I chose to read and critique the Wikipedia article titled “Narváez expedition.” At first glance, I noticed a warning at the top of the page that stated that more citations are needed to verify the article’s text. This initially made me skeptical about the article’s credibility, but as I continued reading, I noticed that overall the article is factual and corresponds to what I have been reading in A Land So Strange. To elaborate on this, all the information presented in the article is relevant to the topic of Narváez’s expedition. It discusses each main element of the excursion chronologically with significant detail, no apparent bias, and little deviation from the subject at hand. The author(s) majorly discuss the part of the expedition that takes place up until Narváez’s death, but do not include much about the part of the expedition that contains great historical significance, as the talk page suggests. Up to this point in the class, we have read up to Narváez’s death and a large section of the book remains, implying that a lot of the later information of the excursion (that was initiated by Narváez) has been omitted from the article. Something worthy of noting is how quickly the article jumps from 80 survivors to only four survivors. I noticed that the later parts of the expedition have subheadings (“South Texas” and “Southwestern North America”) and some information included, but these sections simply need more elaboration and information to complete the story. If these are excluded from the expedition, a major part of history is being overlooked. Further, I checked the links and citations of this article. All of them function properly and do not seem to be outdated, contributing to good reliability and validity. Relevant information is obtained from each of these links. However, the article does not contain enough citations, as the warning suggests. I noticed this because many of the paragraphs that include factual information that must have been obtained from outside sources do not end with an in-text citation. All in all, I believe this to be an adequate article containing detailed events of Narváez expedition, with two faults being the minimal information about the later parts of the expedition that occur after Narváez’s death and a lack in the number of citations.
“Narváez Expedition” Critique
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