Talk:Effect of World War I on children in the United States/GA1

GA review

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GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Is it reasonably well written?
A. Prose quality:

B. MoS compliance:
Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
A. References to sources:

B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

C. No original research:
Is it broad in its coverage?
A. Major aspects:

B. Focused:
Is it neutral?
Fair representation without bias:
Is it stable?
No edit wars, etc:
Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
Overall:
Pass or Fail:

Review by MisterBee1966 (talk · contribs)

Add article to category "Children in war" Done
"Triple Alliance" links to a disambiguation article. Please fix Done
You have a dead external link in the article

check link [1]. The tool flags this as a dead link because you have a period "." at the end of the URL.

I have a bit of a problem with the title of the article. The way I read the article it would better be called "Social implication of World War I in the United States". It equally touches woman rights.
Section Impact on daily life is missing a citation Done
You linked Boy Scouts and you should also link Girl Scouts Done
What kind of citation is "Adams, Eyewitness, 8", does the 8 denote a page? You have many citations that look like this Done

I think this would look better if you wrote "Adams, Eyewitness, p. 8.", denoting this is page 8

Try using named references. I'm not a great fan of multiple references pointing to the same page of a book. Example: McDermott, T. P "USA's Boy Scouts and World War I Liberty Loan Bonds", pg. 70 Done
McDermott, T.P. "USA's Boy Scouts and World War I Liberty Loan Bonds" is missing a page number Done
Wrong dash on McDermott, T. P "USA's Boy Scouts and World War I Liberty Loan Bonds", pg. 70-72 Done
Why do you have a picture of a British poster in the article? I fail to see the link to the US Done
How did American kids suffer differently from kids in European countries?
Do you have statistical data on how many kids were affected?

I would expect that you can find statistical evidence for lower birth rates during or shortly after WW1. Otherwise your thesis doesn't hold.

Right now I feel that the article needs to be put on hold until more content on the subject is added to the article MisterBee1966 (talk) 16:52, 19 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi MisterBee, Thanks so much for the review. We really appreciate it. This article was completed as part of an educational assignment; originally we were going to focus on children, in general, during WWI, but it was too great of a subject matter and we felt that we could go into further detail if we only focused on children in the United States, which is why we did not include European children. Additionally, we included the section on daily life to show how families were affected as a result of the war. We think that the idea for changing the title of our article is valid, however for the scope of our assignment and the resources we have available to us, we wanted to specifically focus on children and not social implications as a whole. However, we would consider expanding our article or adding these sections and changing the title in the future, but for our present purposes we do not have sufficient time or resources to make these changes. Finally, we do not know where the dead link is in our article, if you could direct us to it, we would really appreciate it. Thank you so much again, we really appreciate your comments and look forward to working with you in the future. Santolinek (talk) 23:11, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Content

I do agree with Mr. B's assessment generally.

You could probably go into more detail in some of the sections. For example, this is the google books version of the pamphlet of indoctrination. you could include more on this, for example. Auntieruth55 (talk) 23:34, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! We looked at the book you attached, but we cannot find where it discusses "pamphlet of indoctrination." Could you point us in the right direction! :) Sorry, we're just very confused trying to sort through the information. Generally, we also agree with Mr. B's comments, we were just worried about having time to sufficiently add material. Also, we've used all of the information we can find from valid resources, and we are worried about having citations to back up this new information. Do you think we should change our title? Sorry if we're being needy. Thanks for you help!! :) Donovank (talk) 00:48, 21 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please read your lead of the article again. The topic of the article is "Children in the United States" and how they were influenced during and by World War 1. This is what expect from the title. I feel that the lead can be improved by closer linking the facts of the article to the implications on children in the United States. You could start by stating children lives were changed because of: (A) education changed, (B) fathers were killed or maimed in action thus less children were born or kids were brought up by single parents, (C) mothers had to work, (D) children had to collect money for the war effort, (E) ... and so on. The motivation for the rest of the article has to be more transparent. Currently I see little link between the facts in the lead and the kids in the US (education aside). MisterBee1966 (talk) 15:49, 21 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much for your advice. We are going to work on it tonight and tomorrow, and try to make the lead more direct and also add a few more apparent connections to children throughout the article. We really appreciate your help! Santolinek (talk) 21:26, 21 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Questions: the article speaks of extreme nationalism and anti-German sentiments in education. The kids of WW1 were the adults of WW2, did the anti-German sentiments have an influence on WW2? Also mentioned here is a phrase indicating that the government changed textbooks to portray the American Revolution in a more positive light. Was this ever changed again? Youth Organizations, were there others besides Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts? I think you could write something about the League of Nations in an Aftermath section. MisterBee1966 (talk) 17:18, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I do think there needs to be an aftermath section. The material you have on women and the vote is really a post-war thing, but, you've made a good point that it is related to the war itself. So an outcome is the amendment.

Regarding the textbooks. Mr.B, we don't have a unified education system here, and every community has its own system. Very unwieldy, but that's the way it is. Probably WWI was one of the last times there was a broad consensus about what should be included generally in school curricula, although after WWII, during the McCarthy era there was quite a bit of uproar, and it continued during the Cold War. I would say that part of the problem here is the topic was too broad, and this article could be expanded in many different ways. That said, I'm wondering if the better solution would be to make clear subheadings that will lead to stubs (and expansion at another time), rather than expanding this article beyond the scope of their assignment. Auntieruth55 (talk) 18:05, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mister Bee and Auntieruth, again, thank you so much for all of your help. Textbooks were not and are still not nationally unified, but because of President Wilson's urging of the public education system to incorporate nationalism, many of these curriculums changed accordingly. This was the area that we were discussing in our article. We added an aftermath section to talk about the implications of some of these educational changes and societal changes. Donovank (talk) 00:24, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Closing comments

I am not going to promote this article to GA-class at this point in time. The lead is looking quite good now however my last concerns have been left unaddressed so far. I still think this article is on the borderline with respect to the criteria 3 "broad in coverage". MisterBee1966 (talk) 09:27, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]