User:RM395/Course/Encyclopedia comparisons/Eems.p

For my analysis, I chose the Wikipedia article, Dog Training to compare with the entry titled “Training” in The Purina Encyclopedia of Dog Care. My mother is a dog trainer and I grew up assisting classes and reading all the dog behavior handouts and books floating around my parents’ house. I noticed several differences and similarities with these two articles, specifically in terms of the following elements:

Focus and bias

The focus of the Purina encyclopedia is entirely on positive and negative reinforcement. These types of reinforcement are classified under operant conditioning, which is not specified in the Purina article. Operant conditioning also contains positive and negative punishment, which is also omitted from Purina’s article. The Wikipedia article not only covers all the elements of operant conditioning, but also classical conditioning, non-associative learning and social learning. Purina’s article focuses entirely on positive training methods, saying physical punishment should absolutely be avoided. Although this is the most commonly accepted method in modern training, it puts a definite bias on the article. The Wikipedia article discusses all forms of training. Any method that is deemed unethical is stated in terms of research and studies, as opposed to being conveyed as an opinion.

Accuracy and thoroughness

Above, I mentioned that Purina focuses mainly on positive and negative reinforcement. What I saved to mention here is that its definition for negative reinforcement is incorrect, which I found incredibly surprising. Purina’s article defines negative reinforcement as “anything the dog considers unpleasant” such as “the word no! spoken in a commanding tone” or “water squirted from a distance.” These examples are classified as positive punishment, not negative reinforcement, which Wikipedia defines correctly as “negative reinforcement occurs when a behavior is weakened by not producing a reinforcing consequence.”

The Wikipedia article was also incorrect with its four categories of "How dogs learn." Classical and operant conditioning are the main two, while non-associative and social learning should be classified under these two categories, not two separate ones on their own.

Content and organization

The content of the two articles is vastly different. The Wikipedia article is much more thorough and diverse in its information than the Purina piece. Wikipedia includes a summary and sections titled: definition, history, how dogs learn, training methods, factors, individualized and/or class training, specialized training, and tools. The Purina article simply has the heading “Training.” The history of dog training is not at all talked about in the Purina encyclopedia. It jumps straight into the advised methods.

The Purina article also appeared, in my opinion, to have a little digression from the topic. I was a little more lenient with digression in the Wikipedia article because of the large amount of content featured. I assumed that anything that was not directly related was simply a little extra detail to provide a more thorough understanding of the subject. However, because the Purina article was so short, I noticed any digression immediately and found it to be completely out of place. For example, the Purina article jumps from discussion the use of the dog’s name concerning punishment and reinforcement to addressing appropriate identification. It detailed specific collars and reasons behind their uses. This description seemed unusually specific in comparison to the part regarding recall, which simply glossed over a vague method to training one’s dog how to “come.” This section in the Purina article failed to mention that repetition of the word “come” when the dog is not approaching simply teaches the dog to ignore the word. This is a key detail in training a dog to come when called.

I struggled a lot with the organization of the Wikipedia article. The Purina article was easy to read through, as it was almost a narrative, but the Wikipedia article was a little confusing in how the information is broken down. There is a section titled "training methods," but some of these methods overlap in their theories and some are simply a slight variation or style of method. For example, the Koehler method and dominance-based training are essentially the same thing, the Koehler method is simply a type of dominance-based training.

Overall judgment

Out of the two encyclopedia articles, I’d without a doubt pick the Wikipedia one. In terms of writing and clarity, the Purina article was much easier to read, while the Wikipedia article overcomplicated a lot of its different methods and was confusing in its organization. However, the quality of writing and layout does not change the fact that the Purina encyclopedia is slightly outdated, brief and even incorrect in some of its information. In terms of “dog training” as an informational article, I definitely found Wikipedia to have a wider, more science-based account of the topic. --Eems.p (talk) 05:56, 18 February 2013 (UTC)