User:Allyssa.b/Gwenaëlle Thomas/Isobel.Isobel Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

Allyssa.b


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Allyssa.b/Gwena%C3%ABlle_Thomas?veaction=edit&preload=Template%3ADashboard.wikiedu.org_draft_template
 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)

This article is entirely new to Wikipedia and does not currently exist in the Wikipedia "mainspace".

Evaluate the drafted changes
(Compose a detailed peer review here, considering each of the key aspects listed above if it is relevant. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what feedback looks like.)

Lead

The lead section does include an introductory sentence that clearly and concisely describes the article's topic. I appreciated that the topic "Gwenaëlle Thomas" was in bold, per Wikipedia standards. The lead section seems to include content from all of the main sections of the article, and provides a nice summary of the content that the article presents. There is no information in the lead section that is not present in other parts of the article, which is good. I do think that the Lead section could be made more clear if the topics presented in the Lead followed the same order of presentation as the article itself. After the topic sentence, the Lead discusses Thomas' research, then discusses commitment to inclusion and communication. But in the article itself, the Inclusion and Communication section is placed before the Research section. It might make the article easier to follow if the Lead section reflected a similar organization.

As far as detail, I think that the Lead contains just the right amount of detail (enough to cover all major points, but still concise). If anything, I would recommend changing a few miscellaneous words to make them more specific. For example, I would recommend adding details to the sentence "while at Duke she has been involved in many organizations and has been a teacher and a mentor for many individuals". What organizations? If it's too much to list them all, maybe just a more specific term, such as "student-led advocacy organizations". Similarly, who is included in "many individuals"? Other grad students? Undergrads? Kids and teens?

Content

All of the content that has been added does seem relevant to the article's topic. When looking through the content and at the article's references, it did appear that the content was recent. I didn't find any information that was obviously outdated. When considering content that may be missing, I would definitely encourage the author to add more selected publications, if any more are available. A few more selected publications would really help demonstrate the scope of Thomas' research and the contributions that she has made to the field of Neurobiology.

This article definitely does deal with one of Wikipedia's "equity gaps", which is great. In particular, this topic communicates information about an individual with multiple historically underrepresented identities (an Afrolatina woman in STEM). I think that this article does a good job highlighting the fact that Thomas is an Uncommon Leader, and pointing out that leaders such as Thomas have been historically underrepresented in STEM disciplines.

Tone and Balance

The content that was added to this article did feel neutral overall. Some sentences could be adjusted to feel a little more impartial. For example, the sentence which says "Amplifying marginalized voices and increasing scientific communication is a very important part of Thomas's life" could be changed to something more like "Thomas considers amplifying marginalized voices and increasing scientific communication to be a critical goal in her work". This is just a minor edit, but shifts the sentence slightly, to make it really clear that amplifying voices is a goal expressed by Thomas, and not something that the author simply the author's analysis of Thomas' goals.

There were no claims in the article that felt biased toward any particular political position, although the article did not seem to examine any particularly political topics. This article portrays Thomas in a very positive light, but I don't feel that it attempts to persuade the reader to support one position or another.

Sources and References

The content in this article is relatively well-sourced, and the sources used were current. The first and second sources are each cited many times, and the article heavily relies on the first two sources. When I looked through the sources, it seemed like the article represented the sources well, and that the information was accurate based on the original sources. The sources allow for pretty thorough coverage of the topic, but, if possible, it would be great to find a few more secondary sources (interviews, new stories, etc.) that are less directly connected to Thomas. There are only 11 sources total, and not all of them listed an author, so it's difficult to say whether or not the sources represented a diverse spectrum of authors. Regardless, the article does seem to promote diversity and include historically marginalized populations, since Thomas herself is a member of a historically underrepresented population.

The article could have used a few more potential sources, including more selected publications (if any more are available). Here's a few sources that I found that aren't necessarily better sources, but that might provide a few more reference points and some additional information/coverage: https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2020/06/duke-university-students-professors-experiences-black-america-virtual-panel https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/ask-dr-editor/effective-science-communication-deconstructed/

All of the links that were present in the reference section were working correctly! I think that the References list might have the same source entered twice (sources 8 and 9), so I would double-check that. It also looked like the citation in the Selected Publications section was typed by hand. I'm not sure if this matters, but other Wikipedia pages that I've seen used the "cite journal" template in this section. Wikipedia may want the citations added to the article using this template.

Organization

The content that was added was well-written overall, and I didn't have any issues trying to understand the language used. I didn't find a lot of spelling or grammar errors, but here are some minor changes that I'd recommend:


 * For the very first sentence, I'd change "Gwenaëlle Thomas is a first generation college student who is currently a Neurobiology Ph.D. candidate at Duke University" to "Gwenaëlle Thomas is a first generation college student and Neurobiology Ph.D. candidate at Duke University"
 * "She works in multiple labs" could be more focused. Which labs specifically?
 * "While at Duke she has been involved in many organizations" could also be a little more specific. What types of organizations? How has she been involved?
 * There should be a period after the following sentence: "Additionally, she was also involved in WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) as well as oSTEM (out in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math)"
 * After writing about the "Laboratory for Psychiatric Neuroengineering", you should list its acronym (LPNE) in parentheses, because later in the article, you refer to the laboratory using just the acronym.
 * When including footnote citations, the formatting should be: a period after the sentence, then no spaces, then the footnote, then a space, then start the next sentence. Like this. If there's two citations for the same sentence, then they go right next to each other, with no spaces. Like this. And then the next sentence starts. I noticed that some of the citations in the article had extra spaces or spaces between citations, so this is just something to look out for.

The major sections are broken down in a way that makes sense and represents the topic well. Section headings and subsection headings appear correctly formatted to me.

Images and Media

The article does include images that enhance understanding of the topic. The images are well-captioned. If possible, I would also recommend adding dates to the image captions, to note when the photos were originally taken. I believe that all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations. It looks like the images are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 and CC0 image licenses, which are acceptable for Wikipedia. The image layout is visually appealing. I would recommend increasing the size of the photo of Thomas used in the article's infobox. I would also recommend including an additional photo somewhere in the research section of the article, such as a photo from one of the labs that Thomas works at or a photo of the type of mouse that Thomas does experiments with.

New Article Questions

The article does meet Wikipedia's Notability requirements. It includes at least 2-3 sources that are reliable and independent of the subject. The list of sources is relatively exhaustive, but if possible, I would recommend searching just a little more to see if there are any more sources that could be used (I included a few potential ideas above). The article does follow the pattern of other similar articles. It matches the general formatting of other scientist biographies. I might suggest placing the Research section above the Inclusion and Communication section, since most scientific articles seem to place research above outreach; however, outreach is such a large part of Thomas' life that I think the author could also justify placing the Inclusion and Communication section above Research. The article does link to other articles, but I would recommend reading through it one more time and adding even a few more links. For example, in the first paragraph there are some additional Wikipedia articles that could be linked (first generation college student, Neurobiology, Ph.D., neurodevelopment, Afrolatina, science communication).

Overall Impressions

This is a strong article and will be a great addition to Wikipedia! I particularly appreciated the long Inclusion and Communication section, and I loved how much detail you were able to include regarding Thomas' advocacy and science communication work. The article could be strengthened if a few more sources were located and included. More in-text links to other Wikipedia articles would also improve the article and help make it more discoverable. Fantastic work!

Fake References (from citation example)