Wikipedia:Requests for feedback/2011 May 10

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User:Floccinauci/Women's_International_Motorcycle_Association

Just getting started and would welcome contributions from other editors who are WIMA enthusiastsFloccinauci (talk) 01:01, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Since much of our knowledge of WIMA (Women's International Motorcycle Association) is in the oral history tradition it is important to document what we have and what we can. Contributions with good citations especially welcome!

Floccinauci (talk) 01:01, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

User:Capelawyer/M.i (American Hip Hop Artist) !

Looking for feedback and help on getting this moved to the mainpage. Thanks!!

Capelawyer (talk) 03:14, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings, this page is for feedback requests, not for posting entire articles. I've removed your draft pasted here and instead modified the title to redirect to what appears to be your current draft, though it is difficult to tell since you're moving too many things around for us to keep track easily. Just write one draft in one place, and then come here and post a link asking us to look at it. Way easier. MatthewVanitas (talk) 05:03, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You have quite a few things to address before publishing. There are some general format issues, but mainly the subject doesn't seem to meet WP:Notability (music). I'm just not sure any of the footnotes meet WP:Reliable sources. That said, you might want to post this same request for help at the Discussion tab at WP:WikiProject Hip hop; maybe someone there will be able to suggest better references, or support your current ones. Feel free to psot back with any questions. MatthewVanitas (talk) 05:12, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

User:Mladen.tomic/Faculty_of_Sport_and_Tourism_-_TIMS

Dear fellow Wikipedians,

this is my first full article here and I would appreciate any kind of feedback on it in terms of quality.

Thank you in advance,

Mladen

Mladen.tomic (talk) 10:33, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings, I've added some maintenance tags at the top of your article for things to fix. Most notably, you can't cite Wikipedia on Wikipedia, that's circular. With that gone, all you have are the TIMS site and ATLAS. What you need are more independent, reliable, substantive footnotes to prove WP:Notability. What we need is proof that other serious news/academic sources discuss TIMS and its importance. These footnotes can be in any language, and online or off (online is preferred if available). You don't just want to quote TIMS talking about TIMS, you want citations from the Serbian Gazette or Euro Sports Quarterly discussing its importance. Try searching around Google, GoogleBooks, GoogleNews in English and Serbian and see what you find. Blogs, forums, etc. don't count, you want WP:Reliable source. You're on the right track, just need to work on your footnoting, and add WP:Categories. MatthewVanitas (talk) 23:14, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

User:Muymalestado/Tain_Museum

This draft article may be ready to release into the Wikipedia-sphere. Please comment whether this is the case.

Thank you Phil

Muymalestado (talk) 14:01, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please compare your article to live Wikipedia articles and note major differences in formatting. For example, you have no citations, and your references are formatted incorrectly. Post another request for feedback after you've fixed those issues, and I'd be glad to check it out again. Thanks! Gaebler (talk) 16:59, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, but I think it could pretty easily pull together if you read up on WP:References and understand how refs work and are formatted. I've made some changes (check the "History" tab of your draft), added WikiProjects, and left you some comments. Feel free to post back here for any help. MatthewVanitas (talk) 00:00, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

User:Teagrant/Geek girl

Geek girl Requesting particular help on the history of the term, as well as general additions and corrections. Thanks!

The hope was to get an article started, and then have a bunch of folks jump in with more information. Spread the word!

Teagrant (talk) 16:14, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Very interesting concept; I would strongly suggest that in addition to here, you visit the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Popular Culture and ask for help/feedback there.

I've added maintenance tags at the top of your article; they're not a judgment, just a list of things you want to fine-tune for publication. Aside from some format issues, that main thing you need is not only to provide WP:Verifiability ("this is a thing"), but WP:Notability ("serious media/academics are writing about this"). For WP:N, you'll want to find coverage in WP:Reliable sources. Blogs, Facebook, forums, etc. don't count; you want to find something in a major newspaper, industry journal, etc. discussing the significance/development of the term itself, not simply using it in passing.

The other issue is that the whole section of "types" appears to be WP:Original research... unless for the various examples you can provide a WP:Reliable source specifically applying the term "geek girl" to that type. So, "I, Teagrant, think that sexy librarians are a kind of geek girl" isn't something we can use, but "In fact, librarians have a new cachet as 'geek girls' (footnote: Sara Steinberg. Librarians: a New Hotness. Library Sciences Gazette, January 2011)" would be perfect. Again, don't think of this as criticising your research, think of this as building an inarguable, academic, professional-quality case for the importance and prevalence of the term.

Feel free to post back here with any questions; volunteers keep these pages on Watchlist even a week later. MatthewVanitas (talk) 23:45, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Teagrant (talk) Thanks, (talk) for the constructive (and gentle!) criticism. Will check the Pop Culture project, and continue to work on the formatting/referencing/scholarly argument.

Do you have any rule-of-thumb tips for how to find "professional-quality" evidence of a phenomenon that's still in its early stages? May 11th, 2011 at 10:38 am. EST.

