User talk:Cquinn1112

Welcome!

Hello, Cquinn1112, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; 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) 20:18, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Comments section

Hi! I have some notes for you:

• Studies should generally be avoided unless they're accompanied with a secondary source that reviews the study or comments upon the specific claim that is being stated. The reason for this is that studies are primary sources for any of the claims and research conducted by their authors. The publishers don't provide any commentary or in-depth verification, as they only check to ensure that the study doesn't have any glaring errors that would invalidate it immediately. Study findings also tend to be only true for the specific people or subjects that were studied. For example, a person in one area may respond differently than one in an area located on the other side of the country. Socioeconomic factors (be they for the person or a family member) also play a large role, among other things that can impact a response. As such, it's definitely important to find a secondary source, as they can provide this context, verification, and commentary. Aside from that, there's also the issue of why a specific study should be highlighted over another. For example, someone could ask why one study was chosen as opposed to something that studied a similar topic or had different results.

• Be careful of subjective language and definitive statements, as these often tend to be subjective to the reader. Definitive statements are also something that should be avoided unless it's something that is widely held as true by most authorities and typically written about as such. You also want to make sure that content isn't written like it's a hypothesis. For example, this sentence needs to be rephrased to attribute the claim to the person making it:

The reason for this may be due to the fact that those with strongly-held beliefs are more likely to comment and reply to others when the comments section is widely opposed to them.

This would be attributed along the lines of "This person states that...", however since this is backed up by a study you would also need to have a secondary source that specifically cites the study and this claim in particular.That said, since the study isn't to be officially published until next year, there's likely no secondary coverage out there and as such the content sourced with this study should be removed from the article if that's the case.

I hope that this helps! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:48, 2 October 2019 (UTC)