Talk:Thomas Van Conett
Dominic Ralph - Thomas, you did a great job comparing the effectiveness of each search engine / method in analyzing yourself. What you could do better is to read the data assignment details because you mention a few things that came up wrong but do not go into detail about the extent of which your online data profile matches your real identity (which is a big part of this assignment). Besides for that, all I noticed was issues with sentence flow and formatting. Here are some awkward sentences that might need some revision: 1."The photo in question is not actually of me, in fact I’m not sure who the man pictured is." You could try 'The photo in question is not actually me; in fact, I'm not sure who the man pictured is.' 2."Looking back at the amount of time that has passed since I first set foot into the digital wilderness, with the chance to aggregate all of this information what did the data brokers have to say about my identity?" This sentence makes it seem as if data brokers are looking back at the amount of time that has passed since you first set foot into the digital wilderness. Either omit first half of sentence or create two independent sentences would be my suggestion. 3. "The most surprising data, however had more to do with the neighbors I have and my phone numbers, as well as the address of the first house I ever lived at." You are missing a comma after 'however'. Maybe try "The most surprising data, however, had more to do with the neighbors I have, my phone numbers, and the address of the first house I ever lived at." 4. "Some of my father’s work history seems to be tied up with my own, a few of my father’s patents have shown up on my record, tying the team, and the time, he worked on them back to me as part of my data profile." The flow of this sentence does not work. Try "Some of my father's work history seems to be tied up with my own; a few of my father's patents have shown up on my record - tying the team and the time he worked on them back to my data profile. Lastly, what you want to do is add a couple pictures since that is in the data assignment details.
Besides for more clearly answering the prompt and adding some pictures, this paper really only has sentence flow issues. A lot of these I gave you clear examples of but any remaining could be fixed by just carefully reading aloud your paper to yourself and talking in a way that follows your punctuation - if there is a pause where there shouldn't be or vise versa then you may need to edit.
Taylor Denby's Comment
Hi Thomas,
I really enjoyed reading your article! I thought it was interesting how, despite an extensive amount of time that you have spent on the internet, there doesn't seem to be much information about yourself. I also liked how you checked Duck Duck Go; I hadn't thought to check it. I think a couple things you could improve on include comparing and contrasting the publicly available version of you on the internet to the real-life version of you. We know from your article that not a lot of information is found about you from a Google search, but it would be interesting to be able to compare a little bit about the real life version of you to what is publicly available. The article is also lacking in any visual additions, so I think adding photos would be beneficial. Overall though, I enjoyed reading your article!
McKinley Schmidt - First of all I want to say that this is pretty good to start with, and it is entertaining to read. I like that you took some time to provide background on DuckDuckGo, as some may not be familiar with it. You mention your social media shows up as some of the first Google results. What are your thoughts about how well these profiles represent you and if you have any reservations about them being so visible. I would like to see some images to illustrate your article, such as a screenshot of what came up on your Google image results. You've got a couple run on sentences, such as first one. Try to be more concise in how you word things. It can add clarity to your points. For example this sentence was a bit confusing to me: "Some of my father’s work history seems to be tied up with my own, a few of my father’s patents have shown up on my record, tying the team, and the time, he worked on them back to me as part of my data profile." Could you go more into what your dad does? Is he a business owner? Entrepreneur? It doesn't need to be expansive, just to provide context. Also, does "team" refer to the people he worked with? Lastly, you mention at the beginning that you are one of two people with your name, but don't elaborate until later that it is your father. It would be less confusing to mention that at the beginning as well and I think it would tie your narrative together nicely.
