User talk:GracyxMiller/sandbox

Article evaluation feedback
You do a really nice job organizing your notes for this exercise by the titles of the slides, which makes your response to this exercise easy to follow. I see you making clear and useful observations about each of these topics, which is great. It would be useful to have just a little more information or clarity in some of them. For example, what kinds of statements are you seeing lacking sources or what kinds of sources would be helpful ones to add? Nicoleccc (talk) 01:11, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Choose a topic feedback
Any of these three articles has potential as a project for this class. I don't have a sense based on what you've written here for what changes you would plan to make for each or what kinds/range of sources you located for each in your initial searching. A couple of general thoughts I have after a quick look at each of these articles are that the Alice in Wonderland one is just a list and I would be curious what you plan to add to it that would utilize sourcing (just noting that a product exists doesn't require a source the way talking about the history of something does, for example); and the Gar article is already fairly well developed (C class rather than start or stub), which doesn't make it immediately not an option for this project, but might mean it will be a little harder to find what needs improvement in it.

The biggest thing I would recommend in order to choose which of these to focus on as your editing project is to do some preliminary research. What range and quality of sources are you finding for each? The topic you're finding the most sources for that introduce the most new information is likely your best one to reach for here. Nicoleccc (talk) 23:45, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Peer review
One of the first things I noticed is when you say how only five of seven of the different types of gar fish live in North America. I would suggest rephrasing that sentence so it isn't written to favor North America. Mentioning only the gar fish that reside in North America is sort of biased writing so I would either mention where the only gar fish live or just remove that bit of the text.

Each time you mention the species name, you need to italicize it. In the sections for each of the different types of gar, you reuse the same source over and over again. For some of these sections, you only use that one sources. This lead to your writing to share a really close resemblance to your sources. To strengthen your writing and also remove any accidental paraphrasing, you should go back and find additional sources to use for describing the fish. I would check out the Department of Fish and Wildlife pages for the states that the gar fish reside in to get more information to use.

What you have written is very easy and enjoyable to read. There are a few grammatical errors throughout the article so I would recommend either reading what you have written out loud or running it through an online grammar check. Ohjeezewhy (talk) 18:58, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Article draft feedback
You've got some excellent additions here! The close look at specific types of Gar is really good information, and you navigate sources well from what I can see. I'm curious whether this will be an expansion of where these species are mentioned in the existing "Species" section of the existing article or if you are planning to bring them in a second time in a new section. The existing "Species" section could perhaps be re-named as "Species and Identification" or something along those lines to be a clearer fit for this expanded information.

It might also be worth revisiting the phrasing of the lead with your additions in mind. Right now, the lead describes a single general body style for gar, but your descriptions suggest more variance than this. An added phrase or sentence or so might help this map a little better to your additions. A related question I have is how the opening "Identification" section in your draft differs from or expands on information already present in the current article's lead section.

My biggest notes other than thinking about how and where this will integrate into the existing article are about tone/phrasing and careful proofreading. If you do keep material from the "Identification" section of you draft, you will likely want to remove the reference to North America, as the article is not specific to North America (unless you're also considering adding a broader discussion about geography and where they are found around the world). Smaller tone/phrasing questions come up in relation to descriptors, such as "sheer mass" ("shear" is the current draft spelling, but the other spelling is the one you're looking for)...the adjective seems to be there to make the reader feel even more impressed by the size and doesn't really add information. You will want to look through the draft for small language tweaks like this and for spelling/grammar and things like fragment sentences (one example is this sentence: "The snout is also wide, carrying the look of an alligator from above where its name was formed." I can see where this information came from in the original source, and that you are doing some careful work to paraphrase it without paraphrasing too closely, but the resulting sentence doesn't quite make sense to a reader who isn't directly comparing these texts).

Let me know if you have any questions, and I look forward to reading your polished article edits! Nicoleccc (talk) 17:48, 26 July 2019 (UTC)