NC+State+Fair

__North Carolina State Fair Wikipedia Article__ 1. The NC State Fair article was first created in 2004 and has had 61 revisions in all by 41 different usernames. The first revision was November 2004 and the latest revision was September 2010. The majority of the revisions occurred during the Fall- the time period when the fair is in town. The rest were mostly in the Spring, ranging from March to early June. There were few conducted in the Winter or Summer months. 2. The original article for the NC State Fair contained zero pictures and only had two short paragraphs. It did, however, contain several external links, like to Raleigh or to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture. Facts were continually added over the next few years, making the article increasingly longer. Surprisingly, in March 2006 a hacker literally took over the website and erased the whole article, claiming to “have taken over [the] site until [they] giver her account back”. The article was gone for two weeks and eventually restored to its original format before it was hacked. The most notable progression of the article was the addition of pictures. The website was created in 2004 and the first picture was not added until 2007. Before 2007, the major revisions were basic grammar and spelling mistakes, ex. Farris Wheel to Ferris Wheel. After 2007, the article experienced much more progressive growth. New sub categories were added, and a more detailed description of the rides, food, and attractions available at the fair were also added. More external links were added in latest revisions over the last two years- specifically to links to food vendors, like the Moores Candy company. The last addition was to a photo gallery of food vendors at the 2008 NC state fair. 3. I do not think the quality of this article is very high. It is not scholarly written, nor is it thorough. I think I could have written a more in depth article just from attending the fair. There are only two pictures on the actual website and they are both from the fair last year. The main focus of the article is about the rides available for patrons but the fair contains many more attractions and entertainment than simply the rides. There is no schedule posted, nor is there a list of activities available. One thing I did like about the article, however, was the writers included information on the time periods when the fair was not running. Certain key points in history, like the Civil War and Reconstruction, prevented the fair from coming to Raleigh. External links were provided for the different historical events. Although it was too much of the focus, the article did do a good job detailing the rides at the fair. It described two of the more popular rides: their paths, length, and the level of intensity. I would have liked to seen more rides described, as well as more of the other events, like the food and animals at the fair. This is a good example of when not to use Wikipedia. There is a lot of valuable information on the internet about the NC State Fair but this article is not one of them. If students were researching the fair, using the official fair website would be much more beneficial and factual than this article. Some of the other fair websites for other states had up to date information and provided current pictures, but ours was not one of them. This is one of those times where I would advise to stay away from using Wikipedia for valuable information. 4. Because this article is not a mainstream article, there was no discussion surrounding it. I did, however, look up the article simply on state fairs in general. This article simply had a chart of the various state fairs and what city they were held in. The discussion around the article was people from the states listed providing information on fairs that had moved cities or were no longer running. 5. The contributor that had a significant 18 posts out of 61, was from an anonymous digit-username. The next contributors that provided revisions for the page only had 2 and 3 revisions. Most of the top contributors were Wikipedia administrators. There were a few of the anonymous usernames and a few “bots” also provided revisions. The revisions that the administrators contributed were basic mechanic revisions for grammar and spelling. The other revisions pertained mostly to the photos provided, either with adding them or altering the captions.