User:NotKieronCarlos
About me
[edit]Thanks for spending the time to read my page! I'm Kieron, and I really don't care how you say my name, as long as it's somewhat recognizeable. From a young age, I've always been interested in the "giant robot" genre of TV and cartoons, highly technical videogames with a high skill ceiling, and puzzles. As a result, my current hobbies include building gundam model kits, competitive fighting games, and speedcubing. I like to think I leave a memorable impact on most people I meet, although that's a tad bit unrealistic.
Contribution to Wikipedia
[edit]I'd like to contribute where I can to the seemingly outdated speedcubing article and it's related pages; the pages relating to my other hobbies and interests seem to be fairlycomplete and not in need of updating. Many notable advancements in speedcube hardware, such as the inclusion of magnets for stability and adjustable tensioning for the flexibility of the puzzle, among others, are undocumented on both the speedcubing article, the Rubik's Cube page, and its variants.
Article evaluation
[edit]I'm part of a community of people who solve the Rubik's Cube and its variants and compete for quick times. The competetive activity of solving for speed is called speedcubing or speedsolving. I visited the speedcubing page on Wikipedia, and found three things worth commenting on: the world record log is out of date, it has multiple instances of uncited information, and it contains unncecesary sections which are redundant or too specific.
Outdated
[edit]Under the heading "World Records", an image is shown displaying the progression of the world record for the 3x3x3 cube up until 2017 with Mats Valk's 5.55 second single. Since that date, the record has been broken and a new record holder recognized. The current 3x3x3 record, displayed in the table above, is held by Yusheng Du with a 3.47 single solve. In that same table, the records for 3x3x3 one-handed and 3x3x3 with feet have been broken and have not been updated. World records are a big deal and are seemingly very easy to update.
Uncited facts
[edit]A majority of the information on the page is cited completely and verifiable, but there are a few pieces which are uncited or are circular references. The entire section for the ZZ method of solving the 3x3x3 is linked to only one citation, and the section for corners-first methods has no citations whatsoever, making it hard to tell if the information is accurate or reliable.
Too specific
[edit]In the section headed "Terminology" there are two separate terms listed for very similar meanings: "Pop" and "Explode", both referring to when a puzzle falls apart violently due to aggressive handling or unstable hardware. Between these two, one needs to be deleted or reduced to a mention within the other's entry. An entire headed section is dedicated to the different lubricants commonly used for speedcubing, and contains a poorly formatted list of lubricants. The page could make do with just explaining that lubes are used and that variants exist.
Summary
[edit]All things considered, the page does a fairly good job at providing a background for the sport. It could use some work in updating current records, citing sources on odd bits of information and cleaning up unnecessary and redundant information. I think a small bit of cleanup will greatly improve the article. (As part of this assignment I have updated the table of current world records using data from The World Cube Association.)