I was at high school. I believe Peking man is kind of import but I never cared about learning why. This time, I would take the chance to know a little more about it.

Differences At first glance, Wikipedia’s articles are longer and relatively contain more information. Take the DVD article for example, it uses charts and graphics to compare different types of DVDs, it also has information about DVD players, and even DVD video and audio were explained separately. Reading the Britannica article, I felt it was more serious and did not want to expand too much; the terms were explained and general ideas were provided, and that is good enough. In addition, maybe because I’m used to Wikipedia, the page layout seems to be more user-friendly. When reading a big article like the mobile phone one, Wikipedia’s article was clearer with different sections and easier to navigate, whereas Britannica’s article looked like one big essay and required the reader to spend more time reading. At last, for topics that are not so popular, Peking man in my case, Wikipedia again has more detailed information comparing to Britannica. Moreover, Wikipedia allow the user to change languages. So I also read the Chinese version. It was interesting that the Chinese version was a little different from the English version since different people wrote them. Anyhow, for people who can read languages other than English, it is great to have two different versions to compare and getting a more complete picture.

Assignment Two

Summary

Wikipedia: "DVD" stands for "Digital Versatile Disc". In the year of 1993, Multimedia Compact Disc (MMCD) and Super Density (SD) Disc was developed. To prevent a costly videotape format war from happening, the Technical Working Group (TWG), formed by computer industry experts, helped to make everyone agree to adopt only one format. That format was similar to an SD disc with dual-layer option from MMCD, and now it is called DVD. The adaptation phase was relatively smooth because DVDs have many benefits to movie and home entertainment distributors; and DVDs have large capacity, high speed, and low cost. There are different standards of DVD specifications; some of the specifications worth mentioning are DVD recordable, rewritable, and dual-layer. In addition, DVD capacity varies depending on its diameter and number of layers. As for DVD drives and players, they all use light from laser diodes, and there are various drive speed which is usually called "1x". Moving to the content part, DVD-Video is a standard format on DVD media. It is secured by the Content Scramble System (CSS). Whereas DVD-Audio is a format for high fidelity audio content on a DVD that offers different channel options and sampling frequencies. DVD is still popular as of 2014. This is due to Blu-ray technology is yet immature and costly. In the end, a DVD product has an estimated life expectant of 30-45 years.

Britannica: DVD is a type of optical disc mostly used for playing back recorded videos and audios. It is the second generation of Compact Disc (CD). It combined elements from Multimedia CD (MMCD) and Super Density (SD) disc from two groups who each developed one of the two types of disc. A DVD drive uses a laser to read data from the disc; differently from a CD drive, it allows greater storage density. What is more, there are single-layer and double-layer DVDs, both have several times more capacity comparing to CDs. Regarding the future, the next generation concentrates more on high-definition. Initially there ware DH DVDs and Blu-ray discs; consumers had their doubt which one to purchase until HD DVD development was dropped and Blu-ray became the winner. However, it is too early to say how long Blu-ray discs can hold on as the "streaming" service has grown into a strong competitor in the market.

Comparison

There are some similarities between the two articles. They both began with general descriptions of what DVD is. Then both articles explained how DVD became the only format when there were two types of discs at the beginning. In addition, DVD drive was also a common topic that further explained why DVDs could have larger capacity comparing to CDs. At last, both articles referenced to the next generation discs and the challenge from the Internet. Overall, the two articles are similar because both of them provide enough general information about DVD; and either of the articles can be a start point for further research. However, there are also many differences between them.

The Wikipedia article contains more details than the Britannica one. For example, when talking about how MMCD and SD finally became merged into one common format, Wikipedia article mentioned about other types of disc, LaserDisc and Optical recording technology, that were not supported by major corporations in the market; in addition, it also explained how the Technical Working Group was formed and successfully helped to reach one common format in the end. Neither of the information was included in Britannica. Same for the next generation part where Britannica used the last two paragraphs (there are only five paragraphs in total) explaining HD DVDs and the future. The two paragraphs were hardly related to DVD. Whereas the Wikipedia article still kept DVD as the main topic by stating that DVD still dominated the market and consumers slowly adopt Blu-ray.

What is more, Wikipedia covered contents that were not included by Britannica. Take the adoption of DVDs for instance; it is interesting to see how the market reacted to DVD's introduction and to compare with how consumers reacted to Blu-rays. The adoption part is necessary because it is part of the history of DVD. Another example will be DVD-Video and DVD-Audio, which are formats for video and audio contents on a DVD. They are included in Wikipedia, when Britannica focused on the physical aspects of DVD. Furthermore, Wikipedia contains information on DVD's longevity with research results and charts. This kind of information can be easily forgotten or ignored; yet it is actually useful to some readers and is also part of the physical description. Additionally, DVD recordable and rewritable has their own section in the Wikipedia article and a fair amount of writing was done to explain the two options.

Last but not least, Wikipedia used many charts and pictures to demonstrate different capacities, longevities, drive speeds. In contrast, Britannica has only two pictures made to show the differences between CDs and DVDs. Again, Wikipedia covers more contents and is more informative comparing to Britannica.

