User talk:Kvanschilfgaarde

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Some tone problems
Hi, Kvanschilfgaarde. I'm taking a look at Workers' rights in meat packing industry and I see a few issues:

The tone of the introduction and characteristics section reads more like a position paper than an encyclopedia article. The history section and the implication sections are both much better in this regard, covering the specific labor violations, injuries and risks which have been commonplace in the industry. But the introduction doesn't speak to workers' rights, beginning immediately with "There are significant physical and psychological risks for American meat packing workers" then noting only the injury rates. Imagine you are a critical reader landing on this article. You would expect that the introduction of an article like this would lay out a summary of the contents which in this case are the history of the american meatpacking industry, the composition of the sector and the labor force, and the risks to workers and the industry today. Likewise the characteristics section feels a bit slanted. We want to talk about oligopoly, because market power is a big component in labor relations. We also want to talk about the scale and scope of the industry, not out of alarm but to give the reader some context for the subject.

I also feel the article needs to be renamed. You are deeply covering the American meatpacking industry, and wikipedia is an international resource. I think something like Labor rights in the American meatpacking industry would work well. I prefer labor rights to workers' rights largely because Labor rights is the term Wikipedia has settled on (if you enter "Workers' rights" into the search bar it will redirect you there), but either way we need to specify the country.

However, the remainder of the article has only minor tone problems. Overall it is clear about the claims it makes, well referenced and fairly comprehensive (provided we have the right title). I would love to see more on labor disputes in the article but that is the beauty of wikipedia: no article is ever finished! If you need any help with the above or have any questions about the concerns I've raised please feel free to ask me here or on my talk page. I am looking forward to seeing the tone issues worked out because I think if those can be fixed this will be an excellent article. Thanks, Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:42, 25 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi Adam, sorry for the delay but thanks so much for your feedback. I was planning on going back over some of the language to improve neutrality, which I will absolutely do now. My difficulty in some of the more slanted content is that I was pulling the organization directly from scholarly sources, and tried to present as clear a view as they offered. But I see how it seems less neutral so I will check that it doesn't seem alarming. If you would be able to edit or check my edits, I would very much appreciate an neutral writer adding on. In addition, I was wondering about the title of the article as well. I didn't want to make it too unsearchable by adding American but completely agree the article is focused that way. I'm also happy for labor rights to be in the title since it better aligns with the Labor rights page. However, I'm not sure how to change the title so I will look into it and do so as quickly as possible. Thanks so much for your feedback, please continue to look at the page and help with edits! Kvanschilfgaarde (talk) 18:18, 29 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I can move the article to a new title if you like (you can also try it if it doesn't seem too daunting). I appreciate your concern with regard to search engine optimization (as Wikipedia does quite poorly in that regard due mainly to weird titles), however the low search ranking now is mostly due to limited inbound links to the page. I think Labor rights in the American meatpacking industry might be a good title.
 * The neutrality issue is tough, especially on subjects where the preponderance of sources leans one way or the other. One trick that I've found works really well is to stick to "Just the facts, ma'am"--report and summarize the facts in the available sources and try to avoid drawing the reader to conclusions or following along as the sources attempt to do so. :) This doesn't mean preserving equal time for both "sides" of anything, nor does it mean making the text needlessly passive. You can also try combing your text for verbs which have a particular connotation. In this case, the word "slaughter" is likely more appropriate in context than "kill" (despite the definition of Animal slaughter being the killing of animals for food). The article now uses kill and slaughter interchangeably, I would recommend switching to slaughter throughout. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:44, 2 April 2015 (UTC)