User:Aemoe85/State violence/Winter-PSU Peer Review

General info

Whose work are you reviewing?

User:Aemoe85

Link to draft you're reviewing

User:Aemoe85/State violence

Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)

State violence

Evaluate the drafted changes

I think you have taken on a lot of sections to work on. Our professor mentioned in one of the weekly overviews that most student contributions are around 800 words. You could shave off a lot of work for yourself by sticking to 1-3 sections instead of all the ones you have planned out. The section on Flint, Michigan alone could easily reach 800 words. You could also just briefly write a couple of sentences for some of the sections to give future students an idea of what to work off of. I would get rid of the "Causes" title and delete the section (and the corresponding reference) underneath it completely because it is only focused on the opinions of one author. What could be a better title for all the different ways state violence plays out? "Causes" isn't really a good way to describe the different arenas of state violence. I do think your comments on Israel fall under colonialism. I would add the first sentence of your draft to the article's introduction, then add the rest of it under a different, more focused section because it is too specific for a basic introduction to the topic. Use the introduction to give broad definitions and the sections below for targeted examples. The article's introduction should be fleshed out to at least a complete paragraph.

The ideas you came up with for targeted examples are spot on. You have a lot of good examples to pick from and I appreciate your dedication to the topic you chose. You have a nice selection of a broad range of topics regarding underrepresented groups. Beware of personal opinion and bias sneaking up on you as you write these topics. It can be hard to not let personal opinions come out when writing about difficult, and often frustrating, topics. For example, both the oppressors' and the victims' viewpoints need to be represented in a neutral tone, regardless of your feelings on whose actions are justified in order to prevent bias. I know I will have a hard time with that too when writing my article, so it is always good to keep in mind! I'm unsure what sources you are using because the bibliography and outline page reflect different references. It would be nice to have the updated list. From what I can tell, they all appear to be peer-reviewed, but I would highly recommend using their direct DOI links instead of the PSU proxy links to make them more accessible for other readers to fact-check. It also looks like the formatting needs to be fixed on a couple of them, for example, Butler's article is referenced twice, but there is a way to reference the same source without adding it again to the official reference list. I can't remember which week it was, but we did do a Wikipedia training on it and of course, there's always Youtube to help out with small stuff like that.

I don't think you need to add images or media to the article. You have a couple grammatical and spelling errors in your new draft. I'd rework the last sentence to add more detail or get rid of it entirely because it comes off as persuasion or bias. The organization of your planned sections is well thought out. I think your content will add a lot of good information to the article and give future students a lot of room to work with further topics. Good luck!

Hi there! I really appreciate the thorough feed back. - Aemoe85

Thank you for the thorough review. We have sense narrowed our scope to a few topics with sub headings. The topics are definitely going to be hard to represent without bias. The references I will be working on, since I put them in wrong. Your review has provided several areas of focused improvement. As well as guidelines to keep in mind as we go forward. Thank you for the review.

-Skyjay999