Kalynnmc

Welcome!

Hello, Kalynnmc, 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) 13:41, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Article Evaluation

I feel like most of the words that were in parentheses towards the beginning of the article Human Services was not needed only because if they needed to know this information, it could have a link to the actual word to further explain what the word means and synonyms it consists of. However the editor attached a source next to the word "accountability". There was minimal citing of the sources in this text which troubles the audience because they don't know where this information is coming from. Transitional phrases can be added in because "The" is getting too repetitive being mentioned throughout the text. I feel like the link to "community college" was not really useful because it did not deeply describe what a community college was.____Kalynnmc, September 5 2018, 9:58

Response

Hi! Where are you trying to add this into the article? That may make a difference. Also, I have some notes for you:

• Parts of this are written from an individual standpoint and as such, are written subjectively. Even if the statement seems like it would be one that would be shared by many, you have to make sure that the material doesn't come across as a reflective or persuasive essay. When including major claims or opinions that you have summarized from the source material, make sure that you attribute the claims accordingly. For example, the following sentence comes across as a subjective claim:

Gender equality is intrinsically linked to sustainable development and is vital to the realization of human rights for all.

Phrasing it like this can be seen as a statement of declaration - that something is something and that dissenting opinions are incorrect. There are people who would probably disagree with this in part or whole, so it's important to be careful of how it's phrased and to make sure to attribute declarative statements like this along the lines of "Scholars have stated that..." or "Gender equality, according to...".

• Make sure to review the page Wikipedia:Words to avoid, as this can give some overall good pointers on what to look out for as far as phrasing goes. Avoid using terms like "I" and "you" (see this for Wikipedia's guidelines on second-person pronouns) since that doesn't fit Wikipedia's style guidelines. You also want to avoid using instructional and presumptuous language, as this makes several assumptions about the reader(s) that you shouldn't. Also, never ask questions in the article - it should only summarize existing sourcing on the topic and questions give off the impression of original research.

• Be extremely careful when it comes to sourcing as not all sourcing is considered to be reliable as far as Wikipedia is concerned. Make sure that the source is authoritative and reliable. With internet sources, always make sure that it's routinely considered to be a reliable source, such as how the BBC is seen as reliable for news and IGN is seen as reliable for game related information. However at the same time you should also make sure that you're using the strongest possible sourcing - an Internet site may be reliable, but it's often not the strongest possible source out there. This is extremely, extremely important when it comes to anything that brushes up against the field of medicine and psychology. This training module goes over some of the requirements when it comes to that.

In this situation you do seem to have content that would fall under the banner of health and medicine, so definitely review the training. As far as specific sourcing goes, avoid using The Odyssey as their content is all user submitted and the site doesn't appear to provide any sort of true editorial oversight or verification for published works. This makes the site unreliable as far as Wikipedia is concerned, especially when it comes to topics like gender and sex.

University-discoveries.com is questionable, as there really isn't a lot of information about who runs the site (It looks like it's Jonathan Cole, but he also states that he wants to have people contribute to the site as well) or any evidence that it's routinely cited as a reliable, authoritative source in places like academic and scholarly sources. SimplyPsychology has some of the same issues. The site's about page gives off the impression that it's likely reliable, however the question here is whether or not it's the strongest possible source, which it likely isn't.

I hope that this all helps! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:35, 11 December 2018 (UTC)