Ron+Olson-+Wikipedia+Activity

1. Since its creation back in August 2002, the Carolina Hurricanes wiki page has undergone over 1,000 revisions, with the last occurring October 2010. The majority of the revisions happened in June of 2006, when Carolina won its first and only Stanley Cup. Before that time, only small changes had been made to the article, and mainly they focused on touching the page up with information about the sports franchise. After the ‘Canes won the cup though, predictably the page’s discussion and activity picked up, and the article went from being an insignificant page on an NHL team to a loaded resource for information and opinions about the Carolina franchise.

2.The original post, which created the actual article itself, only included one major paragraph about the team and its then-current lineup of star players. No pictures were included, and the team’s jerseys were not shown. Before long, a few pictures were put up of the team’s logo and more information was included about the franchises origination. The slow progression of the page included highlighting the team’s past as the Hartford Whalers, the NHL records that the franchise holds, and its status as a Southern market hockey team. That last part particularly was created after the team won its championship, with its Southern location making it a symbol for hockey success in the Southeastern United States. Today, the article has everything from explaining the team’s history to highlighting its current 2010-2011 season results. The franchises all-time captains are mentioned as well, along with the broadcasters, hall-of-fame players, record holders, and first-round draft picks. The most recent update was a warning on using citations in the article.

3. Overall, the quality of the article’s writing is very good factually, as I could not find one item that I thought was wrong or even slightly misstated. Seeing that the page is on a sports team that is relatively new (‘Canes originated in 1997), and that sports in general are very statistic-based (i.e. either a team wins, loses, or ties -nothing else) I am not surprised that the article is factually correct and current in the information that it contains. In terms of writing quality, again I think the page is well done, especially for a sports article. Because of its content area, there isn’t a lot of room for the write-up to be fancy or complex in depth and vocabulary. Instead, its aim is to be factual and detailed statistically, providing information about a sports franchise in the NHL. With that said though, the page contributors have done a nice job of limiting short and simple sentences, and keeping the article easy to read with paragraphs that flow from one to another. There are a few grammar issues, such as run-on sentences and poor comma use. It’s interesting to note that the page itself has a B-class rating from Wikipedia editors, which means that readers have no trouble reading the article, but the piece itself needs some supporting details and a few grammatical revisions.

4. As far as the discussion goes, there have been 20 "topics" by various members, and they vary from talking about the team's flag (logo), to discussing which players have played for the franchise, and finally whether the team is located in a "redneck" area or not. That last topic is by far the biggest and most engaging discussion point for people who have edited the article, as fans of the 'Canes have contended that "redneck" hockey is a part of the team's identity, while outside members have argued against this as there doesn't seem to be any conclusive references in reputable media sources. Wikipedia as a whole has pretty strict referencing guidelines, so anything that can't be tied back to some source usually gets marked for deletion or at least is brought up in the discussion area to be talked about. Beyond the redneck discussion, the only other lengthy talk centers on the trivia section of the article, and what exactly should be included in it besides what's included in the main sections as well. The argument here for some people is that certain items belong in the main article sections, and not in the minute trivia section. Others however, argue that these items belong in trivia, if on the page at all. The entire discussion as a whole is relatively simple and not confrontational, except for the redneck topic, which did include some name calling.

5. The three most active contributors are RGTraynor, ccwaters, and VThawkeye. RGTraynor is a big wikipedia hockey editor, and he has several awards for his contributions. As for who he is, RGTraynor lives in the Boston area and does paralegal work. He seems to care a lot about English grammar and usage, and he states that it's important to keep "old-guard" grammar alive. Another article contributor, ccwaters, also has an award for hockey contribution, but they do not have any personal information about themselves on their page. They do have an AHL link though, and that tells me they are big hockey fans (AHL is American Hockey League, the minor league to the NHL). Finally, VThawkeye is a 2002 graduate of Virginia Tech, and again he/she is a big hockey fan, and of the best contributors to wiki hockey pages. Specifically though, VThawkeye states that they really care about the Carolina Hurricanes, and that they undertook the trivia section as a personal project. Beyond this, they also like to twitter and work on history wikis. VThawkeye was particularly an early contributor on the Carolina Hurricanes wiki page.