User talk:Cpkelsey/sandbox

Seems that there is little to no history on Birobidzhan itself. Getting resources on its creation, purpose, and experience of the Jews as we speak. Any one else see anything specific? Cpkelsey (talk) 02:19, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

[Brian] Here are some sources from ASU’s one source, to help with the project:


 * 1) "Birobidzhan." Britannica Online Academic Edition (2018): Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Web.
 * 2) Lvavi, and Redlich, Jacob, Shimon. "Birobidzhan." (2007): Encyclopaedia Judaica, 717-20. Web.
 * 3) Weinberg, Robert. "Birobidzhan." (2004): Encyclopedia of Russian History, 149-50. Web.
 * 4) Weinberg, Robert. Stalin's Forgotten Zion : Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland : An Illustrated History, 1928-1996. Berkeley: U of California : Judah L. Magnas Museum, 1998. Print.
 * 5) Srebrnik, Henry Felix., and Ebrary, Inc. Dreams of Nationhood American Jewish Communists and the Soviet Birobidzhan Project, 1924-1951. Boston: Academic Studies, 2010. Jewish Identities in Post Modern Society. Web.

Weinberg's book is available at Noble Library / We can request chapter scans. Hopefully these can help kick off our references and additions to this subject. BMitchellAdkins (talk) 18:55, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Sbrebrnik's book is under a CC-BY-NC copyright, so we can't use it for our article. I'm running into issues finding adequate sources which are available for commercial use.Lhall23 (talk) 07:22, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Peer ReviewHR Cat (talk) 06:53, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
First, is this a new article or should there be a link to an original wikipedia article? and second, what is Birobidzhan? I'm guessing its a place. I'm not sure what info was added or new. However, it appears to be well written. For example, nothing distracted me. The last paragraph under history "However, Jews were once again targeted in the wake of World War II......." could probably use a citation source. I tried a few citation links and they seem to work properly.

Group 3 Peer Review
I liked how descriptive the history and culture section was, it gave me a good understanding on the topic. The economy topic was also good, it just needs to be longer and give more detail. In the "History" subtopic four paragraphs down it talks about the living conditions from a book, I wasn't sure if the next paragraph was a quote from that book or not because there wasn't any quotes and it was a new paragraph. I would also recommend using less quotes and more of your own words from the sources you read. Lastly, I know it is just a quick overview of the history but it kind of jumps around a bit without giving context. Like I said, I like the article as it was pretty detailed and help me better understand the topic being discussed. I would just focus on fixing up the quotes maybe getting just a little more in depth in on a few of the paragraphs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Austin spencer2 (talk • contribs) 13:57, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Atheana Cooper's Peer Review
Overall very well written and very educational. I just noticed a few things that the group may need to review. History - "After the Bolshevik revolution the Soviet regime had two organizations to work with the Jews settling into the Birobidzhan" I had a hard time understanding this sentence; maybe there is a way to simplify or reword. There are a few direct quotes from Masha Gessen, while valuable, we were taught tat we are not allowed to use direct quotes. We have to take the quote or reading and put it in our own words. The group may want to ask the instructor if this is ok.

Jewish and Yiddish Culture - There are direct quotes beginning in the second paragraph.The group may want to clarify the use of news paper articles.

Is it possible to get a picture of Birobidzhan? I review all your popups and they all make sense and are well executed. The sources are verifiable, but it would be nice if they were hyperlinked. I would check to ensure using direct quotes isn't plagiarism even if you cite the author. Thank you for the opportunity to review such a good article. I hope you do well on your final score. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ARCooper6 (talk • contribs) 21:25, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Peer Review. Jordan Deren
Overall, you guys did a great job making additions to your chosen article. One thing to me wary of is grammatical mistakes. In your first citation "After the Bolshevik revolution the Soviet regime had two organizations to work with the Jews settling into the Birobidzhan: the KOMZET and the OZET." you forgot to adda comma after "After the Bolshevik revolution." You need to be aware of format and structure of your article as well. In your first block of citations, you utilize information all from the same source. While this is ok in general, you proceed to use a string of 3 quotations in a row from the same source. You need to put some of your own analysis or just provide general information in between these citations. Otherwise, you have a full paragraph in your article that are all citations and from the same source. This is unacceptable. Also, in terms of structuring, in the "History" section you have a lot of 1-2 sentence paragraphs. You should either try to consolidate these and try to combine them or find more information on the subject of each of these small paragraphs and expand on them. This will increase the content in your article as well as giving it a more cohesive feeling. The "History" section feels like it just consists of random facts with little correlation to each other. This could be improved upon. Other than expanding upon the "Economy, infrastructure and Transportation" section, your article seems to be coming along well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jderen1 (talk • contribs) 00:07, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Ryan Brockhaus Peer Review
This is Ryan Brockhaus and I am writing a peer review for this article. First and foremost, the article had a lot of valuable information regarding the city of Birobidzhan. There were numerous sources, several of which come from academic sources like The University of California Press. As it pertains to the intro, it could have been more fluid and, at first, sounds confusing. It felt odd that the first sentence is used to describe how the city got its name. Instead, I feel that the lead section of the intro should talk about the Jewish and Yiddish connection to the city, since it was originally constructed for Yiddish people. Therefore, I feel that the lead doesn't discuss the most important aspects of the article. Instead, the lead just goes right into the timeline. Despite this, there seems to be a clear structure to the article and the chronology of events in the article are organized well. This article also appears very neutral in coverage and doesn't attempt to sway the reader one way or the other about the effects of communism on the town. As it pertains to the second part of the article, there definitely needs to be more references. Currently, only two references were placed and there is a lot of information covered. There needs to be correct referencing for readers to check. Despite this, I feel the article is very informative and look forward to seeing the finished product. RBrockhaus (talk) 02:49, 16 February 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by RBrockhaus (talk • contribs)

