User talk:Athomas15

Welcome!

Hello, Athomas15, 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.

I hope you enjoy editing here. If you haven't already done so, please check out the student training library, which introduces you to editing and Wikipedia's core principles. You may also want to check out the Teahouse, a community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to helping new users. Below are some resources to help you get started editing.

Handouts
Choosing an article to edit Editing an article • Add images to articles Citing sources on Wikipedia
Additional Resources
You can find answers to many student questions on our Q&A site, ask.wikiedu.org

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:24, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

You have an overdue training assignment.

Please complete the assigned training modules. --Ecs222 (talk) 14:55, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Notification of special editing rules relating to abortion

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in abortion. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

Because you have shown interest in a highly controversial area of Wikipedia, please carefully ensure that you are following all editing rules. Reach out to Shalor (Wiki Ed) or your instructor if you run into any problems. Elysia (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:04, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Reliable sources and biased sources

One of Wikipedia's core policies concerns Verifiability and the use of Reliable sources. I imagine your training modules covered these in detail; please be sure you are familiar with them. Unreliable sources may not be used on Wikipedia. Some reliable sources may be considered biased or partisan; these may be used under certain circumstances.

On your user subpage User:Athomas15/Forced abortion/Bibliography, you include the following url as one of your proposed sources:

• https://www.pop.org/abortion-axis-of-evil-north-korea-china-and-unfpa-support/

This url is from a domain of the Population Research Institute, an organization run by activist and abortion-opponent Steven W. Mosher. It gives the impression of being a biased source with a strong anti-abortion point of view. Biased sources are permitted as references in Wikipedia articles as long as they are considered reliable, but you should understand Wikipedia's Neutral point of view policy regarding such sources, and the difference between a reliable source and a biased source, and between Wikipedia's voice and in-text attribution if you do. For example, it would not be okay to use web pages from this domain as your only support for content about abortion in China. If you're not sure if a source is reliable or not, you could check the Reliable sources noticeboard.

In general, as Elysia has already pointed out with the Discretionary sanctions alert notice above, abortion is a tough topic in which to get your start at Wikipedia. However, it's not prohibited; if you understand Wikipedia's policies regarding Verifiability supported by citations to reliable, independent, secondary sources, as well as the core policies linked in this message and above, and you are prepared to tread carefully, you may be able to improve the article. If in doubt, ask first at the article Talk page, or contact User:Shalor (Wiki Ed), Elysia, or me for assistance. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 09:26, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

• Thank you Mathglot! Athomas15, academic and scholarly sources are often some of the best to use when it comes to topics like this. You also need to be cautious as this does deal with a medical topic - it is strongly recommended that you take and adhere to the training module on editing articles that deal with health, psychology, and the self. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:40, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Forced abortion

Hi! I saw that you edited this page - please make sure that you discuss the edits on the talk page as well.

Also, one of the sources you used was a study - studies should be generally avoided unless they are accompanied by a secondary, independent source that summarizes the study findings and puts them into context. There are several reasons why this is necessary:

• The secondary source is needed to show where this specific study is notable and should be highlighted over other, similar studies. Someone could ask why this study was chosen and it can be seen as original research, since ultimately without a secondary source the answer would be that we ourselves chose the source and deemed it better than similar studies.

• A secondary source would also help verify the claims and provide commentary. Keep in mind that most outlets don't actually verify the study - they really only review it to ensure that there are no glaring errors. Even with the most respected journals it's still entirely possible for faulty research to make it to publication. It's something that can and has occurred - and will still continue to happen because of human error. These secondary sources can help provide the commentary and verification that the journal itself and the peer review couldn't.

• Finally, study findings are always going to be limited in scope. There's never enough money, time, and staff to interview every person who could potentially fall into this area, even assuming that everyone would participate. As such, the researchers will choose people from a given area, time period, and/or response pool. This means that the findings are really only truly accurate for those people at that specific point of time, assuming that they answered honestly. For example, the findings could differ greatly depending on a multitude of factors that include education, income levels, culture, race, and so on. A black woman from a middle class family may respond differently than a white woman from a low class family, even if they live in the same city. Then there's also the interviewers to take into consideration - a person may feel intimidated by the interviewer depending on the same multitude of factors, which itself has been cited as a real difficulty when it comes to studies in general.

The time period is also very much a factor. The data was collected in 1994, so the findings from that time period may be out of date by today's standards, as the data is over 20 years old. The study itself is about 16 years old. That's where a secondary source would come in handy, as it would presumably be written more recently and discuss the findings in a more modern context.

Looking at the other sources, I see that one of the ones you used was from 1990, which makes any info it has even older than the study findings. It also looks to be written from a specific standpoint, which poses some issues with the neutrality of the source. Another source, the Lozier Institute, is refers to abortion as a "scourge" so they would also not be seen as a neutral source.

It's extremely important to be very careful when finding sources for this type of content, even if you're not specifically making medical claims per se. I would still read over this training module and also read over the guidelines on this page, as it gives some good general information that can be useful even when not editing a medical topic.

In the meantime I've removed the content that was sourced to the study and the 1990 source. I also found a new source for one of the legal claims. I have also removed the Lozier Institute claim, as well as the statement about what the laws' moral basis would be - that just felt a little extra. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:35, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

• Essentially, we can't guarantee that this was the true moral reason for the bills. It could have been something else entirely. Either way, it is the type of statement that can be easily interpreted as a judgement call on the bills themselves. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:39, 6 May 2020 (UTC)