User:Razzjazz70

Hello! Thank you for visiting my user page. My name is Cami and I am a high school student who attends Everett Community College through the running start program. I am passionate about music. I have been playing the flute for about six years. I enjoy playing music as well as listening to music. Whenever I listen to music, I appreciate something unique and I love a clever lyric. Besides all things music, I find myself baking, writing, and I am also interested in photography and psychology/neuroscience. I hope to pursue a career along these lines.

I can see myself adding to natural disaster pages on Wikipedia. Natural disasters have interested me from a young age. I may add to an underdeveloped geography page/local transport page as well. I would love to edit an article about a musician or a renowned figure I care about, too. Articles of specific events seem good to fact check or to add missing information. I hope to add additional beneficial facts to Wikipedia. Any of these pages would be a pleasure to progress.

Article evaluation

Over the past few years, I have been watching the television series American Idol. Some years I emerge myself into it more than others. I indeed did watch this past season, and am familiar with the finalists. I searched the internet to see the information available of a few of the season two finalists. I visited the Laine Hardy page on Wikipedia, and found three aspects of it worth commenting on: its lack of content, its biased citations, and its failure to cite all facts with a reliable source.

Content

I find that Laine’s page has a sufficient amount of information regarding his American Idol journey and a little bit about his music career, but I presume that a section regarding his local musical influences, and his passion for the outdoors of Louisiana would be a good improvement. Laine’s genre has been called “swamp pop,” which originates from south Louisiana. More information about the swamp pop bands he'd hear at the bars he'd play at or his local music lessons could help further embellish the information the page already has on his music career. As I researched a bit more on Laine, I came across a series on his youtube account talking about his life and journey on the show. This series does a pretty good job at keeping neutral and I think it brings up some points that would be good for this Wikipedia page. For example, he said he got a four wheeler at age four, and later in the series, he mentions how he would practice singing by driving it into the woods to seclude himself. Mentioning aspects of his life like these show his character outside of the show and how it is so intermingled with his music career. This article should mention more of his home state and the things he'd do there since it is so embedded into his personality.

Biased citations

Laine’s Wikipedia page does indeed have a fair amount of citations, but as I followed a few of them, I discovered a few which are biased. Three of the listed sources are from a website called “Taste of Country,” which lends itself to country artists and is thus a bit biased. Source 13 is also by “Taste of Country.” Initially, you may think this article is neutral because the title is simply “Laine Hardy Wins ‘American Idol,’” which is a fact and not an opinion. It is not blatantly biased, but subtly biased, often from certain language. The article definitely mentions his win, but for a bulk of it, it talks about the finale show and then goes on to mention other country artists. It is biased and thus not reliable because it clearly favors country, not to mention how it doesn't stick to its topic.

Cited facts with reliable sources

This Wikipedia page does site nearly every fact, which is great. The only fact that needs to be cited is the sentence about his parents’ occupations. That would improve this article too, making sure all facts are cited. However, I followed a citation and it made me concerned. I followed the fact that he was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and it leads to source one, where the article is primarily about his feelings of winning American Idol. I found the fact about Baton Rouge once in the article, and there is no citation for the fact in that article. Furthermore, it wasn't really a point in the article, but more of a fact jumbled into a sentence. It was used as a descriptor of Laine Hardy instead of being a well-developed section in the article. Another problem I found about reliability was in the “Early Life” section of the page. It talks about how he learned the guitar at a young age and had a band with his brothers and cousins that would play at several gigs. However, the source for this lengthy fact only backs up the part that he has a band with his relatives. It does not give any information about his early pursuit of the guitar, or the multiple bars and restaurant gigs. The article mentions one gig, not multiple. Thus, this sentence is not supported as it should be. There should be a better source to cite these facts, that most likely are true, but hard to trust as of right now.

Summary

I think this Wikipedia page is okay, but could definitely be made better. To outsiders, this page looks fairly solid but it seems less sufficient when you look into it. Especially as the winner of the season, this page needs more information. I think his hometown, Livingston, is a good place to start, because it lends itself to his music career very nicely. After that, citations are the main concern. The page would overall be more reliable and trustworthy if the citations were as unbiased as possible and truly supported the fact it claims to.