User talk:Amandafarrell14

Welcome!
Hello, Amandafarrell14, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

I hope you enjoy editing here. If you haven't already done so, please check out the student training library, which introduces you to editing and Wikipedia's core principles. You may also want to check out the Teahouse, a community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to helping new users. Below are some resources to help you get started editing. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:57, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Notes on gender representation in video games
Hi, I wanted to leave you some notes on the content you added to the article on gender representation in video games. I've reverted the content since it had some issues that made it not really suitable for the article in its current state.

One of the major issues is that this isn't neutral, as it's written with specific intent and a particular viewpoint. Content shouldn't be written in order to argue a specific idea, especially in controversial topic areas where a viewpoint can be extremely subjective. Some argue that gender representation is an issue, while others state that it isn't, for example. What this means for article content is that any arguments for or against something must be clearly attributed to a specific person and not formatted as a blanket statement/truth. A specific example of something that shouldn't be stated as an absolute truth is the statement that video games are responsible for unrealistic standards of beauty. Someone can argue that this isn't applicable or that video games are a result of the standards rather than vice-versa: a symptom of an issue rather than the issue itself. Another argument someone could make is that video games alone aren't responsible or that they make a far smaller impact than other media, as the statement gives off the impression that they are the predominant issue here. This is why it's so important to attribute claims and make sure that it isn't a blanket statement.

Another issue is that some of the sourcing used are studies. The issue with studies is that they're primary sources for the research gathered and they deal with a very small group of participants. This means that regardless of who does the study and where it's published, you still need an independent secondary source to back up the claims and even then, the study is really only applicable to that group of people, as study samples are not meant to be representative of an entire demographic or population. For example, one paper dealt with two studies that surveyed college-aged men and women from the Midwestern USA, which means that their results may differ if they surveyed people from a younger or older age group, from different areas in the USA, or even people from a different country. There's also the question of the size of the sample as well as whether or not the participants were college students AS non-college students could have replied differently - the point being that samples are small out of necessity and that there are a lot of variables that can make the claims invalid on a larger scale - especially when you take into consideration things like the aims of the study and who is sponsoring it. (Sad to say, this last part can negatively impact study results in even the best institutions.)

This leads into original research - you must make sure that any claims are explicitly stated in source material. Do not make any assumptions based on vague claims or assertions, as this is seen as original research. Original research in general shouldn't be in articles, but original research that makes controversial claims and/or is on controversial topics is extremely problematic. This is where studies tend to become an issue as far as sourcing goes, as the claims haven't actually been verified or discussed by other people. The institution and even the journals that publish the studies don't verify the material in this fashion - they are there to make sure that the study is on the up and up, but they don't actually give any sort of feedback or reflection on the material, which is really needed with article topics like this one.

Finally, this used terms like "us" and "our culture", which is problematic since US culture is not universal and using this can make something come across as an essay.

The reason that I'm stressing these points is that this is a fairly controversial topic area in general, but especially on Wikipedia. It's extremely common for these articles to be frequently edited and reverted, so content needs to be very carefully written. It's not that the material and claims are necessarily wrong, it's just that they need to be presented carefully and in a specific format. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:25, 9 April 2018 (UTC)