Ella+Fitzgerald+Discussion+Section

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Ella Fitzgerald Wikipedia Section

__ ELLA FITZGERALD __
1. Account for the postings (number of revisions, time range from first to last, notation of periods of activity)

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The Ella Fitzgerald site was first edited on April 25th, 2002 by an anonymous contributor. There have been nearly 2000 contributors to this page, and thousands of revisions made. The most active years for revision were between 2005-2009. In February 2007, there were more than 45 edits completed. The editing on this site are steady with at least one edit every month, or every other month. Several of the contributors on this site are anonymous individuals. However, the most active contributor was the user name, Gareth E. Kegg. This individual began editing in June 2005, and completed his/her last edit in March 2010. The last revision on this page took place on Friday, October 22nd.======

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2. Describe progress or development in the article from the original post to the most recent update ======

In 2002, the first contribution had letters scattered around the page. Fortunately, the user name Ortolan88 replaced the letters with information regarding Ella Fitzgerald. During the first two years the site was created, minimal contribution was made to the page. Between 2004 and 2005, an image of Ella Fitzgerald was added to the page, as well as her album listings. The user name Gareth E. Kegg contributed the most in November 2005. This individual made additions to the history, and notable awards that Ella Fitzgerald received in her life. In 2006, several sections were added including: Film & Television appearances, and Collaborations with other Jazz Artists. Also, in 2006 a major revision was made regarding Ella Fitzgerald's year of birth. Additionally, this page experienced extreme issues with vandalism between the years of 2007-2009. In 2007, an anonymous user replaced the entire page with a derogatory sentence. During the same year, there were two instances of the site being "blanked" by vandals. Furthermore, in 2008 several new images of Ella Fitzgerald were changed. One particular image was of President Reagan shaking hands with Ella Fitzgerald during an award ceremony. Finally, the site today is well formatted with major sections including Ella Fitzgeralds life, career, discography, filmography, and awards.

3. Critique the quality of the article in its current state (writing quality and factual information)

Overall, the writing quality of this article is coherent; however, there are a few punctuation errors. Additionally, I visited the websites in the reference section. The sources include a music website, several books, and articles in the New York Times. I find most of the sources reliable in this article. The music website is the only source I am unsure if it is reliable. There are a considerable amount of ads on the website. The references are mostly secondary resources; they are written after the death of Ella Fitzgerald. In addition, I know minimal information about Fitzgerald's personal background. I had to critique the quality of the factual information regarding the early years of Ella Fitzgerald on this site from the sources used in the article. However, I know a fair amount of information regarding Ella Fitzgerald's singing career. Therefore, I find this site accurate in the details of Ella Fitzgerald's career. As a final note, I like the organization of the writing. The site first addresses the background information of Ella Fitzgerald, and then moves to her career as singer.

4. Describe the discussion around the article

As I scrolled through the discussion area of the article, the main issues addressed were discrepancies in the factual information. The birth year of Ella Fitzgerald developed a debate between three users. In addition, some of the discussion topics were quite ridiculous. One user wanted to question Ella Fitzgerald's racial descent. Fortunately, the most active contributor to the page clarified that it truly did not matter if Ella Fitzgerald was African American or not. Following this further, an anonymous user critiqued the tone of the writing for the article. The user explained that the introduction of Ella Fitzgerald was "too dark" in tone.

5. Provide background information on the most active contributors.

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Gareth E. Kegg was by far the most active contributor to the Ella Fitzgerald site. Gareth's user page states, "I like forgotten things." Also, Gareth has contributed to articles on albums, songs, people, and objets d' art as listed on his user page. Gareth apparently created sites for several of Ella Fitzgerald's albums. Also, user Ttonyb1 contributed 36 times to the Ella Fitzgerald site. The user's page shows various discussions on other musicians and singers. He/she revised articles for several famous individuals on wikipedia.======