That's a very valid question. Wiki is an encyclopedia, not WikiLeaks, Drudge, etc. so our goal is the opposite of "breaking the story." As an encyclopedia, the goal is to compile the most precise, authoritative, and conclusive information about a given topic. Admittedly, this can be tough to do given the speed of New Media, and a lot of New Media though extremely widely read, as that it's not necessarily authoritative because, frankly, there isn't as much money/reputation riding on it. If some PhD messes up in Survey of Burial Customs Among the Laz in Anthropology Review, his career could go down the tubes, and the academic journal and the university that publishes it could take major hits. Whereas if "Deathguy123" at Funeraryrites.forum.com mucks up some details, or even makes them up, he just dumps his username, the site deletes the bad thread, and life moves on.

Granted, you probably don't feel like waiting 10 years until PhDs are studying sociological trends of the early 2000s with objectivity, so finding authoritative sourcing for a rapidly-emerging subject is indeed tricky. I mostly cover the Indian caste system, European folk music instruments, etc. so can't help you there. I would definitely check in with WP Pop Culture, since they are undoubtedly the experts on getting such articles up to snuff. MatthewVanitas (talk) 15:45, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Teagrant (talk) Will do, and thanks again. Still beefing up the history section before moving onto your well-taken point about the subjectivity of the "Types" section: will probably take a couple of days. But in the meantime will head to the WP Pop Culture section to throw the question out to them.

WBHDW (talk) 16:50, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For unifying identical footnotes, see WP:REFNAME. The other thing you need to fix with your footnotes: you risk WP:Link rot. That is, you have WP:Bare URLs that you need to convert to proper WP:Citations. That way folks can tell at a glance that you're linking to "New Mango Crop Out. Acme Times, 24 January 1980" rather than just www.acmetimes/articles/19800124-38s70fs.html . So fix those things and your footnotes will be a lot smoother. MatthewVanitas (talk) 18:14, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

EDIT: Also, note on your Talk page a 'bot has dinged you for copyright issues, so please carefully read that and address the issue, or your article can be deleted. MatthewVanitas (talk) 18:16, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

[Acquity Group]

I created this article first as a userspace draft, so if anyone has any thoughts about how this article can be improved, I would appreciate it! Thanks!

Gaebler (talk) 16:58, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Authorized Dish Network retailers

I'd love it if someone could take a look at my userspace draft. Any and all feedback is appreciated. Thanks!

Ocelot7 (talk) 18:06, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Melodic Learning

Would welcome feedback on Melodic Learning. I've added citations and reworked the language. All comments/additons welcome.

Jharrisonpr (talk) 20:49, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely getting better, but you still need a few things to get in the proper Wiki-groove.

The article still reads too much like an essay vice encyclopedia article. There's too much "leading" to concepts vice blunt statement.
Part of this is that you over-explain some concepts that you can just wikilink to. For example, if I were writing about an Indian poet from 1858 for a magazine article, I'd have to explain the Indian Mutiny for context. However, for a Wikipedia article I'd just give the barest explanation of specifically how it affected his work, since readers can just click on Indian Mutiny for the full story. So some of your content on the different modes of learning (kinetic, etc.) can just be linked to the article about learning styles, and the section itself just specifically address "melodic learning"'s role therein. Similarly, the part about "earworm", if you have some good footnotes illustrating this is an established concept, can probably be its own article, and just covered in a sentence of two for its direct relationship to ML, and then link to earworm (music).
You lean towards some WP:Original research. For example, it's fine to say "Sesame street employs ML (footnote: John Smith. Melodic Learning on PBS. Journal of Education, September 1993)", but it's OR to say "I think that Sesame Street is a good example of ML."
By the way, is "melodic learning" genenerally capitalised? If not, it should be "melodic learning" throughout. If it's like Suzuki Method, sure, capitalise, but otherwise no.
You have a bunch of "Further reading"; if you have internet or physical access to those articles, why not just use them to add more footnoted content to expand the depth of the article?
Of your three categories, two don't work (not they're redlinks) and "Education" is way too broad. You want to use existing categories, and as specific as possible. So open up "Category:Education" and drill down as deep into the subcats as you can to find the most specific applicable subcats. Also consider looking at related articles like Music education, Education theory, etc. and check out their cats (and drill down into their subcats) to get as specific as possible.

So, definitely getting better, but there are a few things to work on. Feel free to post back here with any questions. MatthewVanitas (talk) 22:21, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Indented line

MatthewVanitas - I'm not sure if I'm making the post correctly, but thank you for the excellent feedback. I'll be working on your recommendations.Jharrisonpr (talk) 21:09, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Myrmecochory

This is an extensive rewrite based on an undergrad research assignment. I'm a first-time Wikipedia editor and would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks! Xenetik (talk) 05:15, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Content-wise looks good; you're far beyond out help at RfF. Except for that at least one or two of your cats are a bit too broad. "Catgory:Ecology"? That seems a bit broad for such a niche topic; for a few of your broader cats, try opening to the category itself and see if any of its subcats, or sub-sub-cats, etc. might be a tighter fit for your article. That aside, recommend you add Wikipedia:WikiProject Insects to the Discussion page, and then visit that WikiProject to introduce yourself and your article. I'm sure the guys there can give much better expert entomological help than we copyeditors and tour-guides here. MatthewVanitas (talk) 05:19, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the quick response! I looked over the contents of the ecology category and many similar articles seem present there. Will look into the deeper sub-categories to see if there is a more appropriate fit. Will also look into the project page for more feedback. Appreciated! Xenetik (talk) 19:31, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]