Talk:Gillian Jerome

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Marissajd1212. Peer reviewers: CrescentEvi, Davidajeanne.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:48, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Intertwine Evaluation
Overall structure seems solid with a few parts to be elaborated further. Mary Mijares (talk) 20:25, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Article looks to be complete with a cohesive structure. Aharriot96 (talk) 20:26, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry didn't realise this was a student project, it needs some serious editing to remove wordy content, I've done a bit of simplifying but it needs much more there is FAR too much detail about unimportant matters and not enough strong independent sources. Theroadislong (talk) 21:57, 4 April 2018 (UTC)


 * from the editor's talk page it seems the instructor has set a 2000 word target - big mistake, encouraging bloated writing stretching relevance and references beyond what's reasonable, just for the sake of a school project. Pam  D  09:09, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

AHIS 320 Peer Review
This article focuses on Gillian Jerome, a Canadian writer who is still early in her career. She has strong academic and professional credentials and her work has been recognized in several forums, with both awards and press. Particularly relevant to the goal of our class, the article raises the profile of a woman author, who as a category are underrepresented on Wikipedia, and this author is also the founder and until recently leader of an organization that quantifies the disparity in published book reviews between men and women. Though the article has been flagged for deletion, the topic is well-referenced and thus meets Wikipedia's notable criteria; it also addresses a content gap.

There are several changes that could make this a stronger article that can be built on as Jerome's career develops further. In most sections, the information needs to be reorganized to highlight key facts, tightened and edited (for grammar and spelling) to improve readability, and cut to only include information relevant to the author and not organizations or publications she is involved with professionally. Here are my suggestions for each section:

Lead section: I would keep the first sentence, move the first half of the sentence about being a professor at UBC up (but cut the second half about running workshops) and add as the second half her role at EVENTmagazine. I would add the sentence that follows from the main body, which summaries her approach (and I might add something to it about her commitment to addressing disparities in treatment of men vs women writers): "Jerome's work including her poetry contains themes of community, social commitment and neighborhood life amongst other themes." And then follow with something like: "Her advocacy work includes founding CWILA. I would not include information on her awards or where her work has been published here.

Infobox: For "Born," list her full name, date of birth and city, province, country of birth; cut "Education," add "Occupation" and include the information under Genre; I think it's fine to keep "Genre" as another category but specify what type of writing she does: poetry and non-fiction, for example.

Personal life and education: (I might cut "personal" from the title as it doesn't add anything.) First sentence remove the two commas. Second sentence, be consistent in style and abbreviate or spell out both degrees. As she publishes a book with her husband, I would add his name here and any context about their work together.

Career: This is the section that needs the most attention. Instead of listing as subheads the organizations and publications where she is engaged professionally, I would use only two—one that describes her writing work, maybe "Literature," and the other her activism or advocacy work, "Advocacy."

The first paragraph in the Career section should form the main content under Literature. (Please note "Douglas collage" is misspelled.) But I would better organize this material into separate, coherent paragraphs that focus on her teaching, participation in public literary readings (though I would say this aspect could be cut) and writing. Teaching would absorb the lower UBC section and writing Geist and Event magazines publications and roles. I would cut the details about these magazines (can you add a Wikilink instead? or create one?) and only include information that is relevant to Jerome's career.

The second section, Advocacy, would include her founding of CWILA and the Hope in the Shadows book (please add some context to explain Vancouver's Downtown Eastside on first reference). However, here again, the focus should be tightened to focus on Jerome's contribution to both. The details about CWILA's activities and the photo contest are not relevant to an article about Jerome.

I would be careful in this second section to avoid language that could be construed to carry value judgements or bias. For example: "strives to quantify the barriers" to "quantifies the gender bias in book reviews published in Canadian newspapers;" or "works to instill motivation in the literary and review community" to "uses data to demonstrate the need for the library and review community."

Throughout this section, I would recommend reviewing text for readability, In particular, there are many sentences which run on and should be cut into two sentences. Also review style guidelines; newspapers should be italicized.

Award and Works sections look great. References could be stronger—perhaps pull some from the CWILA article? Davidajeanne (talk) 04:19, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Friendly remarks
Greetings. I happen to participate in the currently ongoing AfD process about this article. I voted to delete it on the grounds of insufficient notability. If the work that is being done establishes notability, I'd be happy to switch my vote. For the moment, and looking at the work being done, allow me a few remarks.

