Talk:Music and women's suffrage in the United States

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2021 and 21 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Roro.nn.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 01:18, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Original Research topic
Dear Roro.nn (tagging also your course supervisor User:Ian (Wiki Ed). Congratulaions on your first WP article - welcome to the show! I saw your article appear while I was doing new page patrol today. I congratulate you on your research and wikitext formatting. Your article's topic is a brave choice for a first WP contribution because is an "idea" at the intersection of two topics (music and women's suffrage) - much harder to write encyclopaedically than an article about a specific "thing".

I am worried about whether this article relies too heavily on Original Research especially in the sense of original synthesis of verified facts to make original claims... I was first drawn to this potential problem by the title. We even have an editorial guideline, WP:AND, that notes that article titles which include "and" often have higher likelihood of neutrality/original research. This is because it is taking two independently notable concepts and hunting for sources which show a connection between them. For example, if I tried to write an article "Einstein and Australia" it would likely be a problem because the combination is not notable even if any individual sentence in the article has a citation. See what I mean?

In your article, as it is currently written, you start with the phrase "In 1848, women gathered at the Seneca Falls Convention in New York to discuss their rights, opportunities, and desire to obtain the vote in the United States.[1]". This is perfectly true but is the beginning of an essay, not an encylopedic article about "Music and the United States' suffragettes". Your first sentence really needs to hit the audience with the bald, boring, statement that does two specific things: State the topic, state why it is notable. Your final sentences in the lead paragraph currently achieve this more accurately - with the footnote [6] - they give your subject choice legitimacy.

In a lot of sentences you're footnoting "obvious" statements and/or referencing primary sources for your statement - e.g. "Most songs were not written as sheet music, but instead were printed as stanzas of lyrics.[7] The tune was simply placed within the heading of the song.[7]" (where [7] is an example of sheet music that demonstrates your point. This is original research - you need a secondary or tertiary source which makes the claim you're stating. This is the opposite of what you're expected to do in a university essay - it's not the encyclopedia-writer's job to come to conclusions about things based on understanding the original sources. That's what a secondary source is for. An encylopedia merely restates and summarises the claims of secondary sources and quotes primary sources.

The "list of song" section is a bit tricky... see the editorial guidelines on embedded lists. It is unclear what the criteria for entry in this list is. You need to clearly state the scope in an opening sentence to the subsection. Is it supposed to be comprehensive list of all songs that fit this article's theme? Is it just all the songs you're aware of? Is it a curated list of some of the best examples? The reference to Crew (2002) is a good primary source - a catalogue of sheet music - but it is not the criteria for entry into this list, otherwise you would be simply be recreating the index page of that catalogue. I would recommend that you use that book as an item in a "bibliography" subheading but not use it as a footnote for the list. Instead, the list should only include things which are verifiably notable examples of your topic. If a secondary-source has said "xyz song is the earliest/best/most-popular song of this genre" then THAT is a noteworthy example to put in the list.

I hope this feedback is helpful. Sincerely, Wittylama 11:16, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Per the above, I've added a few tags to the article, since it's live. If you are able to reframe the opening of the article in line with MOS:LEAD, redo some of the section titles, and ensure that what is in the article includes reporting from reliable sources conveyed in a neutral manner, then I'd see it justified to take down the tags. For now, however, I plan to leave up the tags so that editors who see the page can make improvements. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 05:09, 14 April 2021 (UTC)