User:Marilyndowning99/sandbox

Steven Crowder
I'm not sure if this is an accurate description of his life because it is almost all entirely about his work as a conservative which makes it difficult to judge him based on anything else
 * 1) Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?

2. Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?

I think the article is bias in that it leaves out a lot of relevant information but all of the information that it does include seems to be fact based despite being from heavily biased sources.

3. Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?

Almost the entire article focuses on him as more of a conservative "activist" than anything. It's all about his work as a conservative but not including the negative parts of this work or effects it has had on other people.

4. Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?

Some citations links work and some do not, most of the citations support the fact based claims but some of them I couldn't find any relevance to what the article was saying in the citation

5. 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?Almost all facts are referenced but not with a reliable reference. I would consider most of the references in this articles are unreliable because they come from Crowder's website, Crowder's twitter, Crowder's youtube channel, Fox News, and other heavily biased sources. The latest source is also from 2014 so a lot of the information could be outdated.

6. Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?

The only information after 2014 is one sentence about his current youtube channel. There could be a lot of information added on more recent events of his life and his personal life which might help understand where his radical right views came from.

7.Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?

Many conversations are going on behind the scenes of this article such as why edits were deleted, whether to include his union party affiliation or not, what information is considered controversial or not and so on.

8.How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?

The article was nominated for deletion in 2011 but by 2013 there was no consensus decided. It has no rating is a part of wikiprojects such as Canada, Comedy, conservatism and United States.

9. How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

On this particular topic, wikipedia uses a lot more bias sources than we use in class, but in a way that it would be hard to tell at first glance that the information provided may not be the most reliable. They present it as facts and while they may be true, they present it in a way that is heavily biased in that it's centered on one view and perspective. In class we do the opposite, we are first given the facts and then talk about all of the different perspectives people have on the issue and how they're all different but valid.

Angie Thomas Wikipedia Page Plan
I plan on updating Angie Thomas' works with the most recent book she has or is about to come out with. I plan on add more information in every category on her wikipedia page as well as adding more categories. I think it would be greatly beneficial to put more about her background and what got her into writing. I also want to try to find something on what she or others believes the impact the Hate U Give had on the world. I also want to include other small works she has worked on within the page as well if I am able to find that information.

Possible Sources:

 * http://angiethomas.com
 * http://www.thelavinagency.com/speakers/angie-thomas

Interviews:

 * http://www.ebony.com/entertainment-culture/the-hate-u-give-angie-thomas#axzz4xxfMMZFt
 * https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/meet-angie-thomas-author-new-ya-sensation-inspired-black-lives/
 * https://www.npr.org/2017/02/26/517305270/the-hate-u-give-explores-racism-and-police-violence
 * https://www.thecut.com/2017/03/angie-thomas-the-hate-u-give-interview-ya-novel.html
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTMXpcDd_tM
 * https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/26/angie-thomas-the-debut-novelist-who-turned-racism-and-police-violence-into-a-bestseller
 * https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/72805-q-a-with-angie-thomas.html

Ebony.com

 * In its first week out THUG landed the number spot of the NYT best seller list for YA books
 * Speaks of how her writing is framed from knowing that as a black woman from Mississippi she has to work twice as hard
 * THUG started as a short story she wrote in college when she was writing mostly fantasy because she didn't think anyone cared enough about her experiences
 * Talks about how she was inspired by an older white male professor at her school who said "You know, there’s nothing wrong with maybe paying attention to your surroundings."
 * It was part of her senior project to expand upon THUG as a short story but put it off after graduation because of how emotionally taxing it was
 * The cases of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, and Sandra Bland pushed her to write more, more specifically Trayvon Martin's friend Rachel Jeantel and the backlash she faced for not acting a certain way
 * Chose to focus on Starr to combat how the BLM movement focused on mostly black boys/men and how most YA don't portray black girls

Telegraph.co.uk

 * The show "A Different World" inspired her to keep studying
 * THUG has sold more than 100,000 copies
 * Amandla Stenberg is supposed to star in the film adaptation of THUG
 * Thomas accused her publisher, HarperCollins of failing to publish books that reflected her life; she saw more of herself in hip hop and rap songs than she did in books, this is why representation matters
 * “Publishing did something pretty terrible. They made the assumption that black kids don’t read so then there was this assumption that black books don’t sell. That’s a stereotype… but now you have my book proving them wrong. You have others proving them wrong. Now they realise they made a mistake.”
 * Thomas is her mothers only daughter but has half brothers and sisters
 * Oscar Grant story along with the others were catalyst of her writing
 * THUG was named after a song by Tupac
 * One of the reasons for her writing is to tear down stereotypes of the black community in America
 * Thomas explains the importance of listening rather than just "explaining it away"

Npr.org

 * "code switching" in THUG and Thomas' life
 * modeled the book after her experience at a mostly white college
 * hopes that young readers take away that there are many forms of activism and hopes that through the book others can find their place in activism as well

Thecut.con

 * asked literary agent on twitter if they'd consider doing a YA novel inspired by the BLM movement; her now agent Brooks Sherman responded that he didn't think any topic was inappropriate for a YA novel
 * Wrote THUG as a YA novel because it is young people who are being killed and young people who are being affected the most
 * Thomas says the way you speak should not be a way of determining intelligence when referring to code-switching
 * "We Need Diverse Books did a study where they found that something like 7.5 percent of children’s books in 2015 featured black characters as the main character, but 25 percent of books featured trucks and animals as main characters. You mean to tell me that there are more books about trucks or animals than there are about black kids? Those kids deserve to see themselves."


