User:JSCC3412/Mauritania–Senegal Border War/Earthboundsunseeker Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

JSCC3412


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JSCC3412/Mauritania%E2%80%93Senegal_Border_War?veaction=edit&preload=Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org_draft_template


 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Mauritania–Senegal Border War

Evaluate the drafted changes
Hey Jeff!

First, I want to congratulate you on expanding the page on the Mauritania–Senegal Border War. This is clearly a topic that lacks a lot of coverage, so it's great that you are dedicating your time to increase the information of this historical event. I understand by your bullet points that you are still working to add content. Here are some notes I made in reference to each section as it stands:

Lead

It doesn't seem you have made any edits to the Lead paragraph of the published article yet. As the paragraph stands now, I think it is pretty clear and concise, so I wonder what more you feel you could add to it. Just make sure that the lead section reflects all the big ideas that you are adding in the rest of the article. Treat the lead almost as you would treat the conclusion paragraph of a research paper, wherein you restate your thesis and circle back to all the major points that the article presents.

Background

I appreciate the fact you provided more detail on the ethnic groups present in both countries. I think if one of the main causes of the conflict was ethnic tensions that this paragraph definitely deserves some more information on that. You do a good job of listing out the different ethnic groups, but I wonder if you could add more detail to how they interacted/related with one another. Are there any notable stories or cases of differing ethnic groups coexisting peacefully, or not so peacefully? Perhaps you could add those in?

Border Violence and Ethnic Clashes

I feel like the sentence at the end of this paragraph, "In Senegal, many shopkeepers were Mauritanian, and from 21 to 24 April, the shops of Mauritanian traders in Senegal where looted and burned," is a bit choppy. Also, there is a typo in this sentence on the published page ['where' should be 'were'], so I might go ahead and correct that on the published page too. A possible alternative phrasing could be, "Mauritanian shopkeepers in Senegal had their shops looted and burned from the April 21- April 24" and then specify who did the looting and burning. Also, the following sentence, "In addition, there were reports of professional Mauritanians being burned alive in their furnaces using spits, while others were beheaded" also feels a bit messy to me. I wonder how you could workshop this to flow better? Perhaps define who are the professional Mauritanians and whose furnaces exactly?

Additional notes:


 * I think adding info on the international response & military advisors from Iraq & Syria will be very valuable. This would be a great section to delve deep into the external actors of this conflict and detail the interventions they made.
 * Perhaps add a few images?
 * Your sources look great. I would make sure to update your bibliography and continue adding references.

Great work so far Jeff!

Peer Review Response
Hi Sabrina! Thanks for all of your comments and for the congratulations on my work so far. As for the lead paragraph, I agree that it included most of the information already. I just added one more sentence to the end to further explain the background sections that I would add. I think this gives the reader a better idea of what is to come.

For the Background section, I spent a ton of time this weekend working on making additions and clarifications. I took your advice about the interactions between different ethnic groups, and I added a whole paragraph on that. That was super helpful advice, so thank you!

For the Border Violence paragraph, this is mostly original text from the article, and I haven't spent much time editing this section. I plan to majorly expand this section based on the information that already exists and I also plan to fix all of those typos and poorly constructed sentences. I think it'll be a lot clearer once I'm done editing this section. I'll keep all of this in mind though!

Decent images have been hard to find, but so far, I've added one new one. I'll keep looking for photos to add. I think that is one of the strengths of your draft. I also added some new sources this weekend. Thanks for all the advice! I'll keep referring back to your comments as I continue working.