User:Jgunasti86/sandbox

Jon:

OLD VERSION:


 * Timothy Morton also sees queer ecology as born out of early texts which laid the groundwork for queer theory, such as Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), specifically Butler’s idea of gender as a kind of culturally produced performance.[2] Extended to ecology, this idea helps dismantle other binary oppositions such as culture/nature, suggesting that nature is a constructed category that is performed as something separate by those who have categorized it (i.e. humans). In a similar manner to studying homosexual behavior in animals, scholars have also shown how “nature” contains aspects of queer performativity.[3]

UPDATED VERSION:

According to Timothy Morton, the foundational texts of queer theory also laid the groundwork for queer ecology. For example, Judith Butler explores gender as performance in her 1990 paper, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990).[2] Queer ecology proposes that when Butler’s notion of performance is applied to the realm of ecology, it dismantles the ‘nature-culture binary’ (CITATION). From the perspective of queer ecology, essential differences do not exist between “nature” and “culture.” Rather, humans who have categorized “nature” and “culture” as distinct from one another perform these differences. From a scientific perspective, “nature” cannot be fully understood if animals or particles are considered to be distinct, stagnant entities; rather, nature exists as a “web” of interactions.[3]

 Jon’s Description of Changes : I am responsible for copyediting the paragraph included above. I found that the writing in this section was choppy and difficult to follow, so I rewrote the entire section. I removed the final sentence of the paragraph because I believe that it misrepresented the paper that it cited. Specifically, the notion of queer ecology has far-reaching implications to how scientific research is conducted, and I think that this sentence fundamentally misrepresented queer ecology as simply the existence of nonhuman, homosexual animals. I also think that this paragraph could expand on and explain in more detail what exactly the nature-culture dualism is and how queer ecology addresses this dualism. Also, I found in my literature review that the “web of interactions” analogy is especially relevant for queer ecology, and so I added this analogy to the paragraph. I plan on adding an additional citation to this sentence and expanding this thought.

We plan on reorganizing the article as a whole; I think that the organization of the page in its current state does not easily help a reader decipher what exactly queer ecology is. We plan to add a simpler, more straightforward opening paragraph that succinctly defines queer ecology and its importance before explaining its academic and historic origins. I think that this paragraph that I am focusing on might fit better at the beginning of our article as this introduction. I would appreciate feedback about my changes to the writing style of the paragraph and the structure of the article itself. Are there other sections that you think are missing from the article or any sections that you think we could remove? My main problem with the article as it is right now is that it does not actually help me to understand what queer ecology is; our changes should make sure to address this concern.

(Article evaluation

This section is an evaluation for the article "Miss America Protest"


 * 1) Content
 * 2) Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
 * 3) I think the emphasis of the article is on "bra-burning" more so than the actual protest, which distracts me from the importance and impact of the protest itself.
 * 4) The article includes many quotations that I think are unnecessary and assume the role of space-filling rather than providing new information.
 * 5) Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?
 * 6) The "Purpose" and "Organizers and participants" seem to be too short.
 * 7) The "Historical precedent" section is too short.
 * 8) The "Legacy" section only speaks of a documentary about the protest and, very briefly, about making the Women's Liberation movement more mainstream. I think that this section could be much more comprehensive.
 * 9) What else could be improved?
 * 10) The article is very repetitive and could be organized better.
 * 11) "Civil rights protest" feels like an afterthought, and I think that this should be addressed much earlier. The "Legacy" section should address most the civil rights and the feminist protests.
 * 12) Tone
 * 13) Is the article neutral? Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * 14) I am ambivalent about the particular emphasis on "bra-burning" in this article. I think it may be worthwhile to link to another page that examines this phrase more in depth, however this article is supposed to focus on the event. I worry that a lengthly discussion of this term shifts the emphasis of the article away from the important activism.
 * 15) Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * 16) I think that the account of the civil rights protest is underrepresented. It receives only a short section at the end of the article, like an addendum. However, the article addresses the civil rights protest in the very first sentence of the article as one of the two important protests to the pageant: the civil rights protest and the feminist protest.
 * 17) Sources
 * 18) Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?
 * 19) Most links work appropriately. Reference 23, "Rush Blasts Greenstone," does not link to the Radio Equalizer article that it references. Specifically, I checked reference 6, an NPR podcast entitled "Pageant Protest Sparked Bra-Burning Myth." The podcast seems neutral in perspective.
 * 20) Some references, like number 32, link to a books that are not publicly available. Reference 32 links to a book entitled Just Sex: Students Rewrite the Rules on Sex, Violence, Activism, and Equality. From this citation alone, I cannot check whether the fact from the Wikipedia article correctly reflects the information given in this source. I also cannot assess bias.
 * 21) Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?
 * 22) Many historical facts are not cited. For example, the entire opening section only includes a citation for one sentence. The sentence regarding Lindsey Van Gelder, for example, has no citation. Furthermore, the sentence explaining that a civil rights protest took place, and specifically referencing J. Morriss Anderson, has no citation. The following sections of the article mostly contain adequate citations. It seems that the material may cite source 6 too heavily (10 citations).
 * 23) Talk Page
 * 24) What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * 25) Coverage: there is a short blurb about "coverage" that references the importance of coverage in the press.
 * 26) Merger proposal: people were discussing whether to merge two pages: No More Miss America (the brochure distributed at the protest) and Miss America Protest. The No More Miss America article was too short to have its own page, and this particular article was also lacking in material. The result was a merger. New discussion, however, proposes removing this section because it seems to be too long to justify its presence under the specific header of "Miss America Protest."
 * 27) Cultural impact: the article should address TV coverage more accurately. According to AnonMoos, coverage was actually dismissive.
 * 28) How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * 29) The article is part of the WikiProject Feminism and the WikiProject Beauty Pageants. Both projects rate this page as C-Class, and WikiProject Feminism ranks this article as low-importance.
 * 30) How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?
 * 31) We haven't yet discussed this particular protest in class. We watched the documentary She's Beautiful When She's Angry, which depicted this particular protest as pivotal for the Women's Liberation Movement and for Second Wave Feminism. However, this article seems more concerned with the trope of "bra-burning" than with the protest itself. The protest is not regarded as much as an important historical event for feminism as it is regarded as the origin of bra-burning.