In the apparent haste to enrich the article, lots of trivial mistakes appear: The title of the Giest/Geist magazine is misspelled many times over; some phrases make little sense (e.g quoted verbatim, "In an article written by Tracy Sherlock in the Vancouver sun called the Prize could provide much needed recognition for female writers in 2012, Jerome's work in CWILA is recognized"); birth date is somewhat important for a subject that we want to demonstrate is notable; the same citation from the same source is quoted multiple times, e.g. from Event (remedy); etc. These shortcomings are admittedly not the deciding factor when assessing a subject's notability, but they do help make the case stronger. And, let's not forget, if the article stays up, the text should be up to the level of quality one expects from an encyclopaedia. The house manual of style is a lengthy but enlightening guide. Take care, and may you meet your objectives. -The Gnome (talk) 05:53, 5 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I've fixed a lot of the "Giest" carelessness, but please do us all the courtesy of taking a bit more care about spelling/typing.
 * I also removed the following, listed under "Geist", "Poems":
 * What to expect when you’re expecting (2003, finalist for the 2003 Booker Prize and the 2003 Governor General's Award and shortlisted for the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction.)


 * It isn't a poem, it's a magazine article. No way would it have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (you can check here: List of winners and shortlisted authors of the Booker Prize for Fiction, or the Orange Prize for Fiction (now Baileys - see list here: List of Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction winners.
 * Finding a major muddle/fantasy like this makes me wonder how accurate any of the rest of the article is - she isn't a professor but a sessional lecturer, etc. I'm very supportive of getting more articles about women into Wikipedia and contribute to every WP:Women in Red editathon, but the information in articles needs to be correct.
 * It looks as if you may have copied a chunk of text from Margaret_Atwood, as Oryx and Crake had those awards. Not a good idea unless you check v-e-r-y carefully that you've only re-used the formatting or whatever, and have changed all the content which is no longer relevant, or was written by another editor whose copyright you may be violating.  Pam  D  09:05, 5 April 2018 (UTC)


 * And linking is important: So she published in a list of magazines: to many readers and editors, that's just so many names. But if those magazines have Wikipedia articles, then that gives them a certain amount of credibility - they have been assessed (at least in theory!) as "Notable", so publishing in them carries more weight than publishing in some very minor work. It also helps the reader who wants to know more about Jerome and the sort of place where she has published. The essence of Wikipedia is that we can link from one article to another - but I suppose links don't contribute to "2,000 words" so the instructor's not bothered. Pam  D  09:43, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * oops, sorry, i saw the underlink tag and added links. Coolabahapple (talk) 14:40, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * In future it would be better for the user to create articles using the WP:AFC process which gives you as much time as you like to edit and perfect an article before submitting. Theroadislong (talk) 10:06, 5 April 2018 (UTC)


 * More careless copying: I've just removed the postnominals from the infobox, because none of them are mentioned in the text and I suspect they were copied carelessly from Margaret Atwood. Aaaaargh. Not just thoughtless lecturer but very careless editing here. How much more of the article is rubbish?  Pam  D  11:47, 5 April 2018 (UTC)


 * infobox can be expanded, i promise to hold off, for a bit:)) Coolabahapple (talk) 15:03, 5 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you to all who helped save this article. I have read your concerns and will continue to work on improving the article for Gillian Jerome. I appreciate everyone's hard work. Marissajd1212 (talk) 17:40, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

AHIS 320 Peer Review
You are doing a great job on this important article. You did a lot of work with cleaning up and adding sources as well as expanding on information and fixing wording. You also have a good grasp of Wikipedia protocol, use and tonality. In the info box I would suggest supplying more information. Her date of birth for instance, as well as a career/occupation, and any other relevant information pertaining to her background. The introductory paragraph is short and concise and gives me a good overview of what the article is about. The contents are well organized and the sub-headings make sense. Under career, there are a few run-on sentences that need to be cleared up. The information here is a little confusing as there is a lot of it, and I think that some streamlining would be helpful. Some of the wording is a little confusing but should be an easy fix. I think the last sentence of this (intro for "Career" before subheadings) should be placed elsewhere as the information preceding it is quite specific. Perhaps this sentence could go near the top of "career", or even in her general information as you are speaking about themes in her work. Under "Canadian women in literary arts" the tone here could be edited for CWILA. You give a good overview of CWILA and link it properly to another Wikipedia article. The information under "Hope in Shadows" is well written with good, sourced information that is easy to understand. Minor grammatical errors here which should be looked at. Overall this article is coming along really well - you are doing great work at a high standard, with Wikipedia protocol in mind.

CrescentEvi (talk) 06:35, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Who's "work" are you referring to here? This article has been rescued by a number of editors. Theroadislong (talk) 07:14, 8 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I imagine that this fellow student is addressing the editor who started the article - possibly neither of them understand anything about how to read the edit history of an article, so that they do not realise the massive multi-editor rescue effort which took place. The classmate has made very few recent edits to the article, and some of those they did make were subsequently reverted by more experienced editors. If means to thank the editors who did the constructive work on this article, he or she should look more carefully. Yes, I know, students are not responsible for the poor instruction they get given ahead of being let loose to edit an international encyclopedia, but ordinary editors manage to pick it up from scratch, perhaps without the distraction of aiming to reach inappropriate academic targets such as "2,000 words".  Pam  D  09:39, 8 April 2018 (UTC)