User talk:Marshayg

Welcome!
Hello, Marshayg, 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) 15:13, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Copyright and plagiarism
Hi, I received a notification that you had taken material verbatim from another source, specifically this website. This is seen as a copyright and plagiarism issue, even if you used the source as a citation. Always be careful when writing article content - a good way to avoid doing this is to take notes while reading and write your article from those notes.

Unless the material is explicitly marked as falling into the public domain or was released under a compatible Creative Commons license, it should be assumed that the content is copyrighted in a way that would prohibit it from being used verbatim elsewhere. It's always best to write things in your own words, as this can help prevent issues like this from arising. I would like for you to review the module on plagiarism and copyright.

I also want to caution you about sourcing in general. Not all sources are seen as reliable on Wikipedia. For example, the Ark of Hope for Children website would be seen as non-reliable on Wikipedia unless it's routinely cited as a reliable source by authoritative sources like academic and scholarly sources. The reason for this is that we can't guarantee the site's editorial oversight and verification, which is incredibly important - especially with pages aimed at raising awareness and activism. Sometimes activism and awareness groups will leave out information, fudge details, or sensationalize details in order to capture public attention - things that may be seen as OK when it comes to their goals, but it also makes them unreliable as a source as far as Wikipedia is concerned. Popular press is better, but also runs the risk of not being the most accurate source either, as they're known for doing the same things but rather for clicks and views as opposed to doing it for activism and awareness reasons. It doesn't mean that you can't use popular press sources like news articles, but I would absolutely recommend that you use them with caution - especially when using them to source study findings. While this topic isn't a medicine and health topic per se (but definitely has elements that would be seen as falling into this area), WP:MEDPOP has a good overview of why popular press sources can sometimes be problematic. My recommendation for this topic area is to use academic and scholarly sources, as they're typically seen as the strongest possible sources out there.

Also, make sure that you aren't editorializing in your content. The material needs to be neutrally written, so it should not contain point of view wording or commentary. For example, the term " Incredibly" is seen as a point of view term since it will be subjective to the reader. Some may see it as shocking, while others may be all too sadly aware of the issues with child trafficking and the data won't be surprising to them. ReaderofthePack (formerly Tokyogirl79)  (｡◕‿◕｡)  14:08, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry, the above is me - I had to use my main account to remove the copyrighted material. I also wanted to make a note of something else - when writing, make sure to avoid euphenisms like "dug up" since not all of the readers will understand slang, either because they hadn't heard it before or because they speak English as a second or third language and aren't familiar with the saying. --Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:16, 27 November 2018 (UTC)