User talk:Smikofsky/sandbox

Carly's Peer Review

Overall, I think this draft gets solid, well-balanced points across. Some specific points:

• The first subsection, "Causes," is a pretty long paragraph. Consider breaking up this paragraph into two or three paragraphs based on the causes that relate most to one another, as Wikipedia articles' paragraphs tend towards being shorter rather than longer for readers' ease.

• In the second subsection, "International Policy and its Effects on Abandonment Rates - China's One Child Policy," the following sentence could likely use a citation: "Families that disobeyed the law were levied a fine and lost their right to many government services, including access to health and educational services." It seems like a really important point that Wikipedians would likely want to verify.

• In the same subsection but under "Vietnam War," the last sentence is a bit broad: "It was not until the American withdrawal from Vietnam that the problem began to resolve itself." I think it could be beneficial to further describe how the problem resolved itself. Do you mean that fewer children were abandoned over time? Is there any data surrounding the rate at which this problem resolved itself?

• Many of your citations have red text surrounding them indicating that there aren't any dates for the source (i.e. the date it was published isn't in the citation). Wherever possible, try to find as many dates as possible for the citations that don't have dates as of now -- it would be helpful to know when your citations were published to ensure that the information you're providing is up to date. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Carolineschulz (talk • contribs) 17:40, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

• Overall, I think all of these sections and additions provide ample information on your chosen topic. Something to do that might help you catch any syntax-related errors or areas for improvement would be to read the sections aloud to see where sentences seem choppy or where the general flow of ideas could improve. You definitely have a lot of information in your draft, but the way in which you reveal information can seem jumbled, especially in the subsection, "Causes." In other words, throughout this section, I noticed that many sentences could have been placed anywhere in that paragraph and still make sense, but that may have been a result of the section being just one paragraph, too. Overall, I think breaking up the "Causes" section into a few different paragraphs and reading over the rest of the article to ensure the general flow of ideas and evidence makes sense could be helpful. Great proposed additions overall!

Some copyedits (changes are surrounded by asterisks):

"People living in countries with poor social welfare systems, who are not financially capable of taking care of a child, are more likely to abandon *their children*." - Causes section

"Additionally, a parent being incarcerated or deported can result in the functional abandonment of a child, even if the parent(s) did not voluntarily relinquish their parental role." - Causes section. No change added here, but what do you mean by "functional abandonment" and how does that differ from normal "abandonment?"

"A large *number* of these children were either unwanted to the circumstances of their conception or unable to be cared for due to the lack of available resources and assistance in the war-torn country" - Vietnam War section

Ultimately, I think the structure of each of these sections is great. The content is delivered in a neutral light, and each sentence provides information that is insightful while staying rooted in facts and cited evidence.

Carolineschulz (talk) 17:25, 25 February 2018 (UTC)Carly