User talk:Opulentj

Welcome!
Hello, Opulentj, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with Wiki Education; 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) 16:28, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Response/notes
Hi, I saw your message on my talk page. I have several notes on your draft, which I've moved to your sandbox at User:Opulentj/sandbox.


 * The citations need to be made into individual citations, rather than one citation that contains all of the sources. These sources should also be placed behind the specific claim that it's meant to source.


 * This is written more like an essay on the topic than an encyclopedia article, as it takes a casual, narrative style. Avoid using "you" and "we".


 * You also want to avoid point of view statements, which are essentially statements that come across as being the opinion or viewpoint of the writer. We can only summarize what others have stated on the subject - we cannot add our own thoughts or connections, even if they seem obvious. Any opinions or theories must be clearly attributed to the person who made the claims in the source. For example, avoid labeling something as famous. It's generally assumed that if something is mentioned in an article that it's going to be notable.


 * When pointing out the viewpoints of a specific person, make sure that the individual is notable. You highlight specific people, however this comes across like it's a local describing an urban legend - in most cases they won't be seen as authorities on the topic, so we should avoid highlighting them unless they are.


 * There doesn't need to be as much detail on specific urban legends. I would instead focus on the type of legend or aspects of them that match up with others. There are different types of urban legends out there, but they mostly tend to focus on caution or morality. In this specific case the train story is a cautionary one, so rather than going into detail about that specific legend there should be information about how these legends have been used as cautionary, instructional tales intended to steer listeners away from danger. We would of course need sourcing that discusses urban legends as cautionary tales, but I would imagine that there is sourcing out there about this. (This or for example.)


 * With sourcing, make sure that it's about the specific topic at hand: urban legends. If the source only mentions storytelling but not urban legends in specific, then we can't use the source. While urban legends are a form of storytelling, we can't guarantee that this is the type of storytelling that the source author(s) had in mind. It would thus be seen as original research to apply content from those sources to the specific topic of urban legends.


 * Finally, make sure that the content isn't already covered elsewhere - if the section is meant to specifically cover Mexican-Americans then the section should focus specifically on them. Keep in mind that an urban legend being common doesn't automatically qualify it as a Mexican-American urban legend per se. By this I mean that there would be nothing about it to mark it as unique to Mexican-American culture, so unless the source has information about how this population specifically applies that to their culture it should be avoided.

I hope this all helps! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:06, 5 May 2020 (UTC)