Gabriela Cantu

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Hello, Gabriela Cantu, 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.

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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:50, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Notes

I have some notes about your sandbox content, since your instructor contacted me about how it could be moved live:

• If you haven't already, take this training module on editing health and medicine related topics. Mental health is an area where it's important to have the strongest possible sourcing, but especially when it comes to the topic of suicide.

• I'm concerned that the sourcing has issues - Verywell Mind isn't going to be the strongest possible source when it comes to psychology and suicide related matters, as there have been issues with its information being inconsistent. Here's what the list of perennial sources has to say about it (it's listed under Dotdash):

Dotdash (formerly known as About.com) operates a network of websites. Editors find the quality of articles published by About.com to be inconsistent. Some editors recommend treating About.com articles as self-published sources, and only using articles published by established experts. About.com also previously served as a Wikipedia mirror; using republished Wikipedia content is considered circular sourcing. In 2017, the About.com website became defunct and some of its content was moved to Dotdash's current website brands.[8][9] See also: Investopedia.

So this poses an issue since we would need to be able to prove that the author (Amy Morin) is seen as an established expert, which would in turn mean that she would need to be listed as a reliable source in places like academic and scholarly sources. In cases like this it's far, far better to go directly to the scholarly and academic sources, especially as the scrutiny for medicine and psychology related sourcing is going to be far more strict since there's more of a risk of real world harm.

Places like RAMH and SAVE are going to be iffy at best and won't be the strongest sourcing either for similar reasons, especially as they're more aimed at raising awareness. With RAMH, there's also a focus on getting the reader to use their services, so that will also pose an issue - especially as we can't guarantee the editorial oversight and verification used by RAMH. The Mental Health Foundation is also problematic for similar reasons, as they're also aimed at raising awareness. With sites like these you have to be careful since some of them will be more interested in impact and may fudge numbers or data in order to make a point, as the editorial oversight and verification will not necessarily be as strong as they would for an academic or scholarly journal or publication. I would only use these places as sourcing for information about themselves to be honest, unless they're very widely and thoroughly known in academic and scholarly sources for their quality.

You also use a popular press source (BBC), which should be avoided when it comes to medical related data and explanations as to why something health or psych related is the way it is. The reason for this is that popular press sources are very likely to be incorrect, either completely or partially. This doesn't mean that they necessarily set out to be incorrect, just that their focus is on getting clicks and as such they may oversimplify, misrepresent, and/or sensationalize something for the sake of the story - even the ones that seem like they're really well respected. You should only use popular press for historical information when it comes to medical topics.

You can read over this at this page.

• To expand a bit on the prior one, you also used a study as a source. Studies should generally be avoided (especially with medical topics) unless they're accompanied with a secondary source that reviews the study or comments upon the specific claim that is being stated. The reason for this is that studies are primary sources for any of the claims and research conducted by their authors. The publishers don't provide any commentary or in-depth verification, as they only check to ensure that the study doesn't have any glaring errors that would invalidate it immediately. Study findings also tend to be only true for the specific people or subjects that were studied. For example, a person in one area may respond differently than one in an area located on the other side of the country. Socioeconomic factors (be they for the person or a family member) also play a large role, among other things that can impact a response. As such, it's definitely important to find a secondary source, as they can provide this context, verification, and commentary. Aside from that, there's also the issue of why a specific study should be highlighted over another. For example, someone could ask why one study was chosen as opposed to something that studied a similar topic or had different results.

As stated, medical topics are far more strict and studies are typically not seen as reliable sources except in very specific and rare circumstances (unless it's accompanied by a non-primary source that summarizes the study's claim the study is meant to source).

• Be careful about tone. Even if people may agree with you, don't use subjective or point of view terms like horrific, since that will be subjective to the reader- even with topics like this. At the very least subjective statements will come across like it was written as a reflection or by a specific person, which will pose issues of neutrality since the article shouldn't come across as being written by a specific person.

• Don't ask questions of the reader or use "we" or "you" type of phrasing. This has several issues associated with it, such as original research (more on that below), coming across like it's written from the point of a specific person, and also presuming something of the reader. You can read over the guidelines on this here.

• Avoid original research - we can only summarize what has been explicitly stated in the source material. This is especially important when it comes to health and psychology topics.

• Be extremely careful when it comes to general statements, especially when approaching an article that discusses the topic on a global scale. There are definitely generalities on a global scale, but we can't guarantee that everything is the same in each country, especially if the source only looks at people in North America or another specific country. In cases like that, the information is only true to the people in that given area or group.

Once these are fixed, I would bring up any potential changes on the article's talk page, given that this topic is at Good Article quality and it's such a controversial topic area. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:41, 9 December 2019 (UTC)