User talk:Laurenoneil82

Welcome!

Hello, Laurenoneil82, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with Wiki Education; 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) 20:02, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Peer Review

I completed the peer review for your page on the 2019 Political Crisis in Virginia. Great job! I enjoyed your added content and also provided some feedback!

- Morgan Romero — Preceding unsigned comment added by Morganromero3 (talk • contribs) 21:31, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Notes

Hi! Here are some notes:

• Where is this meant to go in the main article for the 2019 Virginia political crisis?

• Be careful of tone, as it's important to avoid writing in a casual or reflective tone. For example, the phrase "transcended party lines as both the Virginia House Democrats and the Virginia GOP demanded resignation" comes across as editorializing rather than summarizing the source material. You also want to be careful about words like "divulged" as those tend to be inherently non-neutral. You can read move about this here. There seems to be several instances of phrasing like this, so this should be edited to resolve those.

• This is branching off the last point, but it's important to avoid original research and editorializing/reflection on the topic and sourcing. We can only summarize what has been explicitly stated in the source material - we cannot draw conclusions on our own.

• When it comes to detail, keep in mind that it's sometimes better to summarize rather than go into too much detail when it comes to reactions. For example, the first paragraph could be rephrased as such:

Multiple state and national politicians, activists, and public figures called for Northam's resignation. Parties in both the Virginia House Democrats and the Virginia GOP demanded resignation and Representative Karen Bass stated that Northam "can’t be trusted to lead." On the national level figures such as Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Tom Steyer, and Chuck Schumer all made statements admonishing Northam's actions and asking for an apology and a leave of his position. Senator Warner, Senator Kaine, and Representative Bobby Scott issued a joint statement including the assertion that "After [they] watched his press conference today, [they] called Governor Northam to tell him that [they] no longer believe[d] he can effectively serve as Governor of Virginia and that he must resign."

This uses much of the same content but gets a little more to the point - it's better to summarize rather than list many different responses/reactions, especially if they're all stating the same thing.

• I'm concerned that the third paragraph is too much like a reactive essay than a summary of what an academic outlet has written about the specific topic. You also want to make sure that the content is more specific to the topic - this feels like it's more about the general topic of racism and education rather than the article topic. This also comes across as original research since one of the sources predates the article topic and it's being used to back up/imply various things about Northam. This wouldn't be bad in an academic journal article or essay, but it doesn't really fit Wikipedia's writing style.

I can give more specific advice once I know where it's meant to fit into the article. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:11, 6 March 2020 (UTC)