User:PansyPunk420

About me
I am a community college student studying with the intent to obtain my associates in arts and progress to a 4 year degree that would enable me to get job as a teacher. I am especially interested in special education, I would one day like to teach art and SPED. My hobbies include a variety of arts such as leatherworking, sewing, visual arts, and playing the banjo.

Wikipedia interests
Within Wikipedia I am primarily interested in queer history and it documentation. Specifically radical queer living and anti assimilationist viewpoints. As a queer, I find it fascinating to learn about the history of my people through their art and words. In this podcast, Making Gay History, Marsha P. Johnson dispels the popular rumor that she started the stonewall riot. My goal on Wikipedia is to prevent the sanitization of queer history.

Pricking Iron
I am greatly interested in leatherworking and have about a year of experience with the craft. I chose to evaluate the page for a leatherworking tool, the pricking iron. I chose this because I want Wikipedia to function as a comprehensive database for the different tools and methods available to crafters. Three things I find inadequate about the article are: its limited information, lack of sources, and unreliable citations.

Missing Information

The pricking iron page is lacking significant information. It does not mention the different varieties of pricking irons, which can have differently shaped, spaced, and numbered hole marking points. These have different uses within leatherworking and would be good information for a beginner. It does clear up the difference between a pricking iron for marking holes, and a leather chisel used for fully punching holes. In order to expand the article, advantages and disadvantages of each option could be listed. All said, this article defines the basic purpose of a pricking iron but does not expand upon that.

Lack of Sources

This page has only one source, the reliability of which is questioned further below. One source is not enough to cross check facts of show different perspectives. This article could be greatly improved by having more cited facts about the development of the pricking iron or its different variations. The cited information in question is specifically a comparison of the pricking iron and similar tool, which leaves the article without a properly cited and detailed description of the tool it is about.

Reliable Sources

There is only one source listed for this page, More Makeshift Workshop Skills, by James Ballou. The title and description for this book do not mention leatherworking once, rather focusing on making improvised workshop tools. The book appears to be supplementary material for variety crafters. This is inappropriate because the source should be professional and primarily focused on the subject at hand in order to ensure it is providing thorough and accurate foundational information.

In conclusion, the Wikipedia pricking iron article is incomplete. It is lacking several key components such as sufficient content, quantity of sources, and quality of sources. Despite these issues, it provides a decent starting point to understand what kind of tool the pricking iron is and how it is used in leatherworking.