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Hello, Cgolden97, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

I hope you enjoy editing here. If you haven't already done so, please check out the student training library, which introduces you to editing and Wikipedia's core principles. You may also want to check out the Teahouse, a community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to helping new users. Below are some resources to help you get started editing.

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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:07, 29 August 2018 (UTC)Reply


Me Too Movement

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Hi! I wanted to give you a bit of a head's up about this article. It's a controversial topic obviously, so the article is very frequently patrolled and looked at on Wikipedia. What this essentially means is that any additions to the article need to be approached with caution. The writing should be as neutral as possible and the sourcing should be the best/strongest possible sourcing that can be found.

I do have some notes for you though:

  • Only mark edits as minor if you're fixing very small elements, like a spelling or grammatical error. Any addition or removal from the article is seen as non-minor.
  • Make sure that you avoid persuasive writing styles. Words like "furthermore" come across like you're arguing a point.
  • With sourcing, make sure that you're careful to notice the small details. For example, you use the source to state that several studies have found evidence that abstinence only education hurts more than it helps, however the source itself only mentions one study. To back up the claims that there are several studies that cite this, you'd have to have a citation that specifically states this.

I've re-written this a little:

Some areas of the United States only teach abstinence only sex education. In a 2015 article for the American Journal of Nursing David Carter noted that a study found that abstinence based education was "correlated with increases in teenage pregnancies and births". Multiple people have voiced support for comprehensive sex education programs that encompass a wide range topics, which they state leave children more informed.

What I've done is removed the "furthermore" and re-wrote the sentence that mentioned multiple studies to focus on the single study. I also attributed the claims, which is something I prefer to do with any major claims in a controversial article. Sometimes it isn't absolutely necessary, but controversial articles can often attract people who contest claims. Attribution in the sentence can help resolve these concerns before they start by showing that it's held by a specific person or group of people rather than something held by the majority of people. This may seem a bit nitpicky, especially with claims like this that seem pretty obvious, but it's always good to kind of head stuff like this off at the pass.

I hope this helps! Also, good job on the source. It's definitely reliable and summarizes the key points of the study in a way that's incredibly helpful when it comes to summarizing it on the page! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:17, 6 September 2018 (UTC)Reply