References and Contributors

There are 44 items in the reference list of the Wikipedia article. The references varies from website links to other organizations, journal articles, magazines and reports from authorities. The wide variety of sources is a good thing because it helps to make a more comprehensive article; however, sometimes, it also lowers the credibility of the article. For example, for references 9 and 35, the links have already gone or been changed and they will only show "Page not found". Many of the references will link to some online retailers. Like reference 21, it is an article from FAQ page of Tape Resources, who sells computer storage related products. Similar to reference 10, It is a personal blog of someone from New Mexico Highlands University, and the blog has been inactive since 2008. All of these simply do not look very promising and official. The worst is reference 31, which does not even have any citation. Even though there are so many unreliable references, some of the references are official and can be accounted for. Reference 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 are all from the official website of International Organization for Standardization. Reference 42 is a final report on optical disc longevity prepared by the Library of Congress and National Institute of Standards and Technology. In addition, all the references are relevant to the topic and the years are from 1996 to 2014.

As for further reading, there is one online article and two books written by experts in the field. The online article is called Understanding Recordable and Rewritable DVD written by Hugh Bennett. The author is the president of Forget Me Not Information System Inc. and Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) reviewed the article. And the link to the article is actually from OSTA's website where readers can also find lots of detailed information on DVDs and other formats of optical storage. The first book is called "DVD Authoring and Production" written by Ralph LaBarge in 2001. And the second book is titled "DVD Demystified" written by Jim Taylor. According to Amazon.com, both of the books have are many positive editorial reviews. Interestingly, Jim Taylor wrote one of the reviews for the first book by saying "this book takes up where DVD Demystified leaves off, explaining the vital details of designing, producing, and selling a DVD."

The Wikipedia article was created in 2001, and an uncountable number of contributors have made thousands of edits. Using the external tool of Revision history statistics, it is clear to see that majority of the edits were made from the year of 2005 until 2014, although the number of edits has been decrease since 2006. According to the statistics, 19.9% of the contents were added by someone without a name, and other people each contributed less than 2%.

On the other hand, the Britannica article does not have a lot of references and a huge amount of edits. It only has eight references and was only edited twice after it was created. Starting with the edits, the article was created in February 2009 by William L. Hosch who was an editor of EB and specialized in biographical information. One month later, Shiveta Singh, a content analyst of EB added new information "How Stuff Works - Electronics - How DVDs Work". And in 2012, the article was thoroughly revised by Robert Curley, who is a senior editor of science and technology at EB and expertise in the history of technology. Unfortunately, the changes were unavailable due to possible technical issues. Regarding the references, all of them direct to other Britannica articles related to the topic. All of the reference articles have been edited until 2013 except one of them was last edited in 2012.

Assessment

Overall, both articles provide helpful information about the topic. The Wikipedia one covers more contents but the structure is rather chaotic. The longevity part was put as the last section; section 4 solely talked about DVD recordable and rewritable with 4.1 explaining Dual-layer recording. None of which was associated with the context and was very awkward while reading them. On the other hand, the Britannica one is more concise and easier to read. However it lacks some of the contents that can be informative, such as the adoption and longevity of DVDs. Even though, both articles are still good articles because they both do what encyclopaedias should do: to provide summarized information.

On top of the Wikipedia article, there is a note saying the article needs additional citations for verification. It was the etymology section where the first sentence contains uncertainty and may come from unreliable sources. The note may also refer to reference 31, which is a chart showing data rate and write time associated with different DVD drive speeds. As mentioned earlier, this reference does not have any citation with it. Based on the context, the chart might came from reference 30, which is the OSTA Q&A section for recording speed. There is a similar chart listing transfer rates in different units for different DVD read and write speed. I think it would be good to replace the old chart with the one that is similar to it and use the same citation as reference 30.

Surprisingly, the "talk" page in Wikipedia was very interesting. Someone asked for more information on dates or timelines in the adoption section. People were discussing why etymology was noted, "citation needed". There was a discussion on whether DVD lifetime is as long as stated in the article. And there was even some long arguing on missing data capacity on dual-layer DVDs.

Comparing to Britannica, Wikipedia has a huge number of people editing its contents. The contributors might be coming from anywhere. In contrast, it was Britannica employees who edited its articles, and the editing was usually made with less frequency. Therefore, public involvement is much higher with Wikipedia than with Britannica.

I read the Wikipedia article first; it has more information than I expected. However, as mention above, the article was poorly structured; I felt vague and uncertain about what information I understood. After reading the Britannica article, the information I learned became steady and the whole picture became clear. Maybe it is better to always refer to more than one encyclopedia sources. Through comparison, people can find what they really need.

Additional Resources

Date, H., Milster, Tom D, and Sincerbox, Glenn T. “Optical Recording.” AccessScience. McGraw-Hill Education, 2014. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Deane, James K. "Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About DVD (Book)." Library Journal 129.2 (2004): 53-54. Business Source Complete. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

De Lancie, Philip. "HD On DVD. (Cover Story)." Emedia Magazine 15.6 (2002): 24. MasterFILE Elite. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Fisher, William, and Jacqueline Harlow. "Film And Media Studies And The Law Of The DVD." Cinema Journal 45.3 (2006): 118-124. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Iraci, Joe. "The Cold Storage Of CD, DVD, And VHS Tape Media." Restaurator 32.2 (2011): 81-109. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Iraci, Joe. "The Stability Of DVD Optical Disc Formats." Restaurator 32.1 (2011): 39-59. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Labriola, Don. "Battle Of The New Dvds." PC Magazine 25.17 (2006): 77-84. Canadian Reference Centre. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Parker, Dana J. "DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, And The Writable DVD Dts." Emedia 13.1 (2000): 72. Business Source Complete. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Roberts, Johnnie L. "One Man's Flight Of Fancy." Newsweek 144.1 (2004): 50-53. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Spiegel, Rob. "Flexible, Eco-Friendly DVD." Design News 1 Nov. 2009: 22. Academic OneFile. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.