User:Kninss/OLES2129

This week's activity

Tutorial 6 Activity:

Featured article chosen: Isis

Source: Bremmer, Jan N. (2014). Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-029955-7.

Scholarship

Jan N. Bremmer is an academic and historian focusing on ancient religions, with a Ph.D in ancient Greek religion. Despite ancient Egyptian pagan cultures not being his specialty, it is still within his broader range of expertise. His extensive list of works have been published by notable universities, such as Princeton University, thus his research skill can be trusted.

The source was published by Walter de Gruyter, an academic publishing house. The source was published in Berlin, Germany.

The information within the source is independently verifiable, with a extensive bibliography attached at the end of the book.

Context

The source was published in 2014, but any modern academic source is extremely far removed from the ancient world it is writing about. The culture of the ancient world is not an ongoing, breaking news event, and thus proximity between time of publishing and time of the source material actually occuring is less pertinent, and can afford new interpretations with modern clarity.

The information is compiled to propose ideas and educate an academic audience with a vested interest in the topic.

Content

Does the source omit important details and over-represent others?

The source examines the "mysteries" of ancient Greek, Egyptian and Christian religion, with an appendix that examines the Jewish influence as well, thus the source stays on topic of its thesis without confining itself to one aspect. It has a heavy Greek focus, bringing in other religions in conjunction with a Greek religious basis, but this is a product of the author's academic interest and speciality. The book does not claim to cover every religion in depth.

Whilst not an opinion piece, academic articles (even those that refer to primary evidence to support their work) inherently express the opinion of the author, as the thesis is fundamentally more than just fact.

The style and structure of the source conforms to the expectations and is appropriate of an academic book.

Previous activities

Tutorial 5 Activity:

Sources added to the Hatyai University wikipedia page for activity 1.

Previous Activities

Activity 1 - Quality and Importance Ratings in WikiProjects

The random article I chose to examine was for Ben Wicks. It is currently a Start-Class article, waiting review for B-Class, and is of Low-importance.

The article could be bettered by adding an image of the cartoonist and also showing examples of his work, rather than just the citations. There are no subheadings in the article, despite it being moderately long. Some examples could be "Early Life", "Early Career", successive stages of his career, "Humanitarian Work" and "Death". The details of his life are listed, but could be better organised and fleshed out more. There is also a very extensive block quote in the article that lacks context, is inaccessible for a reader and lacks a citation other than "John Fisher, 2010" written at the end.

All in all, the article could be better structured and composed, and will need to be heavily edited before it can be an A-Class.

Activity 2 - Citation Needed

I decided to use the same article for activity two, as I noticed the block quote did not have an apparent citation. Here is the link to the talk page.