User talk:Kierra boyd

Welcome
Hello,, 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) 18:02, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Feedback
Hi! I wanted to leave you some feedback:

I noticed first off that you need to have more sourcing in the article. You only have two sources, one of which is a notification of an event. Be cautious of these since while the source is WP:PRIMARY (as the venue is hosting the artwork), you also cannot tell how much of it was written to promote a topic. Primary sources can be useful, for example the other source is an interview with the artist himself and can be good for quoting something "straight from the horse's mouth" as the saying goes. However it's a good idea to try to use some secondary sourcing as well, especially as you have some interpretations of his art and process in the piece.

On that note, be very cautious about putting original research and writing in a persuasive style. One of the big differences between Wikipedia and an academic paper is that in a paper you can draw your own conclusions and post your own arguments in order to persuade the reader to see things in a certain light. You can't do this with an encyclopedia article, as we can only write about what others have said on the topic. It doesn't mean that what you've written is wrong in the slightest - you just have to have sourcing to back everything up.

Finally, I'm concerned that you have closely paraphrased from this source. Here's what stood out:
 * From the source: He is best known for his extended series of visual work that develops the intricate personal mythology of the Mounds and the Vegans, two diametrically opposed universal forces that play out the archetypal battle between good and evil.
 * What you wrote: Trenton Doyle Hancock is best known for his extended series of visual work which develops the “intricate personal mythology of the Mounds and the Vegans”, two opposing forces that play out the archetypal battle between good & evil.

This sentence is only very slightly rephrased and as such, this would be considered a copyright violation and plagiarism on Wikipedia. You can use a quote, however there are other portions that were taken enough from the original. Be careful of this - it's usually better to try to re-write things as much as possible in your own words and only use quotes when you absolutely have to. That said, it is a difficult sentence to rephrase, so here's my attempt at this:


 * Hancock is known for his visual work that focuses on the Mounds and the Vegans, two forces that are constantly dueling with one another and serve as a representation of the eternal battle between good and evil. This extended series also serves to explore Hancock's mythology of the two forces, which gives him the opportunity to develop his concepts at length.

This is a little clunky, but it gets the gist of the source across without copying too closely. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:57, 23 May 2017 (UTC)