Talk:Individual development account

Proposed Revisions to the IDA Page
The current article lacks history/background information on IDAs, detailed information on the processes of IDA programs, a global perspective on the tool, credible references, well-supported & updated data and criticisms of the program. These features are crucial for providing a comprehensive and neutral outlook on Individual Development Accounts in accordance with Wikipedia guidelines. In light of this, I propose making the following changes to this article throughout the course of the next two months:


 * Add a short section on history of the tool to provide context for the rest of the article.


 * Expand the section on 'Purpose' to include the interaction of IDA usage with domestic policies.


 * Add subsections under 'Programs' to cover programs in both the United States and in other parts of the world.


 * Update the section on 'Usage Date' to include well-supported recent data since the current reference link is broken. Also, I will be renaming the section 'Data and Impact' and expanding the section by adding available scholarly analysis of the data.


 * Adding a section on 'Criticisms' of IDA programs and implementation to provided a balanced perspective.


 * Adding scholarly references for the added information as well as for existing information with broken reference links

For a thorough presentation of the project and a resourceful entry, I would like to request suggestions to expand upon the ideas I present here. Please feel free to propose additional changes that you would like to see made to this page. Thank you.

Kjhooda (talk) 21:02, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Page Review
Kjhooda, your edits thus far look good, and have added a lot to the article. Your article's structure looks good, with a lot of additional information about personal impacts that helps tell a multi-dimensional story about IDA's. The revisions to the explanation section also make it much easier to understand the principles of the accounts. I think one thing that could still improve though would be looking at the overall balance of the article. While IDA's seem like a good idea, 90% of your article is devoted to positive traits, while there is only a tiny criticisms section at the end. One thing that was suggested to me (I had a similar issue with my article), would be to try and incorporate those critical points into the main body of the article. That way you don't have to try and write a huge criticisms section, but the relevant information is present to show the other viewpoint. I don't know if the sources are available, but I think you could add some economic perspective to the article as well. It looks like most of your sources right on the IDAs themselves come from sources with a background in sociology/social welfare. If you can find some more traditional economic analysis it could help balance the technicality of the article too. Overall it's a great contribution though- keep up the good work! matt.9.johnson (talk) 16:53, 6 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your suggestions, Matt.9.johnson. Adding conflicting viewpoints throughout the article instead of in a separate section is actually something I considered but avoided since I wasn't sure if that was an appropriate format but I feel more confident now. I will also look into academic economic sources as you suggested. These changes will definitely help me improve this article so thank you!

Kjhooda (talk) 18:21, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Page Review
This is a really complete and well-done article. You cover a lot of material and present it in a very organized and well-written manner. I really appreciate the work you put into this - it is obvious that you did a lot of research and tried hard to present a comprehensive account of IDAs.

Although I do not think this is completely necessary, but have you found any personal quotes from people who have benefited or had a negative experience with IDAs? A quote or a case study story could help bring a human element to see the impact on a personal level. You could incorporate this in the "Impact" section or create a small section of its own. Also, small edit is to take out the "[[" or complete it after "households" in the first paragraph in the opening! I also think you could incorporate more criticism in that section if you can find it!

Great work! -Juliabarrow3


 * Thank you for your feedback, Juliabarrow3. I have come across anecdotal evidence of IDA benefits but I haven't found many objective or negative evidence in terms of quotations so I am afraid that adding them might disturb the neutral point of view I have tried to maintain here.

Kjhooda (talk) 13:27, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Out of date, funding lost
The major federal funding, AFI, lost it's funding in fiscal year 2017. link Some state funded programs may exist and accounts set up before this time may still continue to be funded. Many of the local pages linked to from AFI go to 404 or not found pages. Going to mark the page as outdated for now. Technophant (talk) 18:48, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Rice University supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program&#32;during the 2013 Q1 term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from by PrimeBOT (talk) on 17:00, 2 January 2023 (UTC)