Awesome essay about sources and stuff.
Alright so, today I’m writing an essay on the credibility of sources. I know what you’re thinking: “Oh, this is going to be soooo exciting. I’ve already read like over 9000 essays like this, I may as well just quit reading now”. Well, you know what?! This is damn important. And you know why? Well, picture this; you’re sitting at home one day, minding your own business, just writing an essay for a college class when suddenly, bam. You accidentally use a non-credible source. “Oh, that’s not that big of a deal.” Is what you’re saying right now, isn’t it? Well, don’t come crying to me when you fail you paper because the source isn’t valid.
The first source we’re going to look at comes straight from fsmitha.com. Sounds like a totally legit website, doesn’t it? Well, let’s find out. After reading the well written article, and looking the pretty pictures off to the side, this article seems pretty believable and whatnot. The article itself is over Genghis Khan, by the way. That seems like an important thing to mention. The source seems pretty credible. It’s got a lot of outside references and references to exact dates and such, so it probably did its homework pretty well. It’s very comprehensive. Like I said, it covers a lot of material and has a lot of exact dates and stuff, so yeah. Where does the author get his information from? Well, here’s where we run into a Godzilla-sized speed bump of doom. Nowhere in the article does it explain where the author gets his information. You would think that would be like, top priority or something, but apparently it is not. The author himself is unknown to me, and, besides his website, Google doesn’t know him either. I’m sure he’s a pretty cool guy, but he seems a little shady too. The source seems to be from 2004, but considering this is an article on Genghis Khan, I don’t think the date it was written is going to matter. Unless Genghis Khan walked out of his grave and conquered a few countries for his own amusement in the last 4 years, all the information is probably accurate.
What is this!? Time for a new source!? That’s right, and this time the source is about… The Battle of Thermopylae! Remember that movie “300”? Yeah, this is the battle from the movie. Remember when Leonidas yelled “This is Spartaaaaa!”? Pretty cool stuff. Anyway, the source goes pretty in details with the battle and whatnot, but it’s like on a blog or something, doesn’t seem very legit first glance. Like, there’s not any sort of sources citied or anything. Don’t get me wrong, there are like over 9000 pictures on the page, and that totally helps support the claims in the article. Oh wait; it doesn’t work like that does it? Crap. Well, I guess the guy who wrote this article needs to realize that. Speaking of the author, there isn’t an actual author listed. I assume it’s the guy on the website URL, but who knows. This article could have been written by some 12 year old while he was playing Pokemon, who knows. Also, there is no date for this article. Basically, if you’re stranded on a desert island and this is the only source you can use for a paper, it would be just as beneficial to completely make up the essay, rather than actually use this… Wait, did that analogy make any sense? Oh well… Yeah, final word, bad source.
Awwww Yeah, time for another source! This one is on the Battle of Gettysburg. The Confederate soldiers were all like “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” and the Union was all like “Never!” a classic in important battle in American history. At first, this article seems all disorganized and random, sort of like this paper, but once you get past the strange-looking exterior, you really see that it knows what it’s talking about (Like my paper). First of all, I noticed that one of the sources for this paper is the Library of Congress. Yeah, I know, right? That’s awesome. Clearly this source is more legit than the two previous ones. But how legit is it? Well, it has a day-by-day account of what happened during the battle, maps of unit locations and the terrain, even a campaign map. Pretty cool stuff, if you ask me. The fact that the author cites the Library of Congress as a source pretty much seals the deal on the legitimacy of this article. It doesn’t have an actual author, but it was probably worked on by multiple people. I was say this is a pretty accurate article.
For my next source, I present you with… Abraham Lincoln! Abraham Lincoln was probably my favorite president, because he was always like “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down!” to America. This source is special and unique, because it’s a timeline, not an article. I wanted to switch it up a little bit. Alright well, I’m not exactly sure this article CAN’T be legit. I mean, it’s a timeline, so it’s all exact dates. It would be pretty hard to fake something like that. Besides the fact that it has no author, no cited sources, and was written in 1996, it still seems pretty legit. I’m pretty sure I would use this as a source.
For my final source, I will be talking about the German Blitzkrieg. When German used lightning fast tactics to catch the enemies out of place and caused them to lose the game. The article itself is obviously not very legit. I mean, the information seems solid enough, but no author is specified, nor is any source cited. Clearly this would not be the best source to use. The article is fairly comprehensive, but again, without any sources and whatnot, it’s could all easily be a fabrication made up by any random Joe on the street looking to make a quick buck.
So there you have it; a collection of completely random sources, and my critiquing of them. I hope you enjoyed reading this incredible informative and amazingly comprehensive essay. Dreadful sources such as these make me a sad panda, and ruin perfectly good papers. Hopefully this has been as informative as it was fun… Well, it was fun for me anyway.
