User:Ingrid.bodeen/sandbox

Article Evaluation
The article that I'll be evaluating is one discussing the granting of white privileges to select groups of people during the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

Evaluating Context
The article includes all relevant information, nothing seems to distract me from the topic at hand. Relevant quotes and references are used to support different claims made in the article however, certain sentences seem to be unnecessarily long and slightly ill phrased. To improve the fluidity of this article, I think changes could be made to the wording of certain sentences. Although the article decently covers the initial creation of the policy, I think more information on how this policy is still relevant today should be included (eg. How Chinese South Africans have been reclassified as black in legislation involving providing benefits for groups that were previously disadvantaged during Apartheid ).

Evaluating Tone
The article seems to remain relatively neutral all throughout showing no signs of being significantly bias towards any single party. Stronger/ more assertive adjectives are used in a couple of sentences however, I don't believe this has any significant effect on swaying the readers opinion on the topic being discussed. This was most likely done to try and place emphasis on the opinions of certain groups mentioned in the article.

Evaluating sources
There are several hyperlinks included that allows you to conveniently conduct deeper research into topics mentioned in the articles. Citations are also included all throughout, with at least one citation per paragraph. There is a variety of reliable cited sources including government statements and articles published by well respected news agencies such as TIME magazine. Although the government statements seems to be more bias towards themselves, I believe the inclusion of news articles and academic reports written by more neutral sources is able to make sure that the article remains objective.

Talk page notes
This article is within the scope of both Wikiproject South Africa and Wikiproject Japan. It's been rated and meets the B-class criteria (the articles uses reliable sources that are relevant and appropriate). Although we have not directly talked about honorary whites in South Africa within our class, we have discussed race/ethnicity in relation to socioeconomic status. I feel like the Wikipedia article discusses this topic from a more neutral perspective whereas our discussions in class are more emotion driven (inclusion of personal experiences/opinions). The talk page doesn't seem to include a lot of conversations about the topic itself but more the format of the citings included within the article.

= Article Additions Task = I will be adding a section to Genetic history of indigenous peoples of the Americas Wikipedia article under the section Old World genetic admixture and Blood groups:

Ancient Beringians
Recent archaeological findings in Alaska have shed light on the existence of a previously unknown Native American population that has been academically named "Ancient Beringians." Although it is popularly agreed among archeologists that early settlers had crossed into Alaska from Russia through the Bering Strait land bridge, the issue of whether or not there was one founding group or several waves of migration is a controversial and prevalent debate among academics in the field today. In 2018, the sequenced DNA of a native girl, whose remains were found at the Sun River archaeological site in Alaska in 2013 (maybe add citation here), proved not to match the two recognized branches of Native Americans and instead belonged to the early population of Ancient Beringians. This breakthrough is said to be the first direct genomic evidence that there was potentially only one wave of migration in the Americas that occurred, with genetic branching and division transpiring after the fact. The migration wave is estimated to have emerged about 20,000 years ago. The Ancient Beringians are said to be a common ancestral group among contemporary Native American populations today, which differs in results collected from previous research that suggests that modern populations were ancestors of either Northern and Southern branches. Experts were also able to use wider genetic evidence to establish that the split between the Northern and Southern American branches of civilization from the Ancient Beringians in Alaska only occurred about 17,000 and 14,000 years, further challenging the concept of multiple migration waves occurring during the very first stages of settlement.

(Blood Groups)
The standard explanation for such a high population of Native Americans with blood type O comes from the idea of Genetic drift, in which the small nature of Native American populations meant the almost complete absence of any other blood gene being passed down through generations. Other related explanations include the Bottleneck explanation which states that there were high frequencies of blood type A and B among Native Americans but severe population decline during the 1500s and 1600s caused by the introduction of disease from Europe resulted in the massive death toll of those with blood types A and B. Coincidentally, a large amount of the survivors were type O.

New Section:

European diseases and Gentic Modification
A team led by Ripan Malhi, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois in Urbana, conducted a study where they used a scientific technique known as whole exam sequencing to test immune-related gene variants within native americans. Through analyzing ancient and modern native DNA, it was found that HLA-DQA1, a variant gene that codes for protein in charge of differentiating between healthy cells from invading viruses and bacteria were present in nearly 100% of ancient remains but only 36% in modern Native Americans. These finding suggest that European-borne epidemics such as smallpox altered the disease landscape of the americas, leaving survivors of these outbreaks less likely to carry variants like HLA-DQA1. This made them less able to cope with new diseases. The change in genetic makeup is measured by scientists to have occurred around 175 years ago, during a time when the smallpox epidemic was ranging through the americas.

Peer Review (Stephanie Lee)

 * I didn't want to directly fix your work so here are some suggestions in fixing sentence structure and grammar:
 * Recent archaeological findings in Alaska have shed light on the existence of a previously unknown Native American population that has been academically named "Ancient Beringians." Although it is popularly agreed among archeologists that early settlers had crossed into Alaska from Russia through the Bering Strait land bridge, the issue of whether or not there was one founding group or several waves of migration is a controversial and prevalent debate among academics in the field today. In 2018, the sequenced DNA of a native girl, whose remains were found at the Sun River archaeological site in Alaska in 2013 (maybe add citation here), proved not to match the two recognized branches of Native Americans and instead belonged to the early population of Ancient Beringians. This breakthrough is said to be the first direct genomic evidence that there was potentially only one wave of migration in the Americas that occurred, with genetic branching and division transpiring after the fact. The migration wave is estimated to have emerged about 20,000 years ago. The Ancient Beringians are said to be a common ancestral group among contemporary Native American populations today, which differs in results collected from previous research that suggests that modern populations were ancestors of either Northern and Southern branches. Experts were also able to use wider genetic evidence to establish that the split between the Northern and Southern American branches of civilization from the Ancient Beringians in Alaska only occurred about 17,000 and 14,000 years, further challenging the concept of multiple migration waves occurring during the very first stages of settlement.
 * The standard explanation for such a high population of Native Americans with blood type O comes from the idea of Genetic drift, in which the small presence of Native Americans shows almost complete absence of any other blood gene being passed down through generations. Other related explanations include the Bottleneck explanation (add citation?) that states there were high frequencies of blood type A and B among Native Americans. However, a severe population decline during the 1500s and 1600s. caused by the introduction of disease from Europe, resulted in the massive death toll of those with blood types A and B. Coincidentally, a large amount of the survivors were type O.
 * I was unclear about what you meant when you said "and the survival of individuals with type O"
 * I think the information you added was clear and concise and are important additions to the Wiki article.
 * I noticed that you ended a few of you sentences with "..., which" so I tried to restructure the sentence a little bit.
 * It felt like I was reading an actual article because you didn't have any tone of bias or opinions, and most of your sentence were backed up by citations.
 * A note on citations: You used some citations more than two times and I know that Wikipedia doesn't like when the same information comes from a single source so you might want to find different information or other sources that work for the information you added.
 * Overall I think the work you have here was good!