Wikipedia Article Analysis

After reading a copious number of articles that were all both interesting and obscure, I settled on the article “Operation Passage to Freedom”:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Passage_to_Freedom

It is a featured content article in the category of history and the access time was: October 3, 2009 8:46am.

1. Account for the postings (number of revisions, time range from first to last, notation of periods of activity). – The article itself is not very old, and the edits have been relatively steady with a few exceptions. One is the edit warring that is discussed later and the other comes on August 26th 2009, after the article was featured on the front page of Wikipedia as the Featured Article of the Day. The total number of edits is 236 over the more than two years of existence. This relatively small number of posts is likely due to the fact that the article is not either controversial or about a well known topic.
2. Describe progress or development in the article from the original post to the most recent update. – The original article was posted June 30, 2007. It appears to be a reference that helps to support the earlier addition of an article about a US Navy ship that was involved in this action. The article started as one sentence posted by Wikited, a self-proclaimed former Navy officer. His only entries on the article were the original post and another correction 5 minutes later. The progress of the article to its current state is dominated by a user named YellowMonkey. He has made a total of 130 edits, while the person with the next most has 12.
3. Critique the quality of the article in its current state. – The readability of the article is generally very good. The information is presented with a good progression historically. The main issue is that some of the sections on the event are too lengthy for an article of this caliber.
4. Describe the discussion around the article. – There are a total of 5 discussion topics on this post. Three were minor issues with only one post or concerned vandalism, but the other two are of interest. They concern an apparent editing war between YellowMonkey and Cripipper. Cripipper felt that the numbers used for the total number of people evacuated was misleading based on a source he had read while YellowMonkey considered that source to be, “out of the mainstream”. The edits were apparently so intense that a 1 week edit protection was placed on the article by a site administrator. The issue was discussed a little more and it appears that YellowMonkey came out the victor. This battle took place September-October 2008.
5. Background information on the most active contributors. – This is perhaps the most interesting of the analysis categories because it sometimes allows you to see some things about the contributor that might indicate their interest in the topic of the article. As I mentioned earlier, the primary editor, and the editor who has guided the article to Featured Content Status is YellowMonkey. He is apparently an editor with wide historical interests and has vast experience with making articles appropriate to be listed as Features Content. He appears to have connections to England or Australia because of his interest in Cricket as well. The amount of time that he spends on Wikipedia would suggest that he might have some sort of paid position that has him using the website often. There are only two editors with double-digit edits besides YM, and they are both apparently amateur historian types with backgrounds that lead them to be interested in naval matters.