 * Back and forth on whether to stay in her home town of Mississippi because she doesn't feel that she belongs there because of initiatives to keep the confederate flag, ban sagging, and call MLK day Robert E Lee Day until she met middle school kids from the same state as her who said that she inspired them because they never knew they could be writers and because she was from a small town just like them

The Waterstones Interview

 * Won Waterstones Children's Book Prize
 * Readers all over the world have concocted with it, even in the UK
 * More focused on speaking to YA audience the adults, wanted to talk with them rather than to them
 * Important that there is a black girl is on the color because of representation and validation

Theguardian.com

 * 29-year-old
 * “When I was six, I was at the park, and two drug dealers decided to recreate the wild west with a shootout,” Thomas recalls. “I ended up running out of the crossfire, and, the very next day, my mom took me to the library, because she wanted me to see that there was more to the world than what I saw that day.”
 * Her first story was a piece of mickey mouse fan fiction written that same year
 * She started the novel in 2009 but these deaths are what inspired her to continue it into a novel in 2015 when she was a secretary for the Bishop in Mississippi
 * Wrote this story on a laptop held together by tape
 * Wanted to write like JK Rowling did in Harry Potter, where every main character was the narrator of their own story
 * Came up with Harry Potter gang theory

Publishersweekly.com

 * Began writing the short story as a senior in college
 * Sees writing as a form of activism

Angie Thomas Draft
Angie Thomas (born 1988) is an African-American author who was born, and continues to reside in, Jackson, Mississippi. She wrote the young adult novel The Hate U Give and is set to release her second novel, On the Come Up in 2019. Although fiction, the goal of Thomas' work is to shine a light on the issue that many African-Americans in the United States face and to shed more light on the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Life
Angie Thomas was born in Jackson, Mississippi. She grew up near the home of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers and recounted to Ebony magazine that her mother heard the gunshot that killed him. When she was six years old, Thomas witnessed a shootout. The day after the incident, her mother took her to the library to show her that the world wasn't all like what she saw then, and this inspired her to begin writing, starting with a short story Fan fiction of Mickey Mouse. She is her mothers only daughter but has many half brothers and sisters.

Thomas earned a BFA from Belhaven University, a predominantly white, private Christian college in Mississippi. Thomas was the first black student to graduate in creative writing. All of these experiences that shaped her life as a black woman from Mississippi are what she speaks of as framing her writing.

Career
While Angie Thomas was a college student, she heard about the shooting of Oscar Grant in the news. This story, combined with the stories of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Mike Brown, and Sandra Bland were major influences on her novel The Hate U Give. Before The Hate U Give, Thomas had been writing in the fantasy genre but worried that her stories would not matter. She spoke with one of her college professors, who suggested that her experiences were unique and that her writing could give voices to those in her world who had been silenced and whose stories had not been told.

In an NPR interview, Thomas cited Tupac as inspiration. She said that she felt a wide range of emotions when listening to his albums, and wanted to achieve a similar effect as a writer: "I want to make you think at times; I want to make you laugh at times; I want to make you cry at times - so he was an influence in that way." The acronym from her book, The Hate U Give, or THUG was inspired by one of Tupac's tattoo which said THUG LIFE. Thug Life was also an acronym; this acronym stood for "The hate u give little infants f**ks everyone." Thomas wanted to incorporate this in her title but she could not use the entire acronym because it was too long and inappropriate for a YA book so she settled for just The Hate U Give, or THUG. Thomas herself has cited experience with rap, her skills as a teen rapper having been the subject of an article in the magazine Right On!.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Thomas stated that she aims to "show truth and tear down stereotypes" in her writing and goes further to say that it is important for the white community to listen to the grievances of the Black Lives Matter Movement.

After its publication, The Hate U Give was optioned for film by Fox 2000 where Amandla Stenberg is set to star as Starr.

Works

 * The Hate U Give Harpercollins Childrens Books, 2017, ISBN 9780062498533,
 * On the Come Up Harpercollins Children's Books, 2019, ISBN 9780062498564

The Hate U Give (THUG)
The Hate U Give, originally published as a short story, debuted at number one on the New York Times best-seller list for young adult hardcover books within the first week it was released. The Hate U Give was written, as Angie Thomas says, to bring light to the rather controversial issue of Police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement. In summary, this book tells the story of a girl named Starr Carter and how her life is impacted by the death of her friend, Khalil, who was an unarmed black man shot at the hands of a police man. Although a piece of fiction, The Hate U Give is said to represent the effect of Police Brutality on the communities of those around the victim.

Critical Reception of The Hate U Give
When searching for reviews on the book, one would find that most reviews are positive affirmations of Angie Thomas' writing and how critics thought she effectively approached the matter of police brutality. This can be seen in the 5/5 star rating The Hate U Give has on Common Sense Media and the average rating of 4.6/5 out of 122,435 total ratings on goodreads (a well known book review website). Along with the positive feedback of The Hate U Give came negative feedback as well. This can be seen in instances such as that of Katy ISD which took THUG off of it's library book shelves and banned it from being taught because of parents complaints of it having inappropriate language.

Awards and Honors

 * Thomas has won an inaugural award from the We Need Diverse Books organization. She now supports this organization and shares their mission.
 * 2018 William C. Morris Award for The Hate U Give
 * 2018 Michael L. Printz Award Honor for The Hate U Give
 * 2018 Coretta Scott King Award Honor for The Hate U Give
 * 2018 Waterstones Children's Book Prize for The Hate U Give