Leighs Peer Review
I do think this is a good article for editing and oved that I learned something new that I hadn't explored in my own reading. ONe thing i wish this page has is an introductory paragraph that summed up some of the information, I think it would make the article flow more smoothly and not seem as abrupt when starting it. You do have to be careful with the direct quotes i can see in the article, if i am remembering correctly they are against Wikis rules. There were some sections where i wished there were a few more citations to back up facts. Overall I think this is a great article and cant wait to see what it becomes! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leigh.pfeiffer (talk • contribs) 05:45, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Considering Peer Review Suggestions
Hey Team, so it seems that there are a lot of similar points made by those who reviewed our article. Lets work together to fix these. From what I can collect, they are as follows:

1) reorganizing History section in a logical manner

2) Eliminating quotations and/or replacing them with unbiased cited statements

3) adding to the economy section

I hope to accomplish 2) within the next day or so!

Cpkelsey (talk) 07:33, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Caitlin - thought
Should we add a section, what went wrong? Clearly, the plan of moving all the Jews to Birobidzhan did not work according to plan, maybe we should create a section about it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucyinthesky17 (talk • contribs) 00:03, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Re: Caitlin - Thought; James
Caitlin, that sounds like a really good idea that could really tie together everything we have under history. Maybe a subsection within the History section would be a good place for it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jwisehar (talk • contribs) 04:26, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
 * A subsection of the history section sounds excellent to me. Lhall23 (talk) 06:05, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Editing the History Section
I'm currently working on reorganizing and adding some new sources to the history section of the page. I have done some tonight, and I plan to do more tomorrow afternoon. I think adding a subsection for Caitlin's suggestion rather than it being its own section makes the most sense. Perhaps we can divide some of the history sections into clear subsections to improve readability? Lhall23 (talk) 06:08, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm making some significant formatting changes and editing some words and phrases for clearer reading. They aren't hardline edits, only things I think would help improve the article. Please feel free to edit my work as well! Lhall23 (talk) 02:13, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
 * What is the 9th source on our source list in the sandbox? It has the ASUrite link, but there isn't any other information in the citation. Lhall23 (talk) 02:28, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, it's not the 9th anymore. Rather, the last source on the list. Lhall23 (talk) 04:57, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I've made some content edits, adjusted the titling for our History subtopics, and included the 'Birobidzhan Experiment' term and titling, as it encompasses these subtopics. The term can be found in the http://www.swarthmore.edu "Forgetting Zion" exhibit. BMitchellAdkins (talk) 07:27, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

I think our article is looking great! I am going to add a small section on Birobidzhan today. We have done a lot about the history, and there are some modern facts about it, but I would like to go into a little bit more detail. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucyinthesky17 (talk • contribs) 21:23, 21 February 2019 (UTC) Also, when we are done with the editing, do we just add these changes into the main article or does the sandbox get graded? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucyinthesky17 (talk • contribs) 21:56, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
 * In the training it said to assign a specific group member to transfer edits over to the actual article page, but there's nothing on Canvas about it. I'm assuming we should do as the training said? Lhall23 (talk) 23:37, 22 February 2019 (UTC)


 * I have a few more edits to contribute, but I would be happy to be the one to move the edits over into the actual article if no one else would like to do it! Lhall23 (talk) 00:24, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Did a few more edits, removed "Birobidzhan Today" and absorbed it into the Jewish and Yiddish Culture section. I added all of the edits to the actual article, just in case that was needed as part of the assignment. Lhall23 (talk) 05:03, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

I have no objections to you being the one to put it all together, thank you for offering! do we think it needs anything else or is it ready?