Evaluating Wikipedia

The first article i chose is on the topic of the Newcastle Knights Rugby League Club. The article itself was easily accessible. The article appears to be accurate as it explains the clubs history, provides competition details,and current information on players and coaches, whilst also using links and footnotes from the Official page of the Newcastle Knights and the official page of the National Rugby League.
In order to understand the Newcastle Knights Rugby League club, an knowledge of the history, squad, coaches, premierships won, and most importantly the impact of Andrew Johns are required. The wikipedia article on the Knights includes all of these things, however it only focuses on the basic information. This thus empowers the people reading the article with the main focuses of the Newcastle Knights and the overall general understanding allows for basic knowledge of the club.
The article appears to follow the Wikipedia guidelines for useful articles, as it most importantly rejects objectivity, and does not include any personal opinions. It also has successfully enforced the use of the guidelines regarding to content, article inclusion, classification, editing, discussion, behaviour, and style. Overall the article displays an etiquette behaviour which allows for the article to meet the Wikipedia guidelines for useful articles.
The article is fair and balanced as it breaks the club down to the four era's; 1988-1996, 1997-2003, 2004-2006, and finally 2007 post Andrew Johns. By doing this it allows for the article to be viewed throughout the important era's of the club and portray an accurate look at the history of the club. However as anyone who is involved with the Newcastle club would know the major player in the club is Andrew Johns. He has impacted upon the Newcastle side like no other player has down to any other team. This I think then allows for a major part of the article to be bias to the importance of Andrew Johns and has successfully done that. The article overall displays a fair and accurate portrayal of the Newcastle Knights.
The changes I would make to tthe article on the Newcastle Knights would be to include a few paragraphs to the importance of the fans to the club, as the club has a strong fan base in the Hunter/Newcastle region and the value that the club prides on having the most loyal supporters in the League. Also i would include another paragraph on the homeground; Energy Australia Stadium, and the history of it, as once again it is a vital part of the Newcastle Rugby League Club.

The second article i have chosen is on the T.V show Scrubs. With the term scrubs having many definitions, this article took a little more time to find, however it in relation to the T.V show the article itself is accurate. It appears accurate as it focuses on the history of the program, the characters, producers, and episodes of the show, whilst also refering to a range of production techniques.
The basic facts needed to understand the program Scrubs include the characters in the program and the idea that the program revolves around the central character's eye's. The article includes the synopsis of the program, along with the many reasons as to why the program is produced the way it is. Through this insight a much broader understanding of the show is given, thus the article covers all basic facts needed to understand Scrubs plus including a more in depth look at the program.
The article follows the Wikipedia guidelines for useful articles, as it has followed the correct measures in reference to content, article inclusion, classification, editing, discussion, behaviour, and styles. By eliminating objectivity the article has successfuly followed Wikipedia's guideline's and has provided a truthful look at the T.V show scrubs in this article.
The article focuses on the synopsis, cast, episodes, awards, music, production details, and includes links and footnotes, thus allowing for it to be fair and balanced. However by including quotes by the creator, Bill Lawrence it is clear that the discourse presented throughout the article is that of Lawrence's which allows for the article, and ideas of the show to be witnessed as Lawrence's ideas. By including links to episodes and plot overview's the article allows for full insight into the show and allows for judgement to be made, thus reinforcing a fair and balanced article.
In order to improve this article to the Wikipedia community the inclusion of more quotes and opinions of the cast and crew, the article would have a more involved feeling thus giving a more appealing, informing, entertaining feel making it a better article.

This weeks reading was a chapter out of Terry Flew's Whats new about media. It looks a little at the history of media, and then goes onto look at the new technologies in particular the Internet and how new media is adapted. "The idea of ‘new media’ captures both the development of unique forms of digital media, and the remaking of more traditional media forms to adopt and
adapt to the new media technologies." (Flew 2005, pp.3-4)