User talk:Kellyskeen

Welcome!
Hello, Kellyskeen, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Adam 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. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:05, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Peer Review
Hi Kelly! I really enjoyed reading this article. I have a few general comments and some specific recommendations - feel free to contact me (rab286) if you'd like to discuss anything I've written here.

General: I understand the way you have it organized now and it makes sense, but I think it would be worth exploring a few different organizations (i.e. what would it look like to combine the career/greatest works section?) in order to make the information flow a bit better. Your tone is generally neutral, but sometimes errs towards the academic especially in your opening/topic sentences.

Specific: The intro section would benefit from a quick note about what he is best known for/what type of work his works exemplify rather than just his birth date, which is already noted next to his name. In the Early Life section, make sure to link to Cincinnati. I would also recommend adding a sentence about what made the art community there so attractive, and hyperlink if you're able to a few other artists or influences that led him to choose Cincinnati. In the Career section, I think the section would benefit from more specific information on why he chose to self-exile and the language about his final works raised a few red flags - make sure that's as neutral as possible i.e. "this is considered" before "his greatest work". I thought the Selected Works section was the strongest, my only comment would be asking why you chose to list them the way you did? One final comment for both the Artworks and Exhibits sections - are these all of the known works, or a comprehensive list?

Peer Review
Hi Kelly, Chris here. I hope that you had a nice weekend.

What a tremendous amount of work you've done here. Kudos. I enjoyed reading it. Some thoughts based off of what I read in your article.

In the Early Life section, I like reading about Duncanson's family history. I think it is an interesting component to understanding the artist in greater detail. However, I'm wondering if that narrative can be sharpened and streamlined a little more. Maybe you could break up some of your paragraphs? If I were in your shoes, I would think about the things that are the most important, even though we are using neutral language. For example, Duncanson took to painting in a way that his other siblings did not. That really stood out to me and, in some ways, made other parts of his family history seem less relevant. What about his grandfather's story, or the family moving is so crucial to understanding the artist better. I feel like I'm not explaining myself in the best manner possible, but I hope you're catching my drift.

There are a few instances where the language you use is illustrative, but maybe not the best for an encyclopedia. I understand this intimately, as I have a tendency to use purple prose. Although true and totally legitimate, expressions like "freed from bondage" or "shackled by their slave legacy" distract me from getting the information that I need in the easiest, most straightforward manner. Keep your eyes open for this and other trigger language: e.g. the best, the most, etc..

You have another really great moment, when you mention his public art debut, but I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that you might mean that his family was excluded from attending because of their race, not their ethnicity.

When talking about his mural project for Ball. Is the estate called The Belmont, or is it just Belmont. If the is part of the proper name of the estate, then I think it needs to be capitalized. This paragraph also needs a citation.

Self-Imposed Exile section: My notes here are language choice again. To me, exile implies punishment, specifically in not being able to return home. Unless it is specifically referred to as an exile in his biographical literature, I might say that he fled or left the country.

In Final Years: language again "created some of his greatest works". What proves that these are his greatest works.

Finally, in the selected works section, you use language that is fairly academic. I didn't notice this at first, but it came up in one of my peer reviews that I was using language that may not be easily digestible for layman. As I'm going back an over my own material, I'm thinking about how to make things better for the reader.

Overall I think you've done really good work and I look forward to reading the final product. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Csmccloskey (talk • contribs) 03:23, 20 March 2017 (UTC)