Quill - December 2008 - (Page 19) Usability This article is pretty pointless. It gives someone a brief idea of what we are, but not enough to write about it. I wouldn’t want someone using this to write a paper about our organization. It doesn’t offer anything worth knowing. Maybe we’ll beef it up after this issue goes out. structure of the biography section is still Conclusion The article is disjointed, placing undisorganized, with confusing subsections necessary emphasis on odd trivia while and inexplicable condensations. getting more important facts wrong. The writing is also shoddy, and the clear bias Usability This is an awkward guide to Nick Carter. that is apparent inspires distrust as to the The very basic details (date of birth, ap- accuracy of the entire article. All in all, a pearance) are accurate, but as a guideline disappointing overview. to his career, it is overall rather misleading. Conclusion — Sabrina Sharif , Backstreet Boy folFurthermore, someone looking for a brief While there are no real untruths in this synopsis would have a difficult time weed- lower of 10 years t article, it doesn’t accurately represent the ing through the irrelevant details. organization. Fortunately, Wiki is a userrun site and we can go in and help it better represent our organization. — Amy Guyer, Quill Managing Editor Nick Carter Nick Carter is a member of the Backstreet Boys, a music group that spearheaded the teen pop craze of the late ‘90s/early 2000s. With sales of over 75 million worldwide and a devoted fanbase, the group received a great deal of media coverage and had an audience to pore through it all in the years before Wikipedia was established. Accuracy of content The content is oddly thorough in some regards and sparse in others. Pointless trivia is mentioned early in the article (a split-second appearance as an extra in “Edward Scissorhands”, for instance), while the most iconic period of his life, his time in the Backstreet Boys from 1998-2001, is glossed over in two paragraphs. There is a remarkable lack of citations in the first half of the article and some notable misinformation — an inflated number of records sold worldwide, and incorrect details about the Backstreet Boys’ formation. As the article moves on to incidents that occurred after Wikipedia was established, the accuracy and citations measurably improve, although they’re still poor relative to other Wikipedia articles. The article is also distinctly biased. It takes care to mention women Carter’s been linked with (many of which are mere rumors), but fails to cover his known arrests. Authorship The writing is equally scattered, running from oddly conversational (“Look for him, he’s the kid on the slip and slide.”) to formal (“It is said that in several auditions, Nick met AJ McLean and Howie Dorough ”). The tenses throughout the article are inconsistent, and sentence structure is often awkward. While following a mostly chronological order, the general DECEMBER 2008 Quill 19 http://www.nationalheadlinerawards.com http://www.nationalheadlinerawards.com
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