Oil Wiki

By roopakroopak (1228969793|%a, %b %e at %I:%M%p)

Introduction

My wiki site focuses on the oil situation in the U.S. and how it relates to the world. My goal was to provide statistical information that would give a very clear view of consumption and production in the U.S. and then closely follow current events. I felt that providing too many statistics would overwhelm an incoming analyst. Therefore, I spent the majority of my time following the news and giving short summaries of the major events occurring each week.

The site

The homepage of the site is very simple and requires no scrolling down. I decided that any pictures I could use on the front page would not really contribute to the goal of the site. I included a basic description of the goal of the site, listed the major pages, and included the most recent current events that I found relevant. I also included my custom search engine on the front page because I wanted to make it very accessible. There is a lot of detailed information that can be found and it is hard to predict exactly what information would be most helpful for a new analyst, so I wanted to make it very easy for a new analyst to utilize my best resources to find any specific statistics needed. There are also dropdown menus at the top of the site listing each page.

The U.S. Oil Consumption page provides basic information needed to get an overview of oil use. As mentioned above, there are a lot of statistics on oil consumption by week and region that could be used for very specific purposes, but this page gives a very general overview for someone completely new to the subject. The bottom of the page provides several images to show how U.S. consumption relates to the world. This fits the overall goal of the site because it shows the current consumption and then provides a basis for comparison.

The U.S. Oil Production page provides basic information to get an overview once again. This is mostly meant to provide a comparison to the consumption statistics to demonstrate the current dependence of the U.S. upon other countries. The bottom of the page has images showing World production to provide a basis to compare the U.S. statistics to.

Current events are the main focus of the site because they provide the most useful information. They are on one page with a complete list of all the events I found relevant from August through early December. The reason this page is the most important is because it is the best way to predict future changes. Considering that the U.S. oil situation is so strongly affected by the rest of the world, there is a lot of value in keeping tabs on any news in major oil-exporting countries. I have provided a short summary under each headline. I decided it was best not to give my views on each event to maintain the objectivity of the site. However, reading about the major events of the last few months is essential to gaining a broad perspective of the current oil situation. Instructions are included on how to stay up-to-date on current events and how to find updated statistics for the site.

The resources are listed on individual pages by type and also compiled onto a complete list. I have detailed the types of information that can be found on each of the resources. The resources are separated into pages by type so that the new analyst can learn the benefits of different types of resources and explore them separately.

The final dropdown menu lists my blogs from the semester. The subjects of the blogs are listed as opposed to the title so that the analyst can easily determine the type of resource discussed in each blog.

My Considerations

There are several things I decided not to include and others that I would have liked to add. I thought it would not be helpful to include videos on the site because videos on the topic tend to focus on cars driving and tend to push an agenda. A new analyst should be presented with the facts and current events that lead him/her to draw conclusions. Being led to specific conclusions or viewing propaganda-filled videos would not allow a new analyst to freely interpret the objective information because it would already be framed in his/her mind.

I feel that the use of themes would have helped bring my site to life more. Though I believe my site really benefits from its simplicity and the logical organization of all of the pages, it would seem more interesting if it were more visually appealing.

Also, looking back I think I should have provided more resources that would allow a new analyst to see the views of experts in the industry.
I would obviously need to provide a wide variety of expert views from opposing angles so as not to push the analyst toward certain beliefs, but I think they would help an analyst gain a better understanding of the potential consequences of current events.

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