anna's "the digital past" blog

My topic of the Marine Corps parade in Washington DC did not come up in the search box when I entered it onto Wikipedia. I did, however, learn that there is a town called Marine Parade in Singapore… I’m not exactly sure if that wiki was a credible source, though.

So, I decided to enter Marine Barracks in Washington DC instead. Precisely “Marine Barracks, Washington DC was exactly what I searched for. By searching this, I came up with a lot more valuable information related to my topic. (I guess entering the right search criteria really does make a difference!)

The information given on the page really does seem credible. Since I have a previous knowledge of the area and background, everything did add up well and correctly. After checking the history of the page, I found one change very interesting. There was a dialog taken out in July that was “said” between a commandant and an official in the British forces. I suppose it was taken out because no one would know exactly what was said during a conversation that happened over 200 years ago. It was a good call to be taken out.. but it does add some interest to the article.

Sadly, there was nothing in the “talk” section for my article. I suppose it might just not be something people really want to talk or comment on.

Finally, I looked at the notes, references, and external links at the bottoms of the page. All of the external links were to government official websites such as the Marine Corps official website. Those are definitely credible. The references, again, were similar to those. The notes also added information to clarify specific sections of the article. Another aspect that I found interesting was that in the “see also” section, a link came up for “reportedly haunted locations in Washington DC.” I never knew that the marine barracks is reportedly haunted!! Now I am kind of scared to ever go back…

All in all, I do believe that this webpage is very credible. The people who edited the information really did do it justice.