User:Taylorbenda/sandbox

If you are going to peer review my article it is in my new sandbox I have made: User:Taylorbenda/EnviroImpactofMin you can find it here.

Reflective Essay
Going through grade school and post-secondary it was always taught how Wikipedia is not a credible source of information. Once I began to edit on Wikipedia for this assignment I learnt that it is not an unreliable as it has been made to seem. Through the need and requirements for credible journal articles and Wikipedia editors who are always patrolling pages making sure there is no vandalism, Wikipedia ensures that the information that is shared with the public is the most true up to date information that can be provided. The more I began to edit on Wikipedia and add in my own findings from journal articles, the more I began to understand what a Wikipedia page needed in contributions. My article was rated a 'C' - an intermediate article with room for improvement, which showed throughout the article as there was a lot of room for improvement as I went through editing. There were obvious unfinished paragraphs, lacking more in-depth information. I felt that some paragraphs could be separated to make their own, focusing in on the structure of the Wikipedia page.

My contributions to this article were anything from grammatical, spelling, and punctuation, to contributing information and creating full paragraphs with new information. When I began editing I started with an overview of the article, looking for spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors, any of which that I did find I just edited within the article right away. When I began to add to and input content, I found that there were paragraphs where information could have its own heading therefore creating new paragraphs for Erosion, Sinkhole, Subsidence, Tailings, and Spoil. By creating these sections I was splitting information from an existing paragraph and adding it to these new headings, while also looking for new information to further contribute to these paragraphs. Paragraphs on Tailings and Spoil were completed drafted with new information I had found from recent journal articles - I felt that adding this new information on these topics was vital as they are a large contributor to environmental impacts from mining. Further edits that I felt were necessary, were made from the recommendations given during my peer review.

The peer review portion of this assignment was to get a better understanding of what someone else see's your article contributions either doing well or lacking. It was to give feedback in areas that could be improved or give suggestions or ideas of things that you may not have thought of. To review another colleagues article was to not only give feedback to peers but to also gain ideas for your own article in ways to improve for yourself. I only received one peer review in my talk page, but the feedback that I did receive was great, catching mistakes that I did not catch while doing my overview such as missing citations and creating a better flow through sentences. They also suggested that I should add in a section on past environmental disasters/the history of mining impacts on the environment, which I thought would be essential to give background on just how detrimental mining can be on the environment. When doing my peer review I felt I stuck to answering the questions that the Wikipedia module gave us as a guide, rather than giving to many suggestions on my own like the peer review I received. However, I did give some suggestions to things that they could fix such as creating better flow and formatting. I do wish I did give my peer a little more in depth review that focused less on answering the questions from the module and more what I saw that could use work.

I did not/have not yet to receive any feedback from any other Wikipedia editors, but when checking my contributions page for the Wikipedia article that I am editing I noticed that I got reported for possible vandalism. This being said, I did attempt to dealing with this situation by going to the person who reported me talk page. By doing so I was directed to a page that was a disclaimer for who reported me saying that it was an automated Internet bot, that reports vandalism. There was no where for me to comment back on this feedback however as there was no talk page linked. My reasoning why I feel I did get reported, was because I had made an edited within my Wikipedia article fairly early into me becoming a Wikipedia editor therefore I was noticed for making changes that could have caught the attention of me vandalizing the article rather than making contributions.

This Wikipedia assignment was much different from any other assignment that I have completed throughout my post-secondary education. I felt much more pressure in making sure my sources were up to date and credible and making sure that my grammar and spelling was correct. Completing the work in the modules was a good way to stay on task and of knowing what was expected to include in the article. It was insightful to the information that should not be included and the right information that should be included. it was different to make the information more informative for the public to read rather than what is expected to be more formal and technical in a university paper.

Potential Articles
- Environmental Impact and Mining

- Longwall Mining

- Surface Mining

Environmental Impact of Mining
- Components effected: sinkholes, loss of biodiversity, and contamination of soil, groundwater, and surface water from chemicals emitted from mining processes.

Introduction

- Wording in intro paragraph needs to be fixed.

- Awkward in text citations

Water Pollution Paragraph
- Spacing Edited

- Awkward wording/phrasing within the passages.

Heavy Metals
- Spacing Edited

- Capitalization of a linked place.

- Awkward References/Examples could add sentence or so to introduce the topic more.

Effect on Biodiversity Paragraph
- Citation needed for sentence

- Biomagnification plays an important role in polluted    habitats:mining impacts on biodiversity should be, assuming that concentration levels are not high enough to directly kill exposed organisms, greater on the species on top of the food chain because of this phenomenon.

Aquatic Organisms Paragraph

- salinisation ?

Animals Paragraph
- Citation needed for sentence

- Huge areas of natural habitat are destroyed during mine construction and exploitation, forcing animals to leave the site.

Microorganisms
- Spacing Edited

Sand Mining Paragraph
- Spacing Edited

Main Article - do these need to be edited?

Inquire about the drop down arrow?

Overall good basis for an article. There is a lot of room for me to add more information and make edits to sentence structure, grammar, and spelling. There seems to be no bias but there is awkward mentioning of events regarding the topic but no introduction to the reasoning behind them, therefore more can be added into make these transitions smoother. There are places where additional subheadings can be added in, or paragraphs can be split to create additional subheadings. Subheadings and paragraphs can be expanded upon. Many citations need to be updated as they cannot be accessed by the general public without subscription to specified journal. Citations also are missing and required in some places.

https://royalsocietypublishing-org.proxy.library.carleton.ca/doi/10.1098/rspb.2018.1926#d3e476