User:Milli.cw/Minnekhada Regional Park/Michaelammd11 Peer Review

General info

 * I copy pasted this from a docx so the formatting might be off

Strong Aspects and What I learned

This article is very thorough. There is plenty of information to back the main points. I admire how the authors were able to cover a vast time period for this park; from day 1 of it’s history to the wildfire from the past year. I can tell the authors spent diligent time thumbing through sources to find detailed, extensive information about Minnekhada. I am particularly favoured to the Ecology section, and learned some transferable and relevant information about the different ecosystems at Minnekhada. I appreciate how the author of this section laid out their findings and conveyed information using credible sources. Highlights include the mentioning of the Regional Park Report and Burke Mountain Naturalists, percentage of vegetation, and ecosystem associations.


 * Work that needs improvement More citations!
 * Work that needs improvement More citations!

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This was the first thing I noticed while reading this article. A few are touched on in the table below. In general I believe there are many more associations, people, movements, animals, time periods, etc, that could be cited (a quick link to another Wikipedia article would be suitable). Some examples of this include:


 * -  Indigenous nations
 * -  Names of people (Harry L Jenkins, Harry Leroy, Jenkins Estate)
 * -  Districts and associations such as GVRD, Regional Parks, IUCN
 * -  Units of space (125ha, etc): I do not know where this info came from
 * -  Other places (Addington Marsh, Burke Mountain)

Use of contractions


 * -  I noticed quite a bit of weren’t, isn’t, wasn’t, scattered throughout the article. Overall, I believe these are not effective toward the overall message and would be more powerful in the full form of were not or was not (or substituted for a better description in general).
 * -  There is quite a few examples in “Extracted Resources” paragraph. Starting with “As we’ve seen...” “When the ducks weren’t lured...”
 * -  Colloquial words, such as “legit” “nowadays”

Empty starters

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I also noticed quite a few sentence starters that did not contribute to the message/theme/

point, added unnecessary words, and disrupted flow. Some examples of this include:


 * -  As we’ve seen above,
 * -  On the hunting terms of Wallace,
 * -  Withthat,
 * -  As stated before,
 * -  On the more hunting side of things,
 * -  There is not much to say that they are involved,

General punctuation and grammar

- Although more of a concern for the last read through for little mistakes, it is also worth noting that there is quite a few capitalization mistakes, general period and comma use, etc.

Table: SOME (not all) comments on certain points throughout article: Difficult to understand any text/language/context?

The article was easy to understand for the most part. If I did not understand something (usually due to a comma splice/ run on sentence/ grammatical error) I was still able to take away key points and arguments. The detail was 10/10 but I believe the wordy and “full” sentences could be split up a bit more, with a focus on clarity and concision. For example, the “Passing of Hands” section is packed with good information but the layout and portrayal seemed a bit muddy, and could be condensed for flow and cohesion.

Article Structure

My favourite aspect of this article is the structure. The headings, subheadings, and topics discussed reflect extensive research and thorough planning into layout and formatting. As a whole, I believe structure and detail are the article’s greatest strengths. I found myself not wondering anything further or having any questions about the park after reading, because all my questions were answered throughout the article! As mentioned in my last comment above, I do, however, feel as though “The passing of hands” could be split up a bit more, such as subheadings for the first owners and then the latest, or something to that effect.

Article Tone

The article tone was overall very formal and in depth. I have made some points on colloquial word use, contractions, and the use of empty starters; with some edits to these, the formality of the article will be more apparent. If I had to put my thoughts somewhere on a scale, I would say

that the article is currently at a 7/10 in terms of formality, but with edits, could certainly be higher! For example, here is the “extracted resources” paragraph, and areas I believe could be reworded for formality:

“'''As we’ve seen above, the land that is now Minnekhada Regional park, has had many great uses to it. From hunting to farming, to horse racing for a brief period, by Hamber himself [1''']. Hamber used the land a lot for hunting, as well as Wallace, but Hamber used buckwheat to lure ducks in to hunt, during these hunting weekends, hundreds of ducks were shot [1]. When the ducks weren’t lured in by the buckwheat in the off season, the bottom part of the marsh was pumped out, and the cattle pastures went in its place [1]. As this would have happened many times over the years, it would have caused mass stress to the animals, but it is not talked about, what had happened to the animals that lived in the marsh and their populations over the years."

Source review

Sources appear credible. The “Minnekhada Park Association” (9,10) is missing some valuable source information, but was probably gathered off the city/regional website as an informational PDF, which is more credible. Once again, I applaud the “ecology” section author for including peer-reviewed articles from reliable sites. Citation 3 appears to be from 1983, which is slightly outdated, as well as Citation 7 (1998).

Balance and Flow

The balance and flow of this article is at about 6/10 in its current state. As mentioned, the structure is commendable and the layout is very well done, but the balance between authors is somewhat choppy; I can tell different writing styles wrote different sections. Although this is among the hardest box to tick with group projects, I believe if the authors read through (out

loud) the sections together, they would notice the difference in language use (and “vibe”, if you will). Once formality, grammatical, contraction, colloquialism, and cohesion points are considered, the article will flow smoothly between each author’s section and bring them all to a common base.

Discussion on Issues of equity, diversity, inclusion (relevant perspectives!)

This article touches on a good variety of perspectives. I appreciate the amount of info provided about Indigenous Involvement (this is always hard to find info on!). My favourite sentence in that paragraph is:

“Through the forced imposition of colonial policy, both nations were overlooked in the parks’ development process.”

The author touches on inclusion of Indigenous peoples (or lackthereof) and future efforts in processes to include the local nations. It is worth noting that the paragraph on colonial settlers (Eric Hamber, and related) is much larger than the one on Indigenous peoples (which is often the case due to information available, but to balance this, you could include more information on the Katzie and Kwikwetlem nations as a whole, what they used the land for, etc).

Thank you for the entertaining read! I learned a lot